[speeder]

Whenever I read articles like this, I get more and more horrified.

I mean, I know that adtech spy on us a lot, but I didn't knew for example that using Bluetooth while the app is shut down was possible.

Makes me very wary even of dumbphones, for example I bought a dumbphone recently, and yet it came with Facebook and Google Assistant both pre-installed.

[realusername]

There's a reason everybody wants you to install their app instead of just using their website, there's much more opportunity of tracking.

[QuadmasterXLII]

To hurt you. The reason is to hurt you and it's unfortunate that we're in denial about it.

[bo1024]

I think "exploit" is more accurate than "hurt" here.

[Supermancho]

> The reason is to hurt you

I'm not sure how this reasoning works. Some company making money using your information isn't with intent to hurt an individual, generally speaking. It's rare that such an opportunity even exists.

[ABCLAW]

To the extent that the individual and the marketer's interests are not aligned, the harm is borne entirely by the individual. It doesn't matter if the intention is to harm the individual; a blatant disregard for their interests accomplishes the same thing at scale. Not caring about what occurs to the individual means that systemically decisions will be made at their detriment.

Get put in a filter bubble? Have your government track you for protesting? Get on the wrong side of grey market price discrimination? Have your access to data and websites revoked?

Parties to a transaction that have no power don't come out ahead.

[Supermancho]

>> The reason is to hurt you and it's unfortunate that we're in denial about it.

> To the extent that the individual and the marketer's interests are not aligned, the harm is borne entirely by the individual. It doesn't matter if the intention is to harm the individual

Of course it does. That's the claim. Don't bring up tangential subjects and then try to associate them as if it's a rephrasing.

[neolog]

GP is saying disregard for the population's interests (plural "you") is equivalent to intending to harm many individual "you"s.

[horsawlarway]

I agree that intent matters, but lack of intent is not a get out of jail free card.

There's a reason both murder and manslaughter are crimes.

[2pEXgD0fZ5cF]

In some way they actually DO have the goal to hurt you though, specifically because it is aligned with their way of making money. When it comes to the attempt to shackle you onto their platform, increase "engagement" (outrage and negative emotion), put dark patterns into place to make leaving as hurtful as possible, and also invading the privacy of people not even directly using their platform. [1]

Facebook hurting you might be because they want the money, but they specifically choose to make money by hurting you, and society. [2][3]

So in the end I don't think it is wrong to phrase it that way. Someone beating you up in exchange for money still has the goal of beating you up.

[1]: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/30/health/facebook-psycholog...

[2]: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/03007995.2021.1...

[3]: https://www.aeaweb.org/research/social-media-news%20consumpt...

[ggggtez]

My data is worth money, that's why they want it. If they take it from me without permission, how is that not stealing? And then isn't stealing obviously hurting me?

Just because you don't know how much your data is worth, and may not even know the crime happened, doesn't make it not a crime or not harmful.

Consider voyeurs who take upskirt photos. Even though the victim may never know that data was stolen, it's undeniable that it's an invasion of privacy and often a criminal offence.

[j_koreth]

Isn't it disingenuous to say it's stealing? From my perspective, I would be exchanging my data with the services provided and if I have a problem with the level of data collection I can always stop using the service and delete my account. I'm sure there are services today that are useful to me that are not possible without data monetization.

[lumost]

It's a question of degree, I don't inherently mind being advertised too or getting targeted advertisements. I do mind having my entire location history known by many parties.

I can get the former largely without the latter. I am concerned when a random app has access to the latter because they feel entitled to collect it by virtue of installation.

[kortilla]

> My data is worth money, that's why they want it. If they take it from me without permission, how is that not stealing?

Because it’s not actually yours and you didn’t create it. It’s about you which is a critical difference.

If you connect to a web server and it records a standard access log of a timestamp that it received a request from a given IP address, that’s data 100% generated by the server. That’s not “your data” any more than a recording from a surveillance camera at a gas station you frequent is “your video”.

[IAmGraydon]

The number of leaps you made in this one short post is truly astounding.

[Supermancho]

> If they take it from me without permission, how is that not stealing?

They don't take it. The value of your information is either inherent (is all information inherently valuable somehow?) or in how it can be used. There is no information "staked claim" as with a natural resource. If you don't have the infrastructure and relationships, you can't monetize it... similar to natural resources. Maybe there should be an individual "staked claim" (which is what the GDPR mostly does), but arguing as if it's a given because "I should be able to make money and nobody else should" is not compelling. This is why there are so few laws regarding it and there's the inherent quasi-legal issue of tracking someone's "staked claim" without tracking them.

[rodgerd]

> Some company making money using your information isn't with intent to hurt an individual

The Mercer family didn't personally want to kill, imprison, or cripple a bunch of people, but that's certainly what they achieved with their opiod business.

[amusedcyclist]

The hyperbole against adtech on hackernews is insane. I swear most people here think its the biggest problem that the world faces.

[riversflow]

I mean, it arguably drives the out-of-control materialism that is currently devastating the environment. Not sure it’s hyperbole.

[amusedcyclist]

Yeah I'm no fan of it either, but i don't think its responsible for materialism in our society, thats been around much longer than adtech.

[nathias]

It's the biggest problem the online world faces? It's structurally unsound and it's making itself into the foundations of the future world in general.

[zibzab]

Maybe we are among the few people who understands the issue??

I mean, grandma isn't going to figure this out on her own. She is happy to have a way to get in touch with her grandchildren and has no idea she is being exploited.

[amusedcyclist]

Or maybe our sense of whats important is warped because of the bubble we live in ?

[esrauch]

There's several reasons why everyone wants you to install the app, some of which aren't sketchy.

[prepend]

I get pop ups from sites all the time asking me to try their site, every darn time I visit. Mai it stuff like Reddit, Imgur, most news sites. I’ve tried the apps and they’re worse.

I’m not sure there’s any explanation other than more ad/data revenue.

Are there apps that give superior experience than web sites nowadays? Even not accounting for privacy, the apps are generally just shittier with less functionality.

I used to give the Google apps as examples of apps being better, but the gmail app is more buggy than just using gmail in a mobile browser, not to mention the integrated phone mail app.

[joe_guy]

Our experiences overwhelming align but one counter example is Discord. The chess.com native client is also reasonable.

[prepend]

There are some apps that provide some functionality that genuinely works best and I use the Discord mobile app. Of course, I didn’t instal it based on the pop ups.

Similar, there’s quite a few chat/video apps and games where apps make sense. And none of them prompted me to download the app or show lies like “better in our app” crap.

[jeffbee]

I've always been on the fence a bit about Gmail's mobile site vs. the iOS app. The mobile site is really great and it has the usual advantage that it uses no data and no battery if you never load it. But many other Google apps are dramatically better or don't even have a web counterpart. Best example is Google Translate, that uses the camera and a bunch of CPU time to do some wild shit.

[qualudeheart]

Everyone should have a computer powerful enough to run vms for compartmentalisation.

If you can simulate 5 different phones it won`t matter if someone gets their spyware onto one of them.

[zibzab]

Sometimes we can solve problems with technology and as a HN reader that is maybe more interesting.

But it is always better to address the root cause of the problem. This often means a policy or legal issue rather than a technical, but has the advantage of not becoming a whack-a-mole technical race.

[alsetmusic]

> Are there apps that give superior experience than web sites nowadays?

The IMDB app is far better (to me) than the dumpster-fire that has become their website. Other than that, I agree with the sentiment that most apps for websites are not worthwhile to install.

[sebastien_b]

> The IMDB app is far better (to me) than the dumpster-fire that has become their website

Funny, to me the IMDB app is the perfect example of a dumpster-fire app, with every 3rd tap/action resulting in an “invitation” to sign up for an account.

[judge2020]

Works for my use case, which is being signed-in and managing my reviews/watchlist.

[1vuio0pswjnm7]

It is not necessarily a dumpster fire if one uses something else besides a popular graphical web browser to make the HTTP request and view the text. The "modern" web browser is complicit in creating the dumpster fire. Web developers can provide the inflammable materials, but a "modern" browser that by default auto-loads resources and runs Javascript is required to ignite it. There is no fire unless the right (=wrong) HTTP client is used.

I use a text-only browser and write simple command line "apps" (scripts) to retrieve text from sites like IMDB. It works very well. Opening pages on these sites in a "modern" web browser is an entirely different experience. We cannot ignore the complicity of the "modern" web browser in degrading the "user experience" in cases like this one.

[nr2x]

My primary use case for IMDB is to figure out names of actors, for which I need to see the photos. There’s a lot to dislike about the modern web, but images are fairly useful.

[scoopertrooper]

Just disable scripts in the web browser you crazy cat.

[pbhjpbhj]

What are some of the none sketchy reasons for "everyone" wanting us to use their apps. Like for major companies, where the service is deliverable through a website, what benefits does the user get from an app?

I can see why GPS based apps, or camera apps with filters, or networking apps 'need' to be installed apps (I don't know if an easy way to do GPS through a browser; speed and fast access to storage) ... but Amazon, Reddit, newspapers, ... what am I gaining?

Genuine question as a one time web dev I've always considered web sites written as an app, shipped with a browser, to be a negative. What am I missing out on?

[oauea]

Easy access to push notifications (which can be sketchy, but doesn't have to be) and believe it or not: Letting users put a shortcut on their homescreen. Sure, you can place a shortcut to a PWA in the Chrome browser but most users won't be configuring that, even if you guide them through it.

[ecshafer]

These seem like reason that help the business, not the user. Are there any legitimate reason that help improve the user's experience for having an app? I can see this for some games and things that native access is usable. but a shortcut to the homescreen and push notifications are mostly an annoyance for users.

[saurik]

What? Those are pieces of functionality that some users actively want. The experience of having to hunt for Yelp in Safari sucks vs. having it as an icon. Being able to get push notifications is effectively the only thing messaging apps even do! If these features weren't important then why do they even exist?! The irony is that Apple knows if they provided push notifications to mobile websites then suddenly their catalog of apps would have a lot less value as people would be much more willing to just make websites.

Like seriously; compare your comment to this person: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27348626 . You just so happen to be weird: that's all.

[pbhjpbhj]

In Brave/FF mobile you open then menu and click "add to home screen", do other browsers not have that? Push notifications are pretty common on the web now, aren't they? (I don't use them).

[Leherenn]

Both Chrome and Safari have the "add to home screen", but Safari doesn't have push notifications, not even for "installed" webapp.

[MatmaRex]

Most of the non-sketchy reasons are related to iOS Safari being crippled.

For example, I worked on a rich text editor, and we wanted to put a bar with text formatting tools above the touch keyboard. This is not possible in the browser: your webapp cannot measure the keyboard or the remaining available viewport (and the keyboard's size depends on the input method and the iPhone model).

Another example I experienced is when we wanted to have full-screen dialogs with buttons at the bottom. If you do that, then the users have to tap your buttons twice, because the first tap only expands Safari's browser UI, and your buttons near the bottom of the screen only work while that UI is expanded.

[burnished]

I have an app for most sites, its called my browser. If the app isn't taking advantage of a feature on my phone then it doesn't make sense to package it as an app.. unless they are getting something out of it. Going to make a broad and sweeping generalization here: they are getting money from tracking.

[drusepth]

Counterthought: I've been running a popular web-only site for about 5 years now and I get a little under a hundred requests per month for it to be made "into an app". A lot of users just want to be able "to install it" or to "get to it from my home screen" or "to get to it faster" (even after pointing out they can add bookmarks to home screens). It's also tempting from my POV to make an app just for discoverability reasons (e.g. users browsing the app store discovering my site).

I haven't made an app (don't know how!) and I definitely wouldn't add a "download our app or else!" banner/wall, but I've been extremely surprised from the other side of the table to see just how many users seemingly just want an app for an app's sake, even if it's functionally no different from a responsive mobile view.

[burnished]

That is interesting!

[qualudeheart]

You can contract out the app development.

Freelancers are cheap if you hire from poor countries.

[jfengel]

Seriously, what are they? Every time I get pointed at an app, I can only think of https://xkcd.com/1174/

[toast0]

Many (most?) apps don't do it, but the useful feature for me that's not possible with a web page is reliable, unobtrusive, background updates.

Things like weather (with or without current coarse location), sports scores, headline news benefit from up to the minute data fetches, but older data is still useful.

For communication apps, often people would like notifications on inbound messages, so that can fit with web push apis to get data; but if you don't want notifications, you can't consistently make messages available to read offline.

[mrtksn]

A few out of my head:

1) Shortcut on the homescreen by simply tapping 1 button(install) instead of hoping that the user will somehow remember you. WebApp shortcuts are quite involved.

2) Sign in once with a forever session. I hate apps where I need to sign in again because having an App is a great opportunity to have one time sign in that runs through generations of phone upgrades. Even better, the sign in doesn't have to involve the user, the data will be there and not accidentally deleted which means that the presence of the app is as good as username and password.

3) Immersive experience means better user experience. The UI becomes part of the Phone's UI instead of another App's UI's sub UI. A well designed app is very effective. I haven't seen a well designed mobile Web App, Web is great for websites and "possible to do" Mobile Web Apps.

4) Smaller download sizes, faster launches. A website would usually download a few MB of scripts and images, an App without bloated frameworks would be easily around that size and will download it only once. It will be ready to use in less than 0.5s every time.

5) Any advanced stuff is done much better natively even if it is possible to do through the browser. This is because the browser put extra boundaries around the boundaries that has due to the OS boundaries.

[prox]

Only 5 is really a legitimate reason, all the other things can be done on par with a website.

[mrtksn]

I think we need "Demand explanation" button for comments like this . It's a useless statement as is. It's essentially trolling and trolling shouldn't be happening on HN.

I know the reasoning of that statement but it's not providing an argument to refute. What am I supposed to say? "No. You can't, that's why it's not happening".

[beagle3]

6) notifications.

Though, (1) is wrong on iPhone; there’s an “add to home screen” action in the share menu.

[Vrondi]

This exists on Android browsers as well (and has for years).

[mrtksn]

>Though, (1) is wrong on iPhone; there’s an “add to home screen” action in the share menu.

As I said:

>WebApp shortcuts are quite involved.

Most people don't know about that functionality, you need to teach them. It would have been cool if Apple supported that, then I guess everyone would have been trying trick you into it like the good old days where every website was trying to trick you into making it you start page.

[arcturus17]

> some of which aren't sketchy

I am as cynical about forcing apps down user's throats as anyone (Reddit, I'm looking at you), but the downvotes are a bit too much when this is a perfectly reasonable point, no?

Some cases for apps are perfectly legitimate, maybe the access to the phone APIs and the native experience is much better for a given product or service. I'm a firm believer in PWAs but as it stands I really prefer Uber or delivery apps to be native.

I really hope the people downvoting the parent comment are not the same people who are staunchly against web apps, though I suspect there will be some intersection. We can't have web apps, but we can't have native apps either... What can we have then, Geocities and MySpace?

[pbhjpbhj]

Without examples I think the downvotes are justified, note they said there are reasons and suggested that those reasons are widely applied. Which is different to 'there could be reasons' and 'it would be good if everyone moved to using those aspects that give justified benefits'.

The expectation is 'everyone wants you to use their app so they can track and advertise better' and the parent basically said 'nuh-uh'. We need more to be able to consider it substantive and benefiting the conversation, IMO.

[rolph]

we can have privacy, security, autonomy

and it is possible to do it with apps if we shift to apps being a service for the user, rather than a service for the developers sponsors

[rodgerd]

There's a reason that they're cranking up lawsuits and rhetoric against the Apple "monopoly" on app stores, too.

[mrfusion]

Relevant xkcd https://xkcd.com/1174/

[fsflover]

> Whenever I read articles like this, I get more and more horrified.

> Makes me very wary even of dumbphones

If you care about it, consider GNU/Linux phones, Librem 5 and Pinephone, which run FLOSS and have hardware kill switches for microphone and other things.

[na85]

>If you care about it, consider GNU/Linux phones, Librem 5 and Pinephone, which run FLOSS and have hardware kill switches for microphone and other things.

Last time I checked in with the Librem project, the phone was completely unusable as a phone because the power management and in particular the sleep mode wasn't working properly. Sometimes the phone would wake up from sleep, and since the power management was buggy it would blow through the entire battery charge in an hour.

So essentially you'd need a backup phone for your Librem 5 because you never know if it'll be dead when you need to call 911.

[fsflover]

Currently, Librem 5 lasts about 10 hours on battery (sleep isn't there yet), and Pinephone can last 24 hours.

[speeder]

Last time I checked, these phones are not allowed in my country.

In my country all phones must have permission from the government to operate, and the phone manufacturer that need to ask this permission in first place, any phone detected by cell towers that aren't one of them, can be legally banned from the network (not just YOUR phone, but all identical model phones!)

[jbaber]

Waiting for MMS support, my friend.

[fsflover]

https://forums.puri.sm/t/state-of-mms-on-librem-5/11809/114

[grishka]

> I didn't knew for example that using Bluetooth while the app is shut down was possible.

On modern Android versions, there's some serious limitations on apps running in the background at all. In most cases, if you want your app to run in the background, you gotta put up a notification that is displayed the whole time that background service is running.

Oh and also. Scanning for bluetooth devices is a fairly battery-consuming activity as far as I can tell.

[dillondoyle]

On the other side though Google uses this stuff, also wifi hotspots, to track you as well.

Whatever the opinion on tracking, Google definitely carves out their own moats and are hypocritical in a lot of respects. Arguably pushing changes to hurt their small competition given they have better/more pervasive personalized tracking without the low hanging fruit.

[jraph]

if it has facebook and google assistant, isn't it really an (Android) smartphone which looks like a dumb phone?

[thekyle]

It could be running KaiOS which is the 3rd most popular mobile phone OS, but not quite as functional as Android or iOS.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KaiOS

[speeder]

It was KaiOS actually, that is based on FirefoxOS.

Unfortunately they went so hard on dumbphone specs that it ran poorly, kept crashing all the time because it kept running out of ram. (it had 256mb of RAM I believe, or 128, don't remember, one of the two).

[rjsw]

Newer Nokia/HMD dumb phones come with a Facebook app, they are not running Android.

[29083011397778]

> I mean, I know that adtech spy on us a lot, but I didn't knew for example that using Bluetooth while the app is shut down was possible.

And now that so many of us leave BT on all the time for our BT earbuds and airpods, I'd assume it's become better at tracking, not worse

[1vuio0pswjnm7]

Some years ago, I questioned those sort of pre-installations on smartphones of Facebook and G-whatever on HN. I got some reply that this is what users wanted. Total nonsense. At that time, most people who bought these computers had zero familiarity with these things. Anyway, users were never asked. There is no opt-out. There is a long history of pre-installed crapware on computers. It predates "smartphones" and "apps". Resistance from computer purchasers today seems nearly non-existant. Not too long ago, we used to remove this stuff after purchasing a new computer, e.g., a laptop.

[qualudeheart]

Custumors need to be taught agency to avoid this stuff.

How can we teach it to them?

[1vuio0pswjnm7]

Perhaps it is not customers that need to be taught something but developers that need to be taught something.

[mortehu]

Bluetooth scanning is actually considered a location privilege on Android already. You see lots of angry reviews on apps for accessing Bluetooth devices saying "this app has no business accessing my location", not realizing the contradiction. Maybe they're breaking it out to avoid this confusion?

[cm2187]

I thought it is precisely because it wasn’t possible that contact tracing required a special API

[swiley]

You have to go full FOSS and run debian on a pinephone.

[chrisseaton]

> I didn't knew for example that using Bluetooth while the app is shut down was possible

How did you think for example notifications were pushed to Bluetooth smart watches?

[esrauch]

I would have assumed there is an os notifications api, and the apps have no idea what surface the notification will be shown on.

[DangitBobby]

You are assuming they were aware of that capability.

[pbhjpbhj]

Not OP: I have a fit band but it only gets notifications if Bluetooth is on. I'd be (ie, I am) surprised to find you couldn't turn Bluetooth off and that they purposefully provide a switch that doesn't work so they can fool you to thinking you can turn it off.

Presumably only Android works like this?

[danaris]

Get an iPhone. Whatever else you may think of them, Apple is deliberately working to prevent this sort of crap from happening without your knowledge and consent.

[myko]

The beacon technology that uses bluetooth when apps are off originated with Apple: https://developer.apple.com/ibeacon/

[nahkoots]

They've also taken a hardline stance against right to repair, which is a deal breaker for a lot of HN. Unfortunately, there aren't many modern options for people who care about both owning their devices and not being spied on by them.

[GeekyBear]

>They've also taken a hardline stance against right to repair

By which you mean Google, Microsoft and Apple?

>Apple, Google & Microsoft Have Teamed up to Block the Right-to-Repair Law

https://wccftech.com/apple-google-microsoft-team-up-to-stop-...

[danaris]

Which is why I buy Apple: I may, on rare occasions, want the ability to mess with my device, but I always want privacy.

[jjtheblunt]

> for a lot of HN

I wonder what fraction

[laurent92]

The right to repair is also the right to steal, refurbish the stolen good and resell. Maybe that is how Apple squashed the theft market for Apple products, but no-one is afraid on the street anymore of holding their iPhone carelessly.