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If you’re building something and you lift up a rock and find a lot of weird solutions to a problem you’d never really thought through crawling under it, what wo

If you’re building something and you lift up a rock and find a lot of weird solutions to a problem you’d never really thought through crawling under it, what would you do? 1) Ban them immediately, no matter how necessary to parents, as the risk of tracking/stalking of all iPhone users is unacceptable 2) Build a safer solution that can’t be harnessed for tracking/stalking, and then ban all solutions that can be used for tracking/stalking Seems like they chose the latter. It’s easy to construct a case for why it is technically inappropriate to allow third-party apps in this space, that I personally boil down primarily to “a frequently-abused chance for corporate entities to monetize the user data of minors”. Apple took years to implement content filtering, and did so in a way that prohibits applications from knowing whether their filters are ever exercised, as otherwise Facebook and other malicious entities would long ago have added a filter for ^(.*)$ to transmit every request to third-party servers. Is their refusal to permit otherwise anti-competitive, security-forward, or both? Apple, if I understand correctly, prohibits third-party keyboards in certain password-type dialogs on iOS because keyboard apps are allowed to send network requests. (They are allowed to do so because e.g. GIF search.) Is this prohibition anti-competitive, security-forward, or both? We as a community need to become a lot more careful with use of the phrase “anti-competitive”, as many industry-standard security practices that we would demand of any product we build and use are then labeled “anti-competitive” solely when they interfere with us doing anything we like, or when they’re done by an organization that doesn’t share its internal discussions with us when making decisions on our behalf. Is it appropriate to stifle the competition for my personal data, even if that is, in a literalistic interpretation, anti-competitive? I sure hope so.

deleted 8y ago
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JadeNB 8y ago
> If you’re building something and you lift up a rock and find a lot of weird solutions to a problem you’d never really thought through crawling under it, what would you do? > 1) Ban them immediately, no matter how necessary to parents, as the risk of tracking/stalking of all iPhone users is unacceptable > 2) Build a safer solution that can’t be harnessed for tracking/stalking, and then ban all solutions that can be used for tracking/stalking Surely the correct answer, if the solution is really so valuable that it cannot be done without in the time it would take to come up with a safe solution, is 3) tell the programmers of the potentially privacy-violating solutions that they'll be banned once you do (2), then do (2); or arguably even 4) do (3), and, in the meantime, display a hard-to-ignore dialogue on installation that warns "this app may violate your privacy, and will be automatically uninstalled once Apple's safer solution is available. Do you wish to proceed?" ?
- floatingatoll 8y ago
  ESR-type freedom fighters typically suggest that the priority should be on one’s freedom to shoot your own foot off with a footgun, as long as the footgun has clear warnings. This idealism commonly places absolute freedom as the number one priority, leaving no room for competing priorities such as the safety and welfare of those who are unable to make sensible judgement calls regarding footgun operation. I have watched expert users infect themselves with malware faster than I can open my mouth to warn them that they’ve just unthinkingly clicked Next and blown their foot off, and then had to help them wipe their installation and start over. I do not consider the current world we live in to be one where it is safe to prioritize absolute freedom over all other concerns. I accept that this puts me at odds with those that do, but as I watch them shoot their own feet off, I am grateful that I chose a more pragmatic path. I am grateful that a safer path is available for those who are unable to comprehend the severities of the risks they are defended against. The solution you propose is no different than saying that the safety on a gun is sufficient to protect someone from accidentally shooting themselves with it. I do not agree with your assumptions, and I think the solution you describe is selfish and neglectful. You prioritize your ideals over the welfare of others unable to avoid paying the price you think yourself able to dodge. Your choice is abhorrent to me, and pushes me further away from the absolutist freedoms you espouse. Consider carefully in the future whether your argument as presented today helps or harms your cause.
  - JadeNB 8y ago
    > You prioritize your ideals over the welfare of others unable to avoid paying the price you think yourself able to dodge. Wow, that's a lot of assumptions. Both my (3) and (4) include "then do (2)", which seemed to be the solution you were proposing; they just more clearly communicated to developers that (2) was coming, and more clearly communicated to users the consequences of implementing half-baked solutions before (2) was done. I can imagine a lot of practical problems with what I suggested, but it's hard for me to see how increasing the communication in either or both of the ways that I proposed, while also doing what (it seems) you're proposing (and what Apple did), constitutes adherence to a selfish ideal.
  - deleted 8y ago

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

JadeNB 8y ago

> If you’re building something and you lift up a rock and find a lot of weird solutions to a problem you’d never really thought through crawling under it, what would you do? > 1) Ban them immediately, no matter how necessary to parents, as the risk of tracking/stalking of all iPhone users is unacceptable > 2) Build a safer solution that can’t be harnessed for tracking/stalking, and then ban all solutions that can be used for tracking/stalking Surely the correct answer, if the solution is really so valuable that it cannot be done without in the time it would take to come up with a safe solution, is 3) tell the programmers of the potentially privacy-violating solutions that they'll be banned once you do (2), then do (2); or arguably even 4) do (3), and, in the meantime, display a hard-to-ignore dialogue on installation that warns "this app may violate your privacy, and will be automatically uninstalled once Apple's safer solution is available. Do you wish to proceed?" ?

floatingatoll 8y ago
ESR-type freedom fighters typically suggest that the priority should be on one’s freedom to shoot your own foot off with a footgun, as long as the footgun has clear warnings. This idealism commonly places absolute freedom as the number one priority, leaving no room for competing priorities such as the safety and welfare of those who are unable to make sensible judgement calls regarding footgun operation. I have watched expert users infect themselves with malware faster than I can open my mouth to warn them that they’ve just unthinkingly clicked Next and blown their foot off, and then had to help them wipe their installation and start over. I do not consider the current world we live in to be one where it is safe to prioritize absolute freedom over all other concerns. I accept that this puts me at odds with those that do, but as I watch them shoot their own feet off, I am grateful that I chose a more pragmatic path. I am grateful that a safer path is available for those who are unable to comprehend the severities of the risks they are defended against. The solution you propose is no different than saying that the safety on a gun is sufficient to protect someone from accidentally shooting themselves with it. I do not agree with your assumptions, and I think the solution you describe is selfish and neglectful. You prioritize your ideals over the welfare of others unable to avoid paying the price you think yourself able to dodge. Your choice is abhorrent to me, and pushes me further away from the absolutist freedoms you espouse. Consider carefully in the future whether your argument as presented today helps or harms your cause.
- JadeNB 8y ago
  > You prioritize your ideals over the welfare of others unable to avoid paying the price you think yourself able to dodge. Wow, that's a lot of assumptions. Both my (3) and (4) include "then do (2)", which seemed to be the solution you were proposing; they just more clearly communicated to developers that (2) was coming, and more clearly communicated to users the consequences of implementing half-baked solutions before (2) was done. I can imagine a lot of practical problems with what I suggested, but it's hard for me to see how increasing the communication in either or both of the ways that I proposed, while also doing what (it seems) you're proposing (and what Apple did), constitutes adherence to a selfish ideal.
- deleted 8y ago