This brings a smile to my face. I don't care anymore what excuses people come up for Facebook's behavior. Enough is enough and Facebook has crossed the line years ago. No remorse, no forgiveness.
I just hope they haven't awoken a sleeping giant. Facebook has enormous capital and engineering capacity. If they decided to have their own app store and/or phone ecosystem, their brand might position them as a viable competitor to Google or Apple. But would we be better off for it?
They already tried their own phone ecosystem. I'm not saying that they shouldn't/can't try again, but it seems like Facebook's hubris is their worst enemy.
"We have invented something no one else has thought of. A small personal computerised device. Now you're able to stay docked twenty-four seven. On the bus. You can dock. On the subway. Stay docked. You can be docked in at home, and at the same time, you're docking with some kids at the public pool. We went to the guys at Fruit Computers and we told them we wanted to make our hardware as compatible as possible... Now you can dock your Lifeinvader to an iFruit or any other device, and it'll take all the data off and reformat it into Lifeinvader-friendly information.
I'd suggest getting a Pixel or other Android device if Apple's privacy stance bothers you. They will act on behalf of the consumer, regardless if you feel like "but it's my phone!".
Yes, it's your phone. But not your app store. You can use your iPhone perfectly well without ever having opened the app store.
I am pessimistic on the issue because people prefer to pay indirectly because it feels like it's free and everybody likes free.
The business model of FB and Google deviates from Apple in a major way, with Apple you give the money and get the service. With Google and FB, you get the service and the cost is added to the stuff you buy. It's not necessarily even a price increase, maybe it's just directing the money from the billboard owners to the technologists.
I don't see how FB or Google can lose unless someone in power(like a politician or an activist businessman) makes it stop despite the popular opinion. The fight between advertisers is vicious and FB doesn't look like afraid of getting its hands dirty.
For someone somewhere "evil" Apple screwed up their entertainment on that FB app which just gives away free stuff and even pays you to use their VPN.
> with Apple you give the money and get the service
I mostly agree but to be fair with Apple you rent the service. They dictate what you are allowed to install on your phone, only after they deem it suitable.
For users for whom the developer tools aren't a realistic option, which is the vast majority of them, apple does dictate what you can install on your phone.
For the rest of us, for the low low price of $100 to join the developer program plus $1000 for a Mac, we can get the ability to install software that we can build, which more-or-less precludes sideloading as an option for commercial software.
So, for all practical purposes, yes, Apple does dictate what you can install on their phone. The question is really whether you think that that's a feature or a misfeature.
That's different from controlling what YOU as a user can install on your phone. Apple controlls what you can make people install on their phones.
These are vastly different things. You own your phone and you can do whatever you want with it. It's just that you can't use Apple's distribution channels to spread you code.
You also can't put your own code on it without a developer key, and Apple is the gatekeeper for getting a developer key.
Theoretically you could bypass everything by replacing the OS, except that you can't replace the OS without yet another key that Apple isn't sharing with anyone.
So I have to pay yearly rent to write and install my own apps onto my phone? And if I do not pay that rent it stops functioning? What if I want to install an app someone else wrote onto my phone but doesn't want to put it in the App Store? I get what you are saying but I don't want my mom approving what I install onto the device I paid for.
That's not true. This whole story is about Facebook's enterprise signing cert being revoked so they can no longer distribute apps outside the app store. Please stop spreading misinformation.
> What Apple dictates is what people can distribute on their App Store.
That's the unfortunate status quo. But it would absolutely be possible to legislate Apple (and Google Play Services - grey area) to allow 3rd party stores/apps.
They dictate what you run on the phone if it requires using their native SDK. Aside from the Flash event almost a decade ago, they haven't tried to restrict web content
I haven't had an Android phone in almost a decade using just iPhones. iOS's web browser game is actually the most frustrating part about Apple's walled garden for me.
You can compile your own browser and install it. People act as if Apple is sending the police if they install an App that doesn't meet Apple's guidelines. Limitations are about the distribution on the App Store.
I disagree. What is “line” you referred to and who gets to define it?
No one forced you to use Facebook. Look, I don’t use FB, and I don’t particular respect Mark or Sheryl, but the daily barrage of anti tech posts crapping on FB, Apple, or Amazon are turning this place into armchairs experts and politicians all pretending to be on some moral high ground when their own employers are likely just as greed driven.
We need comprehensive regulation IMO. What that should look like, I’m not qualified to say. Regardless, it’s sad to see hacker news morph into Reddit.
I don't use Facebook either and yet they still collect data on me. Its the same issue that happened with Experian leaking data on people who never did business with Experian.
I'd be comfortable calling that a line that got crossed
I wouldn’t. That line doesn’t exist, at least in the laws of the legal system. It might cross your own moral boundary, but that’s intrinsic to you and subjective at best.
I’m not defending them as a company. I do think the rest of the media is just as horrible and would seize a similar opportunity if given the chance.
>>I wouldn’t. That line doesn’t exist, at least in the laws of the legal system.
Who cares? It is well known that the legal system trails technology by at least a decade. Therefore, it should be clear that we are discussing a line of an ethical nature, not a legal one.
Well said, we have to get past this "well you have a choice" nonsense. Data is too easily acquired and cross-referenced for that to be remotely true anymore.
Experian's entire business model is built around collecting data about people who have never interacted directly with Experian. In fact, our entire system of credit would break down unless there were ways for lenders to know the credit-worthiness of their borrowers. Now, very good arguments can be made that credit rating has an inherent conflict of interest if privatized. But that's another conversation. In this one, we seem to continually fail to distinguish between 'information about you' and 'private information.' There is clearly a distinction. Figuring out exactly what that distinction is almost certainly a regulatory problem.
People report their personal wealth and income to the local tax authority every year, presumably that tells you something about a person's financial credibility.
It's down to the unfortunate reality that people aren't the actual customers of Facebook or Experian, their actual customers are advertisers and lenders (principally there's a few other people but basically anyone who's asked you for permission for a credit report). Under that lens it makes perfect sense that both would have information about everyone because it makes them more valuable.
It's easier to see with Experian because people pretty much never actually use their credit report actively but rather monitor it to know what the actual users will see about them. It's a metric about you rather than a metric for you. Same basic schema applies to the advertiser profile Facebook builds. They've just built a facade to get you to give them a lot of info willingly (in the case of users).
> It's down to the unfortunate reality that people aren't the actual customers of Facebook or Experian, their actual customers are advertisers and lenders
These are kind of opposite cases, aren't they?
With Facebook, their actual customers are people who want to have a relationship with you.
With Experian, their actual customers are people who you want to have a relationship with.
Lenders also want to have a relationship with you too. They want to make all the loans they can as long as they're good loans. Either way it doesn't change the dynamic that much for the average person they're the product, or I suppose more accurately information about them is the product and the companies are the customer.
I agree. I also think that we need a lot more regulations, because the problem isn't only Facebook, there are so many companies that hold/collect/sell our information, and that's the bigger problem in my opinion, Facebook is just the biggest one so we hear about it the most.
Just because you don't use Facebook doesn't mean that some other company isn't doing the same thing with your data, you just probably haven't heard of it.