Yes and no: they still allowed developers to do it for a very long time. I remember years ago when a social app was chastised for uploading your entire contact

Yes and no: they still allowed developers to do it for a very long time. I remember years ago when a social app was chastised for uploading your entire contact book to their servers without asking, because at the time there was no permission barrier for it. In this instance, apps have been doing this for years. Apple knows this. It’s not entirely clear why they only decided to act on it now.