13 ms·

Facebook Declared War on Apple, and It Just May Signal the End of Facebook

172 points by evo_9 6y ago

Razengan 6y ago
Everyone that "declare war" on Apple either fades into obscurity soon after their 15 minutes of fame, or becomes Apple: https://old.reddit.com/r/apple/comments/ki1rvt/samsung_began_deleting_posts_mocking_apple_galaxy/ https://old.reddit.com/r/apple/comments/ki1rvt/samsung_began... "Becoming Apple" in Facebook and Epic's case may mean their own app stores, and both of them are already sort of on their way there.
- Shared404 6y ago
  Epic Games appears to be still going strong, for better or for worse.
  - unchocked 6y ago
    Too soon to tell.
  - maxsilver 6y ago
    Epic Games might be the exception that proves the rule. Epic doesn't actually need Apple (they have a half-dozen much better ways to deliver their games, all of which better target + support their core revenue audience). Their Unreal Engine is popular with developers, but if they lost iOS device support and those mobile devs switched to Unity, most major games would still continue to use Unreal to target all the major platforms. And similarly, Apple doesn't need Epic, their iOS consoles historically don't push any high end or involved gaming, so they don't cede any meaningful ground losing them. And Apple has a bajillion dollars, they could lose all game sale revenue / gaming IAP revenue tomorrow and barely even notice it. --- Best case scenario: Epic breaks Apple's monopoly and gets anti-trust regulation enforced upon Apple (something that really should have happened a decade ago). Worst case scenario: Epic + Unreal is banned from Apple devices. Some mobile devs have to transition to Unity. Folks have to use the PC/Switch/PS4/Xbox most people already own anyway, to play Fortnite + other Unreal titles. No matter which happens, everyone's better off.
    - Aloha 6y ago
      IMO, iOS/tvOS gaming has a bigger risk of stealing some of Nintendo's revenue stream, than it does hurting anything more intense.
- gilbetron 6y ago
  Microsoft seems fine.
- mhh__ 6y ago
  Not exactly the same situation, but didn't Steve Jobs threaten to kill Dropbox after they said no - i.e. note that Dropbox still exist?
  - ndiscussion 6y ago
    Dropbox is struggling to survive and has resorted to adding "teams" features that no one really wants to live up to their valuation.
    - abhinav22 6y ago
      Dropbox IMO is a terrible organization. Vastly overpriced and made it very difficult for us to cancel.
- grogenaut 6y ago
  Google, Android, netflix, Amazon, spotify, garmin, bose, sony, steam, dell, samsung, lenovo, all seem fine.
juancn 6y ago
The idea of doing a public campaign over this is so myopic that I cannot fathom the thinking about it. Who’s going to rally for Facebook? Did they really expected Apple to change this? The ad should scare investors much more than Apple’s move.
- birdyrooster 6y ago
  They can’t hire people with good ideas anymore because as we know money isn’t a great motivator (and besides, there are more ethical companies within 10 miles paying as much or more than Facebook). They can’t hire good people anymore because their mission is naive and their reputation precedes them.
  - mtgx 6y ago
    Tell that to John Carmack, who apparently is quite fine with tainting his legacy and wasting his last few good work years working for Facebook of all companies. And to top it all off, they're going to ruin Oculus, too (where Carmack is working), going by the latest moves in that division.
    - dijit 6y ago
      It would be very hard to “taint the legacy” of a person like Carmack. He will be excellent no matter where he is because he is given essentially free reign to work on what he enjoys the most. And if that changes it will be unlikely to be the company that did it, since a person in his position would just move to another company and re-acquire free reign.
      - ojbyrne 6y ago
        I don’t usually complain about spelling, but you used it twice. It’s “free rein.” https://grammarist.com/spelling/free-rein-free-reign/ https://grammarist.com/spelling/free-rein-free-reign/
        6y ago
unchocked 6y ago
The article's thesis is that the free content model is dying, and FB needs to pivot to a paid one. It may rather be that the content market is bifurcating, with "free" going toward the lower end mass market. Which FB seems perfectly positioned to serve.
lmedinas 6y ago
another end of the world blah blah blah article. The truth is both are still doing extremely good and FB for sure will not end here. On top of this im extremely disappointed that Apple has the power to take these measures and regulate other companies within their Walled garden. What is US and World identities doing ? Why does it need to be another company with a Monopoly to regulate other ?
- rantwasp 6y ago
  in this instance, what measure did Apple exactly take? give users the option of opting out?
  - halukakin 6y ago
    If that option was there in the very first place a significant portion of the marketing spend wouldn't have happened throughout the years. Now that the market is well established cutting Facebook off is a good strategy for Apple as this will probably move a significant chunk of marketing budget their way. Now Facebook's fate is collateral damage.
    - rantwasp 6y ago
      the option was there for quite a while now. it’s not new. now the developers of apps need to tell you the shady stuff they are doing.
- throwaheyy 6y ago
  Remember when Facebook came up with their own walled garden, and no one wanted it?
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
christiansakai 6y ago
Yes please, kill Facebook.
chicken_dinner 6y ago
Oh gosh, please let me do my internship there first before Facebook sinks!!! /s
slezyr 6y ago
Do you realize that Apple isn't that popular outside of US and Apple can't kill anything with its actions?
- gonzo 6y ago
  Must be why my foreign employees always want to visit the Apple store before returning to their home.
  - BMSmnqXAE4yfe1 6y ago
    Because iPhones are cheaper in the US and can be resold for profit/gifted.
- hu3 6y ago
  You're not wrong. HN crowd is known for having a majorly US centric view. The country where a teen can get bullied if their messages show up green on iMessage. [1] [1] https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20150211/05455029985/green-bubbles-how-apple-quietly-gets-iphone-users-to-hate-android-users.shtml https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20150211/05455029985/green...
- chrisseaton 6y ago
  There are Apple stores in 25 countries, and engineering locations in 14 countries. People use all Apple all over the world. The iPhone is massively popular in all wealthy countries and the MacBook dominates amongst developers in almost all of them.
  - Descon 6y ago
    It's about 80/20 iPhone/Android in North America, and in the rest of the world, it's the inverse.
    - chrisseaton 6y ago
      Do you think a near-quarter of the market held by a single product line counts as 'isn't that popular'?
abhinav22 6y ago
I was a big supporter of Apple for a long time and welcomed privacy focused initiatives when they first started making noise a while back. However since then I’ve become much more skeptical. Apple is no less evil or different; okay, I take that back, they are slightly better but I’m no longer a fanboy. I don’t think the Apple of today, who carefully monitor what everybody does on their macs and make it difficult / annoying to bypass the Mac App Store, cares about privacy or the consumer as much as they lead us to believe. Steve Jobs cared a lot about privacy, from what I have read, but the current group, whilst highly intelligent and producing great innovative products like the M1, are very much driven by profit and not vision. Examples include not providing basic accessories with their expensive iPhone products (seriously I spent 1,000 for an iPhone 12 Pro Max for my Girlfriend and there is no wall plug? Give me a break with their environment saving reasons, they could easily donate a lot more money if they really cared about the environment and not try to trick consumers that they are do-gooders). The more nefarious example is how Apple is pushing paid apps and subscriptions so much on their App Store, since they take a cut. It’s a core part of their services strategy. I don’t see too much ethical differences between selling users privacy for ads and aggressively taking advantage of the average consumer and trying to lure them more and more into more paid subscriptions (many which they don’t need and also are overpriced, but since it’s a monthly charge it is harder to tell). I am not comfortable with Apple, Facebook, Google, Microsoft and Amazon being so large and controlling the tech landscape. I’ve used MacBooks for the past 10 years, my next computer will 100% be a Linux.
- Razengan 6y ago
  > I’ve used MacBooks for the past 10 years, my next computer will 100% be a Linux. Those aren't mutually exclusive.
  - tartrate 6y ago
    They are nowadays
  - abhinav22 6y ago
    It’s not, I quite like the Unix base of OSX. However there are many things where you need to tinker with the settings quite a bit to get apps to work well, that work out of the box on Linux. I know Linux has enough / more problems than OSX, but I’m finally quite motivated to take a stance on this, it’s getting ridiculous on how much big tech want to control our machines. If you mean installing Linux directly on my MacBook, sure that is possible — however I am happy with Catalina for now, so will just upgrade to the latest x86 Linux build in about 3 years. Unless M1 changes the computing world all together....
sto_hristo 6y ago
Pot calling kettle black. All mobile os are just ad delivery platforms that the user never truly owns as they are completely sealed and locked down.
birdyrooster 6y ago
I hope they move to Colorado with Palantir and get the fuck out of our community.
jcfrei 6y ago
This isn't the end of facebook. These privacy changes will affect all social networks and they all run a free membership model. It will certainly change their profitability but facebook is earning so much money there's a long way to go before this becomes an existential problem. If anything these new changes might eliminate some of facebook's competitors because they will have a much harder time to grow their user base without the additional revenue from spying on their users.
keepper 6y ago
“Article continues after video.” Isn't it a bit ironic that a magazine who’s page is PLASTERED by advertising and data collecting beacons is claiming the model is dead... Has the concept of journalistic integrity gone by the way side? Do as I say, read these 10 things that you didn’t know about famous celebrity? It’s in fashion to gang up on Facebook, it’s a lot harder to actually analyze the Ad market space, realize how we got here, and where the true dangers lie. But yea, that would take research... and well, journalistic integrity. ( newspapers didn’t adapt to the new media in the late 90s and they’ve been suffering ever since.. it’s sad.. but clamoring for the old days of TV and Papers domination of advertising is naïveté. Apple just wants to be the new network.. that’s all.)
protoman3000 6y ago
The proliferation of spyware has become unbearable. You cannot anymore use any app or service - even the paid ones - without having to worry that any of your data is being collected. And no, reading through piles of TOS and privacy disclaimers is not gonna solve this. Users must gain control back and opt-in must be the default.
- mpol 6y ago
  Full Open Source and Libre software will be a solution, as it has always been. Is there any other real solution, besides emotional rhetoric? I don't believe regulation will really help, they will just skirt the lines and have lots of oopses.
  - protoman3000 6y ago
    > Full Open Source and Libre Software will be a solution I'm all in for FOSS but in the current state of the infrastructure that would just swap reading TOS to reading source. It just is not feasible for every single user. The alternative is crowd trust but that problem tends to be solved naturally by institutionalization, which brings other requirements such as organization and solving monetary problems. What we need is a change in infrastructure. Why is it allowed that IP addresses are geolocated in the first place? Why do browsers share the name of your graphics adapter by default? Why is the user agent not abolished?
newbie578 6y ago
Wow, now this was a painful article to read. The author spreading his opinion like fact when he has not a trounce of research or objectivity in the article. I do not like Facebook, but if I had to choose between Facebook or Apple, I'll choose Facebook every time. I especially dislike Apple for it's hypocritical behaviour, users need to be aware of companies tracking them, unless it's us...
_cs2017_ 6y ago
Anyone who can successfully predict downfall of large publicly traded companies can work for a hedge fund and make tens of millions of dollars a year. Anyone who cannot predict such events can write articles for a magazine claiming otherwise. At least it helps sell their speaking and consulting engagements.
- gnzoidberg 6y ago
  Completely agree. That title is so stupid that I wish I could "killfile" that author from all my web news feeds.
- heyflyguy 6y ago
  this is wisdom
- ummonk 6y ago
  There are limits to what you can do with superior but imperfect knowledge though. E.g. everyone knows Tesla stock is overvalued - even Elon tweets about it. And yet it's not really feasible to profit off this knowledge.
  - jeremyjh 6y ago
    Why is it not feasible to short Tesla?
    - bryanrasmussen 6y ago
      because you don't have a good idea as to when they will stop being overvalued?
    - epistasis 6y ago
      The market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent.
      - jeremyjh 6y ago
        Isn't that a market failure then? If the founder and CEO of the company says the company is over-valued, there should be someone in a position to capitalize on that information.
senthilnayagam 6y ago
facebook removed the blue verified tick from apple official page on facebook. the page has 13 million+ followers.
- jaywalk 6y ago
  That's so petty it's actually hilarious.
- ncal 6y ago
  lol so petty
- randycupertino 6y ago
  > facebook removed the blue verified tick from apple official page on facebook. How incredibly absurd and petty.
- dddbbb 6y ago
  'Verified' ticks in general are so bizarrely mismanaged. See also Twitter removing the status of controversial political figures. I feel like they should be totally open access to anyone who can provide irrefutable proof of identity, rather than these odd status symbols.
- tristanj 6y ago
  No, this is fake news. The page was never verified in the first place. https://www.soyacincau.com/2020/12/24/did-facebook-remove-apple-facebook-page-blue-tick-verification-badge/ https://www.soyacincau.com/2020/12/24/did-facebook-remove-ap...
ineedasername 6y ago
I can't imagine that even the less technical, typically less privacy concerned public, is going to have much sympathy for Facebook disliking Apple's move to put privacy controls in users hands. In fact considering the political bipartisan dislike for Facebook at the moment, I can't help but see this as outright counter productive. A better PR move would have been to say "We are always seeking ways to put the reins of control withing users hands, and are happy to see that Apple has similar goals. At the same time we will educate users on the value of working with Facebook on the benefits heightened user experience when Facebook is able to generate custom content and tailored user experiences" Lies and generalities sure, but at least it isn't shooting themselves in the foot.
ummonk 6y ago
Given most phones are Android phones, wouldn't it only happen if Android takes the same approach, which it is highly unlikely to since that would impact Google's ad targeting?
scyzoryk_xyz 6y ago
It’s like they think they’re Don Draper making some sort of big statement against Big Tobacco
johnnujler 6y ago
If there is a normal order in societies, it must be the fruit of an anterior crisis. Things have to get ugly before they get better. Here’s to the greater good.
- zelphirkalt 6y ago
  Not disputing this theory, but want to add: This, if true, is only the case because of our collective human short-sightedness, greed and stupidity.
fnord77 6y ago
always figured that government regulators would be the ones attacking the FAANGs (guess this is happening). Never imagined them attacking each other.
cute_boi 6y ago
haha these companies like facebook, google are so shit. First they start monopoly and later say "We are fighting for small companies, people bla bla bla". Why not directly say we are greedy advertising company and we want all those data otherwise our unethical business will die. User should not know we are using their data to generate $60 for 6 months. Any people who works on facebook should reconsider what damage they have done to world.
aussiegreenie 6y ago
To borrow a line from Churchill, "Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning"
Animats 6y ago
It's not likely to be the end of Facebook. What's the alternative? WeChat? But it may make Facebook less profitable. Facebook probably doesn't really need info from tracking users outside Facebook. They already have plenty of info about what people are doing while logged into Facebook.
scyzoryk_xyz 6y ago
They think they’re Don Draper making a dramatic statement against Big Tobacco
badcarbine 6y ago
Doesn't matter - even if facebook loses all its traffic tomorrow, it has a huge gold mine of data that it can sell or train AI on.
BMSmnqXAE4yfe1 6y ago
The article states that people will pay subscription fees to cooking sites and sports blogs. Not gonna happen.
cosmiccatnap 6y ago
If you are hoping apple will save you, you're more fucked up than zuck.
crx07 6y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crocodile_tears https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crocodile_tears

172 points by evo_9 6y ago

Everyone that "declare war" on Apple either fades into obscurity soon after their 15 minutes of fame, or becomes Apple: https://old.reddit.com/r/apple/comments/ki1rvt/samsung_began_deleting_posts_mocking_apple_galaxy/ https://old.reddit.com/r/apple/comments/ki1rvt/samsung_began... "Becoming Apple" in Facebook and Epic's case may mean their own app stores, and both of them are already sort of on their way there.

Shared404 6y ago
Epic Games appears to be still going strong, for better or for worse.
- unchocked 6y ago
  Too soon to tell.
- maxsilver 6y ago
  Epic Games might be the exception that proves the rule. Epic doesn't actually need Apple (they have a half-dozen much better ways to deliver their games, all of which better target + support their core revenue audience). Their Unreal Engine is popular with developers, but if they lost iOS device support and those mobile devs switched to Unity, most major games would still continue to use Unreal to target all the major platforms. And similarly, Apple doesn't need Epic, their iOS consoles historically don't push any high end or involved gaming, so they don't cede any meaningful ground losing them. And Apple has a bajillion dollars, they could lose all game sale revenue / gaming IAP revenue tomorrow and barely even notice it. --- Best case scenario: Epic breaks Apple's monopoly and gets anti-trust regulation enforced upon Apple (something that really should have happened a decade ago). Worst case scenario: Epic + Unreal is banned from Apple devices. Some mobile devs have to transition to Unity. Folks have to use the PC/Switch/PS4/Xbox most people already own anyway, to play Fortnite + other Unreal titles. No matter which happens, everyone's better off.
  - Aloha 6y ago
    IMO, iOS/tvOS gaming has a bigger risk of stealing some of Nintendo's revenue stream, than it does hurting anything more intense.
gilbetron 6y ago
Microsoft seems fine.
mhh__ 6y ago
Not exactly the same situation, but didn't Steve Jobs threaten to kill Dropbox after they said no - i.e. note that Dropbox still exist?
- ndiscussion 6y ago
  Dropbox is struggling to survive and has resorted to adding "teams" features that no one really wants to live up to their valuation.
  - abhinav22 6y ago
    Dropbox IMO is a terrible organization. Vastly overpriced and made it very difficult for us to cancel.
grogenaut 6y ago
Google, Android, netflix, Amazon, spotify, garmin, bose, sony, steam, dell, samsung, lenovo, all seem fine.

juancn 6y ago

The idea of doing a public campaign over this is so myopic that I cannot fathom the thinking about it. Who’s going to rally for Facebook? Did they really expected Apple to change this? The ad should scare investors much more than Apple’s move.

birdyrooster 6y ago
They can’t hire people with good ideas anymore because as we know money isn’t a great motivator (and besides, there are more ethical companies within 10 miles paying as much or more than Facebook). They can’t hire good people anymore because their mission is naive and their reputation precedes them.
- mtgx 6y ago
  Tell that to John Carmack, who apparently is quite fine with tainting his legacy and wasting his last few good work years working for Facebook of all companies. And to top it all off, they're going to ruin Oculus, too (where Carmack is working), going by the latest moves in that division.
  - dijit 6y ago
    It would be very hard to “taint the legacy” of a person like Carmack. He will be excellent no matter where he is because he is given essentially free reign to work on what he enjoys the most. And if that changes it will be unlikely to be the company that did it, since a person in his position would just move to another company and re-acquire free reign.
    - ojbyrne 6y ago
      I don’t usually complain about spelling, but you used it twice. It’s “free rein.” https://grammarist.com/spelling/free-rein-free-reign/ https://grammarist.com/spelling/free-rein-free-reign/
      - 6y ago

unchocked 6y ago

The article's thesis is that the free content model is dying, and FB needs to pivot to a paid one. It may rather be that the content market is bifurcating, with "free" going toward the lower end mass market. Which FB seems perfectly positioned to serve.

lmedinas 6y ago

another end of the world blah blah blah article. The truth is both are still doing extremely good and FB for sure will not end here. On top of this im extremely disappointed that Apple has the power to take these measures and regulate other companies within their Walled garden. What is US and World identities doing ? Why does it need to be another company with a Monopoly to regulate other ?

rantwasp 6y ago
in this instance, what measure did Apple exactly take? give users the option of opting out?
- halukakin 6y ago
  If that option was there in the very first place a significant portion of the marketing spend wouldn't have happened throughout the years. Now that the market is well established cutting Facebook off is a good strategy for Apple as this will probably move a significant chunk of marketing budget their way. Now Facebook's fate is collateral damage.
  - rantwasp 6y ago
    the option was there for quite a while now. it’s not new. now the developers of apps need to tell you the shady stuff they are doing.
throwaheyy 6y ago
Remember when Facebook came up with their own walled garden, and no one wanted it?
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

christiansakai 6y ago

Yes please, kill Facebook.

chicken_dinner 6y ago

Oh gosh, please let me do my internship there first before Facebook sinks!!! /s

slezyr 6y ago

Do you realize that Apple isn't that popular outside of US and Apple can't kill anything with its actions?

gonzo 6y ago
Must be why my foreign employees always want to visit the Apple store before returning to their home.
- BMSmnqXAE4yfe1 6y ago
  Because iPhones are cheaper in the US and can be resold for profit/gifted.
hu3 6y ago
You're not wrong. HN crowd is known for having a majorly US centric view. The country where a teen can get bullied if their messages show up green on iMessage. [1] [1] https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20150211/05455029985/green-bubbles-how-apple-quietly-gets-iphone-users-to-hate-android-users.shtml https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20150211/05455029985/green...
chrisseaton 6y ago
There are Apple stores in 25 countries, and engineering locations in 14 countries. People use all Apple all over the world. The iPhone is massively popular in all wealthy countries and the MacBook dominates amongst developers in almost all of them.
- Descon 6y ago
  It's about 80/20 iPhone/Android in North America, and in the rest of the world, it's the inverse.
  - chrisseaton 6y ago
    Do you think a near-quarter of the market held by a single product line counts as 'isn't that popular'?

abhinav22 6y ago

I was a big supporter of Apple for a long time and welcomed privacy focused initiatives when they first started making noise a while back. However since then I’ve become much more skeptical. Apple is no less evil or different; okay, I take that back, they are slightly better but I’m no longer a fanboy. I don’t think the Apple of today, who carefully monitor what everybody does on their macs and make it difficult / annoying to bypass the Mac App Store, cares about privacy or the consumer as much as they lead us to believe. Steve Jobs cared a lot about privacy, from what I have read, but the current group, whilst highly intelligent and producing great innovative products like the M1, are very much driven by profit and not vision. Examples include not providing basic accessories with their expensive iPhone products (seriously I spent 1,000 for an iPhone 12 Pro Max for my Girlfriend and there is no wall plug? Give me a break with their environment saving reasons, they could easily donate a lot more money if they really cared about the environment and not try to trick consumers that they are do-gooders). The more nefarious example is how Apple is pushing paid apps and subscriptions so much on their App Store, since they take a cut. It’s a core part of their services strategy. I don’t see too much ethical differences between selling users privacy for ads and aggressively taking advantage of the average consumer and trying to lure them more and more into more paid subscriptions (many which they don’t need and also are overpriced, but since it’s a monthly charge it is harder to tell). I am not comfortable with Apple, Facebook, Google, Microsoft and Amazon being so large and controlling the tech landscape. I’ve used MacBooks for the past 10 years, my next computer will 100% be a Linux.

Razengan 6y ago
> I’ve used MacBooks for the past 10 years, my next computer will 100% be a Linux. Those aren't mutually exclusive.
- tartrate 6y ago
  They are nowadays
- abhinav22 6y ago
  It’s not, I quite like the Unix base of OSX. However there are many things where you need to tinker with the settings quite a bit to get apps to work well, that work out of the box on Linux. I know Linux has enough / more problems than OSX, but I’m finally quite motivated to take a stance on this, it’s getting ridiculous on how much big tech want to control our machines. If you mean installing Linux directly on my MacBook, sure that is possible — however I am happy with Catalina for now, so will just upgrade to the latest x86 Linux build in about 3 years. Unless M1 changes the computing world all together....

sto_hristo 6y ago

Pot calling kettle black. All mobile os are just ad delivery platforms that the user never truly owns as they are completely sealed and locked down.

birdyrooster 6y ago

I hope they move to Colorado with Palantir and get the fuck out of our community.

jcfrei 6y ago

This isn't the end of facebook. These privacy changes will affect all social networks and they all run a free membership model. It will certainly change their profitability but facebook is earning so much money there's a long way to go before this becomes an existential problem. If anything these new changes might eliminate some of facebook's competitors because they will have a much harder time to grow their user base without the additional revenue from spying on their users.

keepper 6y ago

“Article continues after video.” Isn't it a bit ironic that a magazine who’s page is PLASTERED by advertising and data collecting beacons is claiming the model is dead... Has the concept of journalistic integrity gone by the way side? Do as I say, read these 10 things that you didn’t know about famous celebrity? It’s in fashion to gang up on Facebook, it’s a lot harder to actually analyze the Ad market space, realize how we got here, and where the true dangers lie. But yea, that would take research... and well, journalistic integrity. ( newspapers didn’t adapt to the new media in the late 90s and they’ve been suffering ever since.. it’s sad.. but clamoring for the old days of TV and Papers domination of advertising is naïveté. Apple just wants to be the new network.. that’s all.)

protoman3000 6y ago

The proliferation of spyware has become unbearable. You cannot anymore use any app or service - even the paid ones - without having to worry that any of your data is being collected. And no, reading through piles of TOS and privacy disclaimers is not gonna solve this. Users must gain control back and opt-in must be the default.

mpol 6y ago
Full Open Source and Libre software will be a solution, as it has always been. Is there any other real solution, besides emotional rhetoric? I don't believe regulation will really help, they will just skirt the lines and have lots of oopses.
- protoman3000 6y ago
  > Full Open Source and Libre Software will be a solution I'm all in for FOSS but in the current state of the infrastructure that would just swap reading TOS to reading source. It just is not feasible for every single user. The alternative is crowd trust but that problem tends to be solved naturally by institutionalization, which brings other requirements such as organization and solving monetary problems. What we need is a change in infrastructure. Why is it allowed that IP addresses are geolocated in the first place? Why do browsers share the name of your graphics adapter by default? Why is the user agent not abolished?

newbie578 6y ago

Wow, now this was a painful article to read. The author spreading his opinion like fact when he has not a trounce of research or objectivity in the article. I do not like Facebook, but if I had to choose between Facebook or Apple, I'll choose Facebook every time. I especially dislike Apple for it's hypocritical behaviour, users need to be aware of companies tracking them, unless it's us...

_cs2017_ 6y ago

Anyone who can successfully predict downfall of large publicly traded companies can work for a hedge fund and make tens of millions of dollars a year. Anyone who cannot predict such events can write articles for a magazine claiming otherwise. At least it helps sell their speaking and consulting engagements.

gnzoidberg 6y ago
Completely agree. That title is so stupid that I wish I could "killfile" that author from all my web news feeds.
heyflyguy 6y ago
this is wisdom
ummonk 6y ago
There are limits to what you can do with superior but imperfect knowledge though. E.g. everyone knows Tesla stock is overvalued - even Elon tweets about it. And yet it's not really feasible to profit off this knowledge.
- jeremyjh 6y ago
  Why is it not feasible to short Tesla?
  - bryanrasmussen 6y ago
    because you don't have a good idea as to when they will stop being overvalued?
  - epistasis 6y ago
    The market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent.
    - jeremyjh 6y ago
      Isn't that a market failure then? If the founder and CEO of the company says the company is over-valued, there should be someone in a position to capitalize on that information.

senthilnayagam 6y ago

facebook removed the blue verified tick from apple official page on facebook. the page has 13 million+ followers.

jaywalk 6y ago
That's so petty it's actually hilarious.
ncal 6y ago
lol so petty
randycupertino 6y ago
> facebook removed the blue verified tick from apple official page on facebook. How incredibly absurd and petty.
dddbbb 6y ago
'Verified' ticks in general are so bizarrely mismanaged. See also Twitter removing the status of controversial political figures. I feel like they should be totally open access to anyone who can provide irrefutable proof of identity, rather than these odd status symbols.
tristanj 6y ago
No, this is fake news. The page was never verified in the first place. https://www.soyacincau.com/2020/12/24/did-facebook-remove-apple-facebook-page-blue-tick-verification-badge/ https://www.soyacincau.com/2020/12/24/did-facebook-remove-ap...

ineedasername 6y ago

I can't imagine that even the less technical, typically less privacy concerned public, is going to have much sympathy for Facebook disliking Apple's move to put privacy controls in users hands. In fact considering the political bipartisan dislike for Facebook at the moment, I can't help but see this as outright counter productive. A better PR move would have been to say "We are always seeking ways to put the reins of control withing users hands, and are happy to see that Apple has similar goals. At the same time we will educate users on the value of working with Facebook on the benefits heightened user experience when Facebook is able to generate custom content and tailored user experiences" Lies and generalities sure, but at least it isn't shooting themselves in the foot.

ummonk 6y ago

Given most phones are Android phones, wouldn't it only happen if Android takes the same approach, which it is highly unlikely to since that would impact Google's ad targeting?

scyzoryk_xyz 6y ago

It’s like they think they’re Don Draper making some sort of big statement against Big Tobacco

johnnujler 6y ago

If there is a normal order in societies, it must be the fruit of an anterior crisis. Things have to get ugly before they get better. Here’s to the greater good.

zelphirkalt 6y ago
Not disputing this theory, but want to add: This, if true, is only the case because of our collective human short-sightedness, greed and stupidity.

fnord77 6y ago

always figured that government regulators would be the ones attacking the FAANGs (guess this is happening). Never imagined them attacking each other.

cute_boi 6y ago

haha these companies like facebook, google are so shit. First they start monopoly and later say "We are fighting for small companies, people bla bla bla". Why not directly say we are greedy advertising company and we want all those data otherwise our unethical business will die. User should not know we are using their data to generate $60 for 6 months. Any people who works on facebook should reconsider what damage they have done to world.

aussiegreenie 6y ago

To borrow a line from Churchill, "Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning"

Animats 6y ago

It's not likely to be the end of Facebook. What's the alternative? WeChat? But it may make Facebook less profitable. Facebook probably doesn't really need info from tracking users outside Facebook. They already have plenty of info about what people are doing while logged into Facebook.

scyzoryk_xyz 6y ago

They think they’re Don Draper making a dramatic statement against Big Tobacco

badcarbine 6y ago

Doesn't matter - even if facebook loses all its traffic tomorrow, it has a huge gold mine of data that it can sell or train AI on.

BMSmnqXAE4yfe1 6y ago

The article states that people will pay subscription fees to cooking sites and sports blogs. Not gonna happen.

cosmiccatnap 6y ago

If you are hoping apple will save you, you're more fucked up than zuck.

crx07 6y ago

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