[_2d30]

By some metrics, iMessage is the biggest messaging service in the US. Arguably, from the POV of the FTC as a US regulator, WhatsApp shouldn't be included but Apple SHOULD be.

This is of course ignoring other social features of Apple products such as Game Center, Find My Friends and Facetime.

[josho]

Apple Message is a message service. Its features include a way to personalize messages. It's not collecting personal/demographic information, it's not trying to increase user engagement (addictiveness), it's not serving ads. So, it clearly is outside the scope of the information that the FTC is trying to gather.

[_2d30]

> It's not collecting personal/demographic information

Sure is! On my iCloud account, Apple has my address, my location, the location of all of my devices, my Apple Card is tied directly to purchases, and much more!

Did you know iMessage specifically even used to be linked directly to Facebook's evil social graph?

> it's not trying to increase user engagement (addictiveness)

Citation? I would bet a large amount of money that Apple is trying to increase engagement. Why do you think they make products like memoji or features like pinned threads?

> it's not serving ads.

True! But, uh, is WhatsApp? https://www.wsj.com/articles/whatsapp-backs-off-controversia...

Here's iMessage generating revenue through the sale of Apps that integrate with it: https://www.fastcompany.com/3063925/apples-imessage-economy-...

Did you know the App Store has a recommendation system to suggest apps to you? It's based on the other apps that you purchase and possibly other signals that I'm not aware of. Apple, of course, gets its 30% cut of that.

[jiofih]

iMessage is a pure messaging service - there are no recommendations, no feed, no following friends, no status updates, no likes, no profiles, no stories, and no connection to Facebook at all. Most importantly, no advertising since they actually make money off the products, which means no incentive for gaming engagement metrics. They want you to have a good time and sell you another device next year, not glue your eyeballs to the screen.

Since there is no “Apple social network” to be spoken of, there would be little reason to include them.

[jldugger]

> no likes, no profiles, and no connection to Facebook at all

You can absolutely thumbs up stuff. And accounts do have a profile -- a name, a phone number, a profile pic, email address, probably your apple ID somewhere in the metadata, etc. And this is not connected to Facebook, but to your Apple account. All your activity is sync'd between devices.

> Since there is no “Apple social network” to be spoken of, there would be little reason to include them.

In a sense, iCloud is the social network: https://www.androidauthority.com/green-bubble-phenomenon-102.... Beyond being able to send special effects with your chats, you can also send money via apple pay, video call via FaceTime, and, with Apple One, share your subscriptions.

> They want you to have a good time and sell you another device next year, not glue your eyeballs to the screen.

True, but what do you think the metrics execsy are thinking of when they introduce thread replies or Memoji? And with Fitness+, News+, TV+ and Apple Arcade, more and more of Apple is increasingly reliant on customers paying them for the privilege of staring at screens.

[zepto]

Would you say Fastmail is a social network?

[_2d30]

Does Fastmail limit any of the social features of its product to communications with other Fastmail users or is Fastmail an interface to the generic, open email protocols?

[HexagonalKitten]

Well, if they did Apple could respond with a few short pages (targeting: none, ads: none, etc.) of info compared to the terabytes the social companies would need.

[_2d30]

Apple's great luck here is that everyone thinks of social media primarily in aesthetic ways that are linked to ideas of social media that they don't like.

> there are no recommendations, no feed, no following friends, no status updates, no likes, no profiles, no stories, and no connection to Facebook at all.

So because Apple doesn't have, in your view, some of the above, extremely limited, set of things they have no social networking properties in your view. It's revealing that "no connection to Facebook at all" is of such prime importance in the determination of Apple's products not being social media that it is specifically listed here. You're arguing what makes a product social so clearly based on a narrow set of specific features that you have ill-will toward but not on questions of the actual social nature of the products.

Under your asserted set of features which define social media, Messenger from Facebook only fails on being associated with Facebook and having stories! WhatsApp only fails due to Status and being associated with Facebook.

Apple used to have a product that was formerly known as "Find My Friends". It's wrapped into an app now called Find My, where you can follow the locations of your friends throughout the world. It integrates really nicely with other apps in Apple's portfolio like FaceTime and iMessage. One of its key features is to notify you when a friend of yours enters/leaves a location. It's about as close to "following friends" as it gets. Now for you, I imagine that your argument is that you are following physical locations of your friends with this app, not broadcast digital content so it's different and is therefore not social media. This seems like an extremely narrow view of social media that ignores the "social" aspect. Hard to understand how anyone would assert an app called "Find My Friends" isn't social!

> Most importantly, no advertising since they actually make money off the products, which means no incentive for gaming engagement metrics.

Why is it that engagement can only be useful for advertising? If Apple packaged a whole bunch of terrible apps that no one wanted to use (ie had low engagement) into its OS, do you think the demand would be so high for them? I don't. Neither do you, I think, as you make clear in the next sentence:

> They want you to have a good time and sell you another device next year, not glue your eyeballs to the screen.

What do you think represents having a good time in iMessage? For me, I would probably measure it by repeated usage under some metric like sends. The more someone uses iMessage to communicate with other people on iMessage, the more likely they are to not want to leave the Apple ecosystem. This is a real phenomenon. The shame of being a green bubble is very real in some circles. If the functionality of iMessage didn't vary between in-network and out-of-network messages, it would be completely fair to suggest that iMessage is a "pure messaging app" in the sense that GMail is just an email service. On GMail, my emails go across email services and work the same way in any scenario. In iMessage, if you're a pleb on Android, I can't do dozens of things with you that I can when communicating to my contacts on iMessage.

> Since there is no “Apple social network” to be spoken of, there would be little reason to include them.

This is just false beyond your aesthetic assertions of what social media is! Game Center explicitly has a "friends" concept as does Find My. iMessage doesn't call your contacts friends but if you have an iCloud account associated to a contact what's the difference beyond aesthetic conceptions? You have a closed network where you can socialize with others.

If your definition of social media is "has the features of Facebook Apps or is associated with Facebook" then I get why Apple doesn't have social media properties. If your definition of social media is "closed ecosystem services that enable you to interact socially with chosen individuals" then Apple clearly has social media properties.

[mhh__]

Although I don't despise apple, they are a company like any other at the end of the day.

Debate that fits the pattern of,

1. Apple good (Because it's my tribe etc.)

2. Work backwards to find reasoning

is not a good thing.

[_2d30]

Strongly agree.

[jiofih]

It really sounds like you’re problematising this subject. Tell us: which of Apple’s services or platforms have played a significant part in recent sociopolitical events, trends or culture in general?

That is what this inquiry is about, not musings over system boundaries or speculation about intent.

[roland-s]

iMessage is E2EE (according to Apple). But Apple can still see who's messaging who. With that you get an intimate social graph. Similar to what the NSA has on US citizens via phone records. Apple also says they don't sell your personal info to advertisers. But they can still use that data however they like, and there's nothing stopping them from selling that data at some point in the future.

[1vuio0pswjnm7]

Why would they want to sell it. They could license access to it for recurring revenue, like other Big Tech companies.

The most important control that customers should seek is not control over the sale/transfer of data, it is control over how the data may be used, by anyone. For example, if the data comes with terms that say it cannot be used for advertising purposes, then what are the chances anyone can sell it to advertisers.

The "We do not/will not sell your data" line is a deliberate red herring, of no more value than "We take security very seriously".

(Great comment, BTW.)