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Apple leaves Facebook offices in disarray after revoking app permissions
- who-knows95 8y agogood.
- techslave 8y agoouch! it’s an appropriate response.
- onepremise 8y agoApple would be a great company if it didn't botch 'right to repair', overprice their products, and restrict their OS and APIs. Regardless, there's not much 'American' left in American tech products, let alone all US products. Apple and Essential are the only two cell phone manufacturers left, if that, and Essential just dropped theirs :( Somebody needs to make it cost effective to print circuit boards and encasing frameworks so we can move our tech back to the US. At least Apple is pushing back against Facebook and the NSA/gov. Everybody else is selling our privacy.
- ghaff 8y agoIt’s really hard to not be brought joy by Facebook being kicked like this. But on a less emotional level, if one wants to change Facebook culture and behavior, it’s hard to see causing a lot of individual employee pain (in addition to the business as a whole) as in any way a bad thing.
- FakeComments 8y agoEspecially as this causes frustration for Facebook employees that directly stems from Facebook’s misconduct, rather than holding Facebook customers hostage.
- chris_wot 8y agoI agree. It was individual employees who violated the agreement - if it makes Facebook employees actually think about their actions then overall it’s a good thing. It’s gotten to the point where I start to ask myself - if you work or Facebook, are you a good person? My personal opinion is that you might be, but you are likely are not.
- jakear 8y agoThis reminds me of the saying way back in 2016 American elections: “If you vote for Trump, it doesn’t mean that you’re not a good person, but it does mean that someone being a bad person isn’t a deal breaker for your support” I think that sentence could start off with “If you work for Zuck...” just as well.
- gyaniv 8y agoDefinitely agree. I know good people working for Facebook, but it does make me think "After everything you know about Facebook, the fact you would still work there, makes me respect you a lot less"
- notacoward 8y agoThis is true, but doesn't mean what most think it does because it doesn't address knowledge/belief about whether someone's bad. Someone could vote for Trump because they're an idiot. To an extent that's true of working for Zuck as well, except that Facebook has a much more rigorous interview process than the White House. While it's not good to be an idiot, it's not the same as being amoral and I think that's what most people read in the original statement. Consider these alternatives. "If you vote for Trump and know he's bad..." "...it does mean that the possibility of someone being a bad person..." Not quite the same, eh?
- coldtea 8y agoOr the person is not 15 years old, and doesn't believe there are "good persons" in politics, or that the alternatives (in GOP or Dems) were better people. Or the person goes even further, and doesn't believe the puritan tenet that "good person == good politician". There were excellent politicians that were bad in their behavior, and vice versa. E.g. the person might care more about not encouraging a hawkish member of the establishment, that continued to beat the drum of American supremacy and threatened even more wars and tension coming on (e.g. with Iran) -- compared to merely voting someone who is e.g. sexist (as if that matters for the kind of decisions a President takes).
- 8y ago
- chj 8y agoFB, forget vr, time to make your own phone.
- maxwellito 8y agoThey kinda tried already ;-) https://www.cnet.com/news/heres-why-the-facebook-phone-flopped/ https://www.cnet.com/news/heres-why-the-facebook-phone-flopp...
- javagram 8y agoPresumably FB has similar versions of internal apps for Android which has no remote kill switch since side loading is allowed. Employees could just switch to Android if they are worried about Apple killing their apps.
- goldmouth 8y agoI’m not sure about an Android internal app, all employees are given brand new iPhone x’s. When I worked there we all had to use the internal fb and IG apps and do all communication through them. Switching to android would mean a huge IT change and mean replacing every employees phone.
- Shish2k 8y ago> all employees are given brand new iPhone x’s. > [...] > replacing every employees phone Huh? Employees are given a choice of iPhone or Android; the full infrastructure stack already exists for both, internal apps are built and deployed for both. I'm pretty sure that IT could switch the whole company to Android overnight if they had the hardware in stock...
- goldmouth 8y agoGuess I was misktaken. I had the choice between a thinkpad and MacBook and given an iPhone, didn’t realize we could get an android or just didn’t pay attention...
- 8y ago
- uzero 8y agoThis 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.
- warp_factor 8y agofully agree. Even though I'm not fully onboard with Apple's huge power over their phones, in this specific case the enemy of my enemy is my friend.
- velobro 8y agoI am. 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.
- pacala 8y agoAndroid is spyware, with a slightly more humane face. Not touching it with a 10 foot pole.
- wyldfire 8y agoI 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?
- barkingcat 8y agoThey 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.
- macinjosh 8y agoI understand how FB was not using Apple's enterprise development program in good faith. Apple clearly has a right to do what they did. I don't understand why FB is in hot water with the public for what they did. Users were informed that data collection was taking place and they were compensated for it. Now, was it wise on the users' part to join this program? Perhaps not, but last time I checked this is still a free country and people can sell their property for as much or as little as they want. On NPR this morning I heard the argument that a lot of the detail of what is collected and how it is used is buried in the T&C. So what? Have we lost sight of personal responsibility? How naive are people? If you are getting something for free from a large corporation you're not getting it out the kindness of their heart. They are making money somehow. That is how the world works. Panic, moral or otherwise, about this sort of stuff is going to push the tech industry into realm of regulatory capture. Well funded companies will be able to afford and absorb compliance costs where small bootstrapped startups, lifestyle businesses, and indie developers will be pushed out of the market.
- aaomidi 8y agoThe issue wasn't the app exists and people were using it. It was the demographic this app was targeting. The app was targeting 13 to 35 year olds. People under 18 has to get parental permission which was literally just selecting a box. The $20 of free money is a big deal for a kid and they might not have the best idea of what they're giving away with agreeing to this. It's a really scummy move and possibly illegal to target kids like this.
- HillaryBriss 8y agoanother perspective: FB's big mistake was paying these users too little. if FB had paid, say, $2000 a month instead of $20, the users would have been angry at Apple for forcing such a program to stop. FB would look like a force for good. instead, FB cheaped out.
- enedil 8y agoThere are so many places on the world where $2000 a month is more than most people get. Of course they didn't pay that much. I would probably consider it seriously given that currently I get about $800 and that is still considered average.
- warp_factor 8y agoFB is a company with a completely rotten top-down culture. Nothing is going to change until a huge set of executive leadership swap, or they are forced to by mean of legislation. After apologizing thousands of times, they internally justify each of those breaches by rejecting the fault to "users" or other external factors (source: several friends working at Facebook, and reading public tweets of Facebook leaders). The culture there is inherently anti-privacy and whoever fundamentally disagree is about to leave or has already left.
- ucaetano 8y agoNot just that, the top-down structure is shaped after a cult of personality. Talking to my friends who work at Apple, FB, Google, Amazon and others, facebookers are the only ones who seem to be willing to defend their leader on a personal level, as if they had a dear friend being attacked. My other friends couldn't care less if someone criticizes or attacks Bezos, Tim Cook, Sundar and so on. The only other company I can think that behaves in the same way is Tesla with Musk (well, an Apple with Jobs in the old days), but the key difference is that most Muskians don't seem to work for Tesla, and the folks I know at Tesla aren't actually obsessed with Musk. In the case of FB, it is the opposite.
- drilldrive 8y agoA hair off topic, but is Muskrat ever used as a denotative?
- sunsetMurk 8y agoI haven't heard that before, but ... I like it! I hope that 'muskrat' makes its way into the lexicon.
- ucaetano 8y agoSame here! The two terms I've heard describing the cultists so far are Muskians and Zuckerboys (and we should also include Zurckergals and Zuckerfolks).
- _Microft 8y agoFacebook made their enterprise development certificate a single point of failure and then messed up by abusing it? That's so dumb that it's actually funny.
- bunderbunder 8y agoIt would have taken time to get a second enterprise development certificate. So they probably did it in order to move fast. . . and then they broke things.
- nevir 8y agoApple only allows/signs one cert per company. And the process to get one requires an annoying amount of paperwork about your business
- rootusrootus 8y agoShould have set up a new, disposable company to handle the research. Helps shield them from more than just Apple.
- weeks 8y agoApple's policy is one certificate per company. So it being a single point of failure is unavoidable.
- norswap 8y agoIf only life had been as simple as dropping an .apk on their phone... I don't expect Facebook to get a whole lot of sympathy, but really, Apple's power on device owned by customers is ridiculous.
- akhilcacharya 8y agoFB Employees do get the choice of either 2 Android phones (a Galaxy S9 or a Pixel 3, IIRC) or an iPhone so I'd wager they're just going to make a build system for their iPhone employees to sideload the apps through their internal build process or something.
- wool_gather 8y agoYou can only sideload to devices that are registered in your Apple Developer account, and there's a 100-count limit per each device class (iPhone/iPad, i.e.). This doesn't seem feasible. Another option is TestFlight, but for devices that aren't registered (so-called "external beta") the app has to go through some App Store review.
- akhilcacharya 8y agoThat's true, don't know how their developer accounts work. I guess then they'll have to beg for forgiveness or just spin the native apps into web apps. I feel sorry for their Enterprise Engineering team!
- curt15 8y agoDoes this mean there is ultimately no way of running your own code on your iDevices without first going through Apple?
- wool_gather 8y agoEssentially, yes. The OS enforces that an app bundle is signed by a cert that was issued by Apple. Without going through Apple at all, the only option is jailbreaking, to bypass the signing check. No one's figured out (publicly) how to jailbreak the last two major versions, though, as far as I know (there were some jailbreaks that worked for iOS 11 betas). Another option still involves getting a cert from Apple, but it's free. You just need to create an Apple ID. The limitation here is that you have to re-install the app (IIRC) every seven days.
- aqibgatoo 8y agoFacebook has become a privacy nightmare
- thg 8y agoIt's never been anything else.
- rdtsc 8y agoIt seems the article almost wants us to feel sorry for Facebook. Facebook are really the Oracle of the "social" tech companies. They are not even pretending to be good or follow rules. As long as cash / clicks / impressions keep coming in nothing is off the table. Google is struggling with its positive PR image, every time they fall short they are judged by the "Don't be evil" motto and everything it entailed. Facebook doesn't have to worry about such details and it's easier for them in a way. Their shares are going up as we saw recently, CA scandal didn't do much damage, everything is great. > “We designed our Enterprise Developer Program solely for the internal distribution of apps within an organisation. Watch them pivot to "these researchers are part of the Facebook family, so their network device are considered part of the internal network's edge, we did nothing wrong".
- wlesieutre 8y agoThis is where regulation eventually has to come in, IMO. People like to talk about how the market will solve problems, but per today's posts about Facebook racking up thousands of dollars of credit card charges from 5 year olds and their positive earnings results, the market looks at these kind of things and says "Yep, this is great for our bottom line." Facebook isn't going to fix itself.
- archagon 8y agoYeah, corporate titans punishing each other when the government won’t do anything is a clear path to dystopia.
- AtlasBarfed 8y agoUber is worse, but they aren't a FAANG member
- TheoTorvalds 8y agoTurns out Facebook can just Facetime Apple users to get all the data they need anyway. Also, why even offer accounts if you just shadowban everybody? It's gay. Ycombinator is gay.
- dang 8y agoThere's software that filters comments based on past abuses by trolls. New accounts are subject to more of these filters. We review the comments that get killed that way, unkill the good ones, and mark accounts legit when it's clear they're posting in good faith.
- remote_phone 8y agoI would characterize it as more annoying than anything else. It’s not like we couldn’t work or we had productions issues because of it.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- velobro 8y agoThanks for helping to ruin the world through advertising.
- callalex 8y agoI don’t like Facebook either, but personal attack’s are not acceptable on this forum. Isn’t being able to talk to someone who works for Facebook better than not being able to talk to them at all? Why would this person continue to post if they know they will just be attacked?
- ahelwer 8y agoMaybe they would think twice about continuing to burn the most productive years of their only life at this company if they knew what people thought of them.
- saagarjha 8y agoRegardless of your opinion on Facebook, I don't think its employees should have to deal with a personal attack like that. It's one thing to try to get them to reconsider their viewpoint on their job, and quite another to flippantly call them out with a response that doesn't foster discussion.
- dang 8y agoAttacking another user like that will get you banned here, regardless of how strongly you feel about Facebook or how right you are or feel. The guidelines also ask you not to snark on HN. Please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and follow the rules when posting here.
- benologist 8y agoGoogle shat themselves and unpublished something similar and apologized heh. I wonder if Apple has done a tremendous favor to web applications because in hindsight letting Apple (or any of these companies) have a company-wide on/off switch for your own apps like that is a bad idea. https://www.zdnet.com/article/google-shuts-down-iphone-data-gathering-app-this-was-a-mistake-and-we-apologize/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/google-shuts-down-iphone-data-...
- zaroth 8y agoWow, good find. Apple should absolutely be revoking Google’s certificate as well in this case. But they use the enterprise certificate for their external “research” apps, because they are doing things on the device (using internal APIs) that an approved app is not permitted to do, and that is certainly not possible through the web browser. Of course their internal-use apps could be WebView almost certainly.
- ineedasername 8y agoTwo things: first, this seems like a reasonable response to the breach Facebook committed. Second, it illustrates the folly behind relying on the continued good will of a 3rd party offering an essentially (or very nearly) free service. If Facebook was licensing EDCs for millions a year, this ban might not have been the first reaction Apple took.
- saagarjha 8y ago> If Facebook was licensing EDCs for millions a year, this ban might not have been the first reaction Apple took. Why would Facebook do this, and how?
- ineedasername 8y agoThey can't do it, that's not how Apple's EDC licensing works. I wasn't proposing they should have paid more-- My point was that customers paying for a product have more leverage than those receiving one for free, and so relying on a free product for pieces of your business operations can put you in a tenuous position.
- mcgwiz 8y agoI wonder how pervasive the abuse of the EDC for customer-facing apps actually is. If this got through FB / Google's legal teams, they might know of others who have done this without consequence.
- brettnak 8y agoIt seems like there's something getting lost here. A lot of comments and even articles make it sound like Apple is retaliating against fb at random, which is not true. FB had an internal app agreement with apple to distribute apps to it's employees. Probably this one: https://developer.apple.com/programs/enterprise/ https://developer.apple.com/programs/enterprise/ They violated the terms of the agreement, and therefore the have lost access. They also probably violated the terms of the app store as a whole, but who knows. Whether or not one should have to be part of that program to install Enterprise apps is a different issue.
- oarabbus_ 8y agoAnd... their stock is up.
- sutterbomb 8y agoStock price is trailing indicator
- gerardnll 8y agoOh yeah, I'm loving this.
- neonate 8y agoThe original report was https://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-employees-angry-after-apple-blocks-its-internal-ios-apps-2019-1?r=US&IR=T https://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-employees-angry-aft..., which is also here: http://archive.is/tRiAp http://archive.is/tRiAp
- olliej 8y agoWrong title, should be “FB left their offices in disarray by using their enterprise cert to spy on kids”. What utter muppets.
- ezoe 8y ago> Apple has left Facebook’s campus in disarray after the company revoked the social network’s permission to build or run employee-only applications, according to reports. Employees were reportedly left unable to read cafeteria menus, call for inter-office transport or use versions of the social network’s own apps. If you just ignore all the evil things Facebook did. The moral of the story is don't relies on a non-free computer and OS.
- erinnh 8y agoKind of? But this is so far off from being anywhere Apple's fault, that I can only theoretically agree. Facebook really shot themselves in the foot.
- rootusrootus 8y agoA good option for RMS, but as a practical matter impossible for normal people.
- bcheung 8y ago1) WTF, FB? Don't go around violating license terms. 2) Why do developers tolerate a platform that doesn't allow developers to deploy apps wherever they want?
- myguysi 8y ago2) probably because a lot of consumers buy iPhones? Can’t speak for Facebooks internal use though...
- nerdb4itwascool 8y agoMy co-worker put it best: "This is Uber-level scumminess"
- kevintb 8y agoFB should have seen this coming, honestly. What did they expect?
- mshaler 8y agoTitle is inaccurate: _Facebook_ leaves Facebook offices in disarray after Apple revoked app permissions.