Daring Fireball★ Consider the Plight of the VC-Backed Privacy Burglars
https://daringfireball.net/2024/10/consider_the_plight_of_the_vc-backed_privacy_burglars
https://daringfireball.net/2024/10/consider_the_plight_of_the_vc-backed_privacy_burglars
Michael Cicconi@daringfireball these iOS settings "debacles" which simply enable users to choose who gets their data are so dumb. Simple question: if users understood how much data was harvested, would they *agree* to do so? the new prompt simply makes the user decide, not some scammy app or social platform.
dmitriid> The question to ask is, “Is this what users want and expect?”
Strange that you spent not an inconsiderable time arguing that Meta has the right to user data because they have lucrative ads business, and the EU has bo right regulating that.
And yet now it's "privacy burglars" and "what users want and expect"
Delric@dmitriid @daringfireball not as strange as your need to troll every post on his feed 🤷♂️
Not every post, and this doublethink really needs to be called out
Shad
Yes, and it sucks, and shouldn't require that many permissions and contracts
*edit: corrected "sticks" to "sucks". As in: "iOS swipe to type sucks"*
Jimmy Callin@daringfireball It’s very unclear to me when Apple chooses to submit first-party apps to the same privacy rules as others, and when they choose to circumvent them. Why can iMessage ignore the contacts permission, while Apple Maps need to ask for location access?
Magnus Ahltorp@callin @daringfireball Because Apple can itself verify that iMessage doesn’t send the data off without explicit permission from the user. Also, do you actually know that iMessage has access to the contacts database, or if it’s a separate jailed framework?
And if you want to exclude Apple’s code from this privileged position, where do you draw the line? Does the Contacts app get access without asking? Does the Settings app? Do the frameworks? The kernel? The processor?
@ahltorp @daringfireball Ok but that wasn't my question
@callin “Why can iMessage ignore the contacts permission, while Apple Maps need to ask for location access?” wasn’t your question?
Well, that’s the one I answered, anyway, because that’s the one in the post I replied to.
Nit> To the first party go the first-party spoils.
What an awful stance.
> It’s absurd to consider a cell phone that doesn’t make the user’s full address book available.
Apple should demo good dev behaviour and respect user data by asking.
I don’t use Messages outbound at all. In my case they have no need to pull all my contacts into Messages. But they do.
> All phones offer similar system-level integration
Good for all phones. Apple should be better.
@NitP @daringfireball nah. Asking would just confuse a lot of users into saying no, then be frustrated that they can’t address a message by the name of their intended recipient. It’d be dumb. I have zero concerns about Apple selling my data and that’s why people like me voted with our wallets to use iOS and not some knockoff
@delric @daringfireball Do as I say not as I do is a poor position.
Every app on iOS follows the rule, by your logic there should be lots of confusion.
Apple asking for permission would exemplify correct behaviour and show they aren’t above the rules, build trust. Apple added it for some apps (people aren’t confused!), hopefully means they’ll add the rest.
Taking because they can? Nah, shit behaviour.
We Apple users expect pop ups https://daringfireball.net/linked/2024/08/07/macos-15-sequoia-weekly-permission-prompts
Merovius> first-party apps necessarily have certain advantages third-party apps do not (otherwise, there’d be no distinction)
*this* 🤏 close to enlightenment.
Oliver Lowe@Merovius Ha yes, good catch. Absolutely agreed
@Merovius @daringfireball @otl it’s not tho. If you build a thing to work seamlessly, you should be able to without concern for making it easier for competitors to latch on. Do you expect Nintendo to host and load PlayStation games, or vice versa? Or for Ford to design their trucks to accept Chevy motors? Of course not, it’s absurd
@delric My answer to all those questions is "I would expect them to not make it artificially harder, yes".
It seems to me you'd have to be a real brown-nosing apologist for anti-competitive behavior to feel any different.
@delric Given what PlayStation and Nintendo devices are, and how the games are created, you may expect them to be able to play the same game, sure. Given what Ford and Chevrolet engines are, you could expect them to accept the same oil, fuel, seals… (I’ll stop with the car & software analogy, they never work out well 😅). As @Merovius says, it’s about *artificial* barriers to interoperability made by companies for extracting profit.
@otl @delric FWIW these aren't even hypotheticals. Nintendo *does* do the same thing Apple does and prevents you from running whatever you want on the Switch. John Deer *does* prevent repairs of their engines using third-party parts or by third-party mechanics.
And it's all bad. It's rent-seeking. And I can't stress enough how mainstream the opinion that this is bad is, among economists. It's the opposite of absurd.
swingerofbirch@daringfireball The relationship worked in the opposite direction, though to the same effect in terms of privacy, in Mountain Lion and iOS 6 (and in some unknown to me number of ensuing versions) in which Contacts was bolstering its utility through interfacing with a social media site—Facebook—rather than the other way around. It pulled down profile pics. To this day I have them in my Contacts, fossilized records of profile pictures from whenever that now defunct feature last synced.
a Witty Name@daringfireball I don’t use any apps that *requires* full access to Contacts (read: Address Book) to function.
I deleted my F*c*book account when it listed some email addresses and asked me if they were my emails. Some of those emails were email aliases that I used with just one person for a joke.
Siff@daringfireball The feature to give access only to selected contacts is the reason why my teen now has Instagram, WhatsApp an Viber.