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Apple is way too powerful. Not that Facebook is any better, but Facebook is not the gatekeeper for millions of peoples lives. When Apple boots you as a customer

Apple is way too powerful. Not that Facebook is any better, but Facebook is not the gatekeeper for millions of peoples lives. When Apple boots you as a customer, you most likely will lose everything about your digital life. If you lose your Facebook account, it's annoying but recoverable. Apple has control over your phone, your passwords, your photos, your music, your emails, your credit cards/payment methods. And you can backup nothing of it in a usable way. Without a working Apple account any iPhone is as good as a brick.

beachy 4y ago
Apple doesn't harm your mental health or facilitate threats to democracy though. They just want your money, and they'll sell you beautiful gadgets to get it.
- rglullis 4y ago
  "Brave New World" is also a dystopia. The more unchecked power Apple gets and the more Apple zealots think that it is okay, the closer we get to live in it.
988747 4y ago
Apple is not in control of your credit cards - it just allows you to use them more conveniently. And for photos and music, and even passwords there are alternative services, no one forces you to use Apple provided ones.
- moonchrome 4y ago
  > Apple is not in control of your credit cards Maybe OP was referring to https://www.apple.com/apple-card/ https://www.apple.com/apple-card/ ? > And for photos and music, and even passwords there are alternative services, no one forces you to use Apple provided ones. Apple has a real tight lockdown on what gets published to iOS devices and ships defaults built to the OS so I don't really buy this argument. Microsoft got punished for way less back in the day (eg. IE bundling vs being forced to use webkit for your rendering engine...)
  - threeseed 4y ago
    I really wish people would stop bringing up Microsoft. They had ~95% market share when they were pulling this IE nonsense. iOS is ~28%. And they didn't get in trouble just for bundling IE. It was the coercion of OEMs to not bundle Netscape. Many of the companies at the time wanted to offer both but weren't allowed.
    - moonchrome 4y ago
      > iOS is ~28%. This is a deliberately misleading number. They own ~50% of US market, they have close to 50% of global mobile revenue, >70% of profit, etc. etc. They are a huge player and abusing their market position - and are big enough to bring regulatory attention in multiple countries. This is exactly the situation where proper government intervention into markets is a good thing and I've seen multiple proposals to deal with "Apple tax" and walled garden strategy. Hopefully they come sooner rather than later.
zelphirkalt 4y ago
I some countries FB is the Internet and provides "the Internet" through FB. That is quite some gate keeping there. Someone getting into your FB account can ruin your complete social life, if you were relying on FB too much. Could also ruin your job perspectives and thus financial security. Not merely annoying. Self-inflicted mostly, yes, but definitely serious.
shmel 4y ago
On the other hand, you can choose to not use Apple and your life won't be affected at all. I don't use Apple at all and don't feel I missing out. Apple doesn't have any network effect. If FB goes nuclear on me, I will lose the main platform to discover local events (like gigs, festivals, meetups and such), pretty much the only social media for a hobby of mine (photography) and the most popular messenger used by family members (ok, I could probably convince them to move elsewhere) and lots of local group chats (multiple attempts to move those group chats on telegram ultimately failed). Most of it is irreplaceable because FB killed off most of the competition. Compare it to Apple where you can just use Android and forget Apple exists at all.
- blfr 4y ago
  I use neither Facebook nor Apple. Let's hope Google doesn't ban my account since it has everything. Or perhaps we could have a regulatory regime that doesn't press every consumer into becoming an e-peasant of one of five mega corps.
  - b112 4y ago
    I recall that scifi from the pre-2000s, had loads of scenarios with a "house computer". All personal stuff was stored there, even if it was net connnected and collated/performed searches for you. Maybe this will be the blowback reality. An applicance in every home, stored in a black box (fireproof, etc), which stores all your stuff. Computing at this level, email, notes, personal records, has the capacity to stabilize and change freeze. Which is good, if you want personal records to last 100 years. And looking at email, mbox formats have been static for decades. Static image formats too.
    - int_19h 4y ago
      There are some attempts: https://thehelm.com/ https://thehelm.com/ The problem is that it's not cheap to keep running, if you want it to integrate with the rest of the Net (i.e. also handle email and such).
    - justinclift 4y ago
EugeneOZ 4y ago
Apple only controls my phone and playlists in the Music app (from time to time I export them to have a backup, but only because the Music app is absolutely dumb in syncing). From my example, you can see that you have a choice about what you want to be controlled by Apple.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
rvieira 4y ago
I honestly think the other way around, that Facebook is way too powerful and in a more insidious way, than Apple. I'm coming from a Apple HW user perspective. This means that, yes, if Apple locked me out, I would have trouble using my machines. But I'm not an services user (music, TV or iCloud). So nothing would be lost from my digital life and it is elsewhere and well backed up. On the other hand, I genuinely despair at the amount of public services (at least in Europe), community services and businesses that require me to have a Facebook account to interact with them. The quickest way to reach a local politician might be leave a message on a local FB group. Some segments of society (and some age groups) just _assume_ _everyone _ is on FB. FB is _not_ a public service.
- rglullis 4y ago
  > businesses that require me to have a Facebook account to interact with them. Can you give examples? > The quickest way to reach a local politician Doesn't mean that it is the only one. There are still alternatives. If you feel that using Facebook is wrong, the solution is not to use Facebook and complain about it. The solution is to stay away from it and send a clear signal that Facebook is not the proper channel.
  - lloeki 4y ago
    Can't be sure about what GP meant but over here many small biz (restaurants, bars, shops...) online presence is a FB page + booking/inquiry/support via Messenger (which has specific support for that on biz pages) > If you feel that using Facebook is wrong, the solution is not to use Facebook and complain about it. Do that and they could care less. The only one you'll impact is you, as the needle will barely move. You could say if enough people do that and talk enough about it things will change, but in practice they don't as it's very far from reaching critical mass. And yes I've tried! But the network effect is stupidly powerful here. > The solution is to stay away from it and send a clear signal that Facebook is not the proper channel. To be fair, many are being pragmatic as Facebook tools for business are useful, as in they solve a real use case in an easy enough way. So people use it, which means events, news, communication, end up happening via Facebook for a huge proportion of local life. Displacing that is capital H Hard.
signal11 4y ago
> Facebook is not the gatekeeper for millions of peoples lives Facebook’s influence over billions of people’s lives is far more insidious. What that platform peddles influences countries’ political futures. It is absolutely a gatekeeper of ideas to an extent AOL or the proprietary MSN of old could never imagine. Less charitable people could even call it a privately owned memetic weapon. > Without a working Apple account any iPhone is as good as a brick. Lots of people have iPhones without Apple accounts — they’re corporate “managed” iPhones. I appreciate the desire to decouple from Apple’s services, but it’s a stretch to say that you’re locked in. In fact, most iPhone users don’t use all of Apple’s services can quite easily move to Android with only a little effort. If there’s enough consensus though that Apple’s policies are harming users, then I’m sure legislators can require Apple to (say) allow users to decouple from Apple services. I’m not seeing it though. There are places with Apple goes overboard, eg the “must pay via Apple” is being attacked by legislation already (eg in the Netherlands), and better App Store policies will probably help as well, as long as they don’t open the door to malware. But to say that Apple is worse than Facebook feels like a very skewed perspective.
natly 4y ago
I recently got a new phone and forgot my apple password but I considered just creating a new account because I didn't really consider it that big of a deal to just start fresh. I don't cling onto my emails and I only have like 30 contacts that I actually care about, all of which I have their emails stored in gmail rather than in contacts (and don't call them anyway). So I'm not sure I would care if I had to start from scratch.
ChrisRR 4y ago
> If you lose your Facebook account, it's annoying but recoverable. I haven't noticed any negative impact since giving facebook the boot
- afr0ck 4y ago
  How do you find out about events, gigs and stuff happening in your town?
  - ChrisRR 4y ago
    My town has a website for events, music, comedy, etc. Even when I used facebook I never used it for gigs or anything.
  - threeseed 4y ago
    So if Facebook shut down everyone would just be staying home confused about what to do ? Anyway in Australia at least we have sites like this: https://www.broadsheet.com.au https://www.broadsheet.com.au Pretty sure every city does too.
    - Nextgrid 4y ago
      If Facebook shuts down people would flock to an alternative. If Facebook bans people here and there, the rest of the crowd won't give a shit. That is the problem.
jurmous 4y ago
In Europe and specifically here in the Netherlands, almost everything is going through WhatsApp. Without whatsapp you are disconnecting yourself from a lot of socialising groups/neighborhood watch and more. Recoverable, but still a main pillar of society here so it comes at a cost of losing social connections.
jurmous 4y ago
With Apple, any service you use is a choice. Ok you need an Apple account to download apps but that is the only mandatory one. But you can switch out all Apple apps with other ecosystem variants like those from Google or others.
- NorwegianDude 4y ago
  That's not true at all. Apple goes a long way to sabotage and make sure what you're saying is not the case. You're not even allowed to use a browser that Apple isn't in control of. You're even forced to use Apple for payments. Apple even dictates what content an app is allowed to contain.
  - threeseed 4y ago
    a) I use Chrome. Apple doesn't control it except for the engine which is irrelevant to my day to day use. b) I don't use Apple for payments. c) If there is content that is highly objectionable I would just visit the website. But then again I am not really into that sort of content in the first place.
  - EugeneOZ 4y ago
    It's just ridiculous. I use whatever I want for payments. How is Apple forcing you to buy a fish in your shop only using ApplePay?
  - jurmous 4y ago
    I use Apple Pay as a protocol to pay with either credit card or maestro through my own bank or its competitors. Apple state they don't get any of my payment data as it stays on my devices and with my bank. It is a method of communication and not a payment provider. Apple dictates the browser engine for security and battery life considerations which I regard as a feature. There are multiple browsers which can implement any feature on top of the browser engine included. And Apple does not dictate what content is allowed to contain. But they do the opposite, they disallow certain content to keep their devices safe to use for the general audience/children. Anything else can be viewed on the web. They are over time removing restrictions in the browser like adding web push in iOS 16. https://9to5mac.com/2022/06/06/ios-16-web-push-notifications-safari-update/ https://9to5mac.com/2022/06/06/ios-16-web-push-notifications... And it was already possible to add full screen web apps to the Home Screen.
kmlx 4y ago
> you most likely will lose everything about your digital life. "everything"? why would you lose anything at all?
drexlspivey 4y ago
I am not sure that’s the case, I know a lot of (mainly older) people that if facebook was gone from their iphone they would ditch their iphone for android instead of not using facebook.
madeofpalk 4y ago
> Apple is way too powerful. Not that Facebook is any better, but Facebook is not the gatekeeper for millions of peoples lives. I think Facebook inciting genocide is being more of a literal gatekeeper of lives than Apple allowing porn on their app store. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/15/technology/myanmar-facebook-genocide.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/15/technology/myanmar-facebo... https://about.fb.com/news/2018/11/myanmar-hria/ https://about.fb.com/news/2018/11/myanmar-hria/
AnonHP 4y ago
> Not that Facebook is any better, but Facebook is not the gatekeeper for millions of peoples lives. When Apple boots you as a customer, you most likely will lose everything about your digital life. What??? Maybe you're referring to one or two countries. Facebook is the gatekeeper for billions of people's (online) lives around the world. With WhatsApp, Instagram, Facebook, Messenger, etc., the influence that Meta has is huge. It's far larger than Apple in terms of number of people who rely on it.
devoutsalsa 4y ago
The three primary ways I communicate with friends and family are FB Messenger, Instagram, and WhatsApp. Facebook could decide it doesn't like me at any time.
Schroedingersat 4y ago
> If you lose your Facebook account, it's annoying but recoverable. Tell that to the large portion of the world living where government services, clubs, community and social events, second hand markets, contact with family or communication without usurious data charges are unavailable without a facebook or facebook subsidiary account. At least with apple you can just use a different phone. If all of the social activity in your area operates over facebook you can't get a new social graph that isn't owned by them.
SllX 4y ago
> Apple has control over your phone, your passwords, your photos, your music, your emails, your credit cards/payment methods. This gets repetitive but: only if you let them. I’m not even sure you need an Apple ID to use an iPhone either, although you will for the App Store. Everything else is extra: iCloud, Apple Music, iCloud email, the Apple Wallet. Your Dropbox, Spotify, email host and credit cards don’t just fall into an abyss when you create an Apple ID. Apple has what you give them. That’s true for every single one of their customers. Contrast that with Facebook that built shadow profiles before people even had accounts because the websites you visited and apps you used were relaying information back to them.
fritigern 4y ago
> Apple has control over your phone, your passwords, your photos, your music, your emails, your credit cards/payment methods. And you can backup nothing of it in a usable way. Without a working Apple account any iPhone is as good as a brick. This is why no one could ever convince me to buy an Apple product.
gpspake 4y ago
I've solved this problem for good with email - since I think it's arguably the most important thing here (all my financial/important life stuff is ultimately tied back to my email). I kinda think everyone should do this... - First I got a custom domain email address that I own and control (like name@myname.com). - Then I set up what's basically a burner account with a popular email service just so I could take advantage of the web UX (it could be gmail or whatever, I don't really care). This email address never gets used or exposed. The account is merely a forwarding bucket that I can use to check my email in a browser. - My personal email all gets forwarded to the burner address (at the host level). The burner (gmail or whatever) acct is configured to send from my personal address. - I have the account set up in outlook so I can access/backup emails locally. I'm not really worried about losing access to my web mail account but I've read horror stories and the cost of that scenario is just intolerable so, if I did, I would just set up another account with the same or a different service, forward my personal email to the new address, add it to outlook, and drag all my existing emails in to the new account. I don't even need to worry about accessing my existing emails because they're all backed up locally. Sidenote: as part of this process, I quit filing my emails in folders (search is good enough to find any email these days). I just put all my read emails in a single flat folder called archive. This makes it a lot easier to keep my inbox clean (no more meticulous filing) and easier to migrate if I ever need to (different services have different implementations and restrictions around folders - but a bunch of emails in a single folder is universally deal-with-able.).

beachy 4y ago

Apple doesn't harm your mental health or facilitate threats to democracy though. They just want your money, and they'll sell you beautiful gadgets to get it.

rglullis 4y ago
"Brave New World" is also a dystopia. The more unchecked power Apple gets and the more Apple zealots think that it is okay, the closer we get to live in it.

988747 4y ago

Apple is not in control of your credit cards - it just allows you to use them more conveniently. And for photos and music, and even passwords there are alternative services, no one forces you to use Apple provided ones.

moonchrome 4y ago
> Apple is not in control of your credit cards Maybe OP was referring to https://www.apple.com/apple-card/ https://www.apple.com/apple-card/ ? > And for photos and music, and even passwords there are alternative services, no one forces you to use Apple provided ones. Apple has a real tight lockdown on what gets published to iOS devices and ships defaults built to the OS so I don't really buy this argument. Microsoft got punished for way less back in the day (eg. IE bundling vs being forced to use webkit for your rendering engine...)
- threeseed 4y ago
  I really wish people would stop bringing up Microsoft. They had ~95% market share when they were pulling this IE nonsense. iOS is ~28%. And they didn't get in trouble just for bundling IE. It was the coercion of OEMs to not bundle Netscape. Many of the companies at the time wanted to offer both but weren't allowed.
  - moonchrome 4y ago
    > iOS is ~28%. This is a deliberately misleading number. They own ~50% of US market, they have close to 50% of global mobile revenue, >70% of profit, etc. etc. They are a huge player and abusing their market position - and are big enough to bring regulatory attention in multiple countries. This is exactly the situation where proper government intervention into markets is a good thing and I've seen multiple proposals to deal with "Apple tax" and walled garden strategy. Hopefully they come sooner rather than later.

zelphirkalt 4y ago

I some countries FB is the Internet and provides "the Internet" through FB. That is quite some gate keeping there. Someone getting into your FB account can ruin your complete social life, if you were relying on FB too much. Could also ruin your job perspectives and thus financial security. Not merely annoying. Self-inflicted mostly, yes, but definitely serious.

shmel 4y ago

On the other hand, you can choose to not use Apple and your life won't be affected at all. I don't use Apple at all and don't feel I missing out. Apple doesn't have any network effect. If FB goes nuclear on me, I will lose the main platform to discover local events (like gigs, festivals, meetups and such), pretty much the only social media for a hobby of mine (photography) and the most popular messenger used by family members (ok, I could probably convince them to move elsewhere) and lots of local group chats (multiple attempts to move those group chats on telegram ultimately failed). Most of it is irreplaceable because FB killed off most of the competition. Compare it to Apple where you can just use Android and forget Apple exists at all.

blfr 4y ago
I use neither Facebook nor Apple. Let's hope Google doesn't ban my account since it has everything. Or perhaps we could have a regulatory regime that doesn't press every consumer into becoming an e-peasant of one of five mega corps.
- b112 4y ago
  I recall that scifi from the pre-2000s, had loads of scenarios with a "house computer". All personal stuff was stored there, even if it was net connnected and collated/performed searches for you. Maybe this will be the blowback reality. An applicance in every home, stored in a black box (fireproof, etc), which stores all your stuff. Computing at this level, email, notes, personal records, has the capacity to stabilize and change freeze. Which is good, if you want personal records to last 100 years. And looking at email, mbox formats have been static for decades. Static image formats too.
  - int_19h 4y ago
    There are some attempts: https://thehelm.com/ https://thehelm.com/ The problem is that it's not cheap to keep running, if you want it to integrate with the rest of the Net (i.e. also handle email and such).
  - justinclift 4y ago

EugeneOZ 4y ago

Apple only controls my phone and playlists in the Music app (from time to time I export them to have a backup, but only because the Music app is absolutely dumb in syncing). From my example, you can see that you have a choice about what you want to be controlled by Apple.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

rvieira 4y ago

I honestly think the other way around, that Facebook is way too powerful and in a more insidious way, than Apple. I'm coming from a Apple HW user perspective. This means that, yes, if Apple locked me out, I would have trouble using my machines. But I'm not an services user (music, TV or iCloud). So nothing would be lost from my digital life and it is elsewhere and well backed up. On the other hand, I genuinely despair at the amount of public services (at least in Europe), community services and businesses that require me to have a Facebook account to interact with them. The quickest way to reach a local politician might be leave a message on a local FB group. Some segments of society (and some age groups) just _assume_ _everyone _ is on FB. FB is _not_ a public service.

rglullis 4y ago
> businesses that require me to have a Facebook account to interact with them. Can you give examples? > The quickest way to reach a local politician Doesn't mean that it is the only one. There are still alternatives. If you feel that using Facebook is wrong, the solution is not to use Facebook and complain about it. The solution is to stay away from it and send a clear signal that Facebook is not the proper channel.
- lloeki 4y ago
  Can't be sure about what GP meant but over here many small biz (restaurants, bars, shops...) online presence is a FB page + booking/inquiry/support via Messenger (which has specific support for that on biz pages) > If you feel that using Facebook is wrong, the solution is not to use Facebook and complain about it. Do that and they could care less. The only one you'll impact is you, as the needle will barely move. You could say if enough people do that and talk enough about it things will change, but in practice they don't as it's very far from reaching critical mass. And yes I've tried! But the network effect is stupidly powerful here. > The solution is to stay away from it and send a clear signal that Facebook is not the proper channel. To be fair, many are being pragmatic as Facebook tools for business are useful, as in they solve a real use case in an easy enough way. So people use it, which means events, news, communication, end up happening via Facebook for a huge proportion of local life. Displacing that is capital H Hard.

signal11 4y ago

> Facebook is not the gatekeeper for millions of peoples lives Facebook’s influence over billions of people’s lives is far more insidious. What that platform peddles influences countries’ political futures. It is absolutely a gatekeeper of ideas to an extent AOL or the proprietary MSN of old could never imagine. Less charitable people could even call it a privately owned memetic weapon. > Without a working Apple account any iPhone is as good as a brick. Lots of people have iPhones without Apple accounts — they’re corporate “managed” iPhones. I appreciate the desire to decouple from Apple’s services, but it’s a stretch to say that you’re locked in. In fact, most iPhone users don’t use all of Apple’s services can quite easily move to Android with only a little effort. If there’s enough consensus though that Apple’s policies are harming users, then I’m sure legislators can require Apple to (say) allow users to decouple from Apple services. I’m not seeing it though. There are places with Apple goes overboard, eg the “must pay via Apple” is being attacked by legislation already (eg in the Netherlands), and better App Store policies will probably help as well, as long as they don’t open the door to malware. But to say that Apple is worse than Facebook feels like a very skewed perspective.

natly 4y ago

I recently got a new phone and forgot my apple password but I considered just creating a new account because I didn't really consider it that big of a deal to just start fresh. I don't cling onto my emails and I only have like 30 contacts that I actually care about, all of which I have their emails stored in gmail rather than in contacts (and don't call them anyway). So I'm not sure I would care if I had to start from scratch.

ChrisRR 4y ago

> If you lose your Facebook account, it's annoying but recoverable. I haven't noticed any negative impact since giving facebook the boot

afr0ck 4y ago
How do you find out about events, gigs and stuff happening in your town?
- ChrisRR 4y ago
  My town has a website for events, music, comedy, etc. Even when I used facebook I never used it for gigs or anything.
- threeseed 4y ago
  So if Facebook shut down everyone would just be staying home confused about what to do ? Anyway in Australia at least we have sites like this: https://www.broadsheet.com.au https://www.broadsheet.com.au Pretty sure every city does too.
  - Nextgrid 4y ago
    If Facebook shuts down people would flock to an alternative. If Facebook bans people here and there, the rest of the crowd won't give a shit. That is the problem.

jurmous 4y ago

In Europe and specifically here in the Netherlands, almost everything is going through WhatsApp. Without whatsapp you are disconnecting yourself from a lot of socialising groups/neighborhood watch and more. Recoverable, but still a main pillar of society here so it comes at a cost of losing social connections.

jurmous 4y ago

With Apple, any service you use is a choice. Ok you need an Apple account to download apps but that is the only mandatory one. But you can switch out all Apple apps with other ecosystem variants like those from Google or others.

NorwegianDude 4y ago
That's not true at all. Apple goes a long way to sabotage and make sure what you're saying is not the case. You're not even allowed to use a browser that Apple isn't in control of. You're even forced to use Apple for payments. Apple even dictates what content an app is allowed to contain.
- threeseed 4y ago
  a) I use Chrome. Apple doesn't control it except for the engine which is irrelevant to my day to day use. b) I don't use Apple for payments. c) If there is content that is highly objectionable I would just visit the website. But then again I am not really into that sort of content in the first place.
- EugeneOZ 4y ago
  It's just ridiculous. I use whatever I want for payments. How is Apple forcing you to buy a fish in your shop only using ApplePay?
- jurmous 4y ago
  I use Apple Pay as a protocol to pay with either credit card or maestro through my own bank or its competitors. Apple state they don't get any of my payment data as it stays on my devices and with my bank. It is a method of communication and not a payment provider. Apple dictates the browser engine for security and battery life considerations which I regard as a feature. There are multiple browsers which can implement any feature on top of the browser engine included. And Apple does not dictate what content is allowed to contain. But they do the opposite, they disallow certain content to keep their devices safe to use for the general audience/children. Anything else can be viewed on the web. They are over time removing restrictions in the browser like adding web push in iOS 16. https://9to5mac.com/2022/06/06/ios-16-web-push-notifications-safari-update/ https://9to5mac.com/2022/06/06/ios-16-web-push-notifications... And it was already possible to add full screen web apps to the Home Screen.

kmlx 4y ago

> you most likely will lose everything about your digital life. "everything"? why would you lose anything at all?

drexlspivey 4y ago

I am not sure that’s the case, I know a lot of (mainly older) people that if facebook was gone from their iphone they would ditch their iphone for android instead of not using facebook.

madeofpalk 4y ago

> Apple is way too powerful. Not that Facebook is any better, but Facebook is not the gatekeeper for millions of peoples lives. I think Facebook inciting genocide is being more of a literal gatekeeper of lives than Apple allowing porn on their app store. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/15/technology/myanmar-facebook-genocide.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/15/technology/myanmar-facebo... https://about.fb.com/news/2018/11/myanmar-hria/ https://about.fb.com/news/2018/11/myanmar-hria/

AnonHP 4y ago

> Not that Facebook is any better, but Facebook is not the gatekeeper for millions of peoples lives. When Apple boots you as a customer, you most likely will lose everything about your digital life. What??? Maybe you're referring to one or two countries. Facebook is the gatekeeper for billions of people's (online) lives around the world. With WhatsApp, Instagram, Facebook, Messenger, etc., the influence that Meta has is huge. It's far larger than Apple in terms of number of people who rely on it.

devoutsalsa 4y ago

The three primary ways I communicate with friends and family are FB Messenger, Instagram, and WhatsApp. Facebook could decide it doesn't like me at any time.

Schroedingersat 4y ago

> If you lose your Facebook account, it's annoying but recoverable. Tell that to the large portion of the world living where government services, clubs, community and social events, second hand markets, contact with family or communication without usurious data charges are unavailable without a facebook or facebook subsidiary account. At least with apple you can just use a different phone. If all of the social activity in your area operates over facebook you can't get a new social graph that isn't owned by them.

SllX 4y ago

> Apple has control over your phone, your passwords, your photos, your music, your emails, your credit cards/payment methods. This gets repetitive but: only if you let them. I’m not even sure you need an Apple ID to use an iPhone either, although you will for the App Store. Everything else is extra: iCloud, Apple Music, iCloud email, the Apple Wallet. Your Dropbox, Spotify, email host and credit cards don’t just fall into an abyss when you create an Apple ID. Apple has what you give them. That’s true for every single one of their customers. Contrast that with Facebook that built shadow profiles before people even had accounts because the websites you visited and apps you used were relaying information back to them.

fritigern 4y ago

> Apple has control over your phone, your passwords, your photos, your music, your emails, your credit cards/payment methods. And you can backup nothing of it in a usable way. Without a working Apple account any iPhone is as good as a brick. This is why no one could ever convince me to buy an Apple product.

gpspake 4y ago

I've solved this problem for good with email - since I think it's arguably the most important thing here (all my financial/important life stuff is ultimately tied back to my email). I kinda think everyone should do this... - First I got a custom domain email address that I own and control (like name@myname.com). - Then I set up what's basically a burner account with a popular email service just so I could take advantage of the web UX (it could be gmail or whatever, I don't really care). This email address never gets used or exposed. The account is merely a forwarding bucket that I can use to check my email in a browser. - My personal email all gets forwarded to the burner address (at the host level). The burner (gmail or whatever) acct is configured to send from my personal address. - I have the account set up in outlook so I can access/backup emails locally. I'm not really worried about losing access to my web mail account but I've read horror stories and the cost of that scenario is just intolerable so, if I did, I would just set up another account with the same or a different service, forward my personal email to the new address, add it to outlook, and drag all my existing emails in to the new account. I don't even need to worry about accessing my existing emails because they're all backed up locally. Sidenote: as part of this process, I quit filing my emails in folders (search is good enough to find any email these days). I just put all my read emails in a single flat folder called archive. This makes it a lot easier to keep my inbox clean (no more meticulous filing) and easier to migrate if I ever need to (different services have different implementations and restrictions around folders - but a bunch of emails in a single folder is universally deal-with-able.).