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Seems to me that social app devs sound a bit entitled. If their business model depends on slurping up all my contacts, maybe they need to find a new line of wor

Seems to me that social app devs sound a bit entitled. If their business model depends on slurping up all my contacts, maybe they need to find a new line of work.

km144 2y ago
I tend to agree—however I think the point of the article is that, regardless of whether this an ethical or "good" practice, it represents a pulling up of the ladder in a social media landscape that most users would agree is not in a great place with regard to the big names. Maybe we already have enough social media apps, but also maybe the ones we have aren't very good, and things like this probably make it harder to compete in that space if you believe that you can create something better. Also to be clear, while I'm sympathetic to that idea I'm not sympathetic to garbage people like Nikita Bier, who is basically saying this is what helped enable him to make two identical apps marketed directly to high-schoolers rapidly acquire a substantial userbase. He then subsequently sold these apps to Meta and Discord. So maybe this change is for the best. https://www.reddit.com/r/Entrepreneur/comments/12rqnk6/nikita_bier_got_5m_users_in_2_months_with_a_0/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Entrepreneur/comments/12rqnk6/nikit...
- _aavaa_ 2y ago
  I don't think pulling up the ladder is the correct analogy here. The inability of users to prevent companies from slurping up all of their contacts creates an environment which greatly benefits those company which simply take the data since nobody can stop them. Yes having that data has allowed the current crop of social media companies to grow very quickly, but look at the societal costs of that rapid growth. If we want social media companies of a categorically different kind, we need different rules so that the kind we currently have don't dominate again.
  - ryandrake 2y ago
    Yea, this is more of a "better late than never" security fix. While you can't go back in time and fix past apps that exploited a vulnerability, you can at least close the vulnerability for future apps.
    - the_snooze 2y ago
      You also fix it for future users. Kids without phones or contact lists grow up to have them.
    - throwaway48476 2y ago
      It's going to require a legal fix for past mistakes.
- throwaway314155 2y ago
  That reddit thread made my soul hurt.
- Terretta 2y ago
  > pulling up the ladder On the contrary, it allows users to better than current "all or nothing" which today leaves users holding their nose and feeling forced by social monopolies into feeding their entire graph to resell to advertisers, data brokers, government monitors, and the like. Note that a minority of social apps have done the work to match your contacts with your contacts' affirmative disclosure on the social network, without giving themselves new shadow contacts from your phonebook. Only those who "want to be found" will match up. > So maybe this change is for the best. It's possible to ... slurp respectfully? If everyone did that, this feature wouldn't be needed. If EU wanted to legislate something, they could mandate something like an extrovert flag: this is my name tag, I want to be found! Given an app respecting this method of matching, then allow matching to be seamless after the first OS level prompt.
mihaaly 2y ago
Noo! They shouldn't try finding new ways to carry on! There is a huge risk that they will do!
iamcalledrob 2y ago
This also affects communication apps, like email clients. It's a real bummer for the user experience, honestly. Yes, people can say "share all contacts", but the user experience is confusing, and many people won't. This means that all 3rd party mail and messaging apps will be lacking contact information -- whereas of course Apple's own will have it by default. Again, it's shameful API design by Apple, because they don't have to use their own APIs/permission systems. This could be mitigated, by the way, by having a rate-limited "lookup" API where an app can say "Can I have the contact for bob@example.com, if it exists?". Most legit apps don't need a copy of your entire address book, but they may need to query it occasionally.

Seems to me that social app devs sound a bit entitled. If their business model depends on slurping up all my contacts, maybe they need to find a new line of work.

km144 2y ago

I tend to agree—however I think the point of the article is that, regardless of whether this an ethical or "good" practice, it represents a pulling up of the ladder in a social media landscape that most users would agree is not in a great place with regard to the big names. Maybe we already have enough social media apps, but also maybe the ones we have aren't very good, and things like this probably make it harder to compete in that space if you believe that you can create something better. Also to be clear, while I'm sympathetic to that idea I'm not sympathetic to garbage people like Nikita Bier, who is basically saying this is what helped enable him to make two identical apps marketed directly to high-schoolers rapidly acquire a substantial userbase. He then subsequently sold these apps to Meta and Discord. So maybe this change is for the best. https://www.reddit.com/r/Entrepreneur/comments/12rqnk6/nikita_bier_got_5m_users_in_2_months_with_a_0/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Entrepreneur/comments/12rqnk6/nikit...

_aavaa_ 2y ago
I don't think pulling up the ladder is the correct analogy here. The inability of users to prevent companies from slurping up all of their contacts creates an environment which greatly benefits those company which simply take the data since nobody can stop them. Yes having that data has allowed the current crop of social media companies to grow very quickly, but look at the societal costs of that rapid growth. If we want social media companies of a categorically different kind, we need different rules so that the kind we currently have don't dominate again.
- ryandrake 2y ago
  Yea, this is more of a "better late than never" security fix. While you can't go back in time and fix past apps that exploited a vulnerability, you can at least close the vulnerability for future apps.
  - the_snooze 2y ago
    You also fix it for future users. Kids without phones or contact lists grow up to have them.
  - throwaway48476 2y ago
    It's going to require a legal fix for past mistakes.
throwaway314155 2y ago
That reddit thread made my soul hurt.
Terretta 2y ago
> pulling up the ladder On the contrary, it allows users to better than current "all or nothing" which today leaves users holding their nose and feeling forced by social monopolies into feeding their entire graph to resell to advertisers, data brokers, government monitors, and the like. Note that a minority of social apps have done the work to match your contacts with your contacts' affirmative disclosure on the social network, without giving themselves new shadow contacts from your phonebook. Only those who "want to be found" will match up. > So maybe this change is for the best. It's possible to ... slurp respectfully? If everyone did that, this feature wouldn't be needed. If EU wanted to legislate something, they could mandate something like an extrovert flag: this is my name tag, I want to be found! Given an app respecting this method of matching, then allow matching to be seamless after the first OS level prompt.

mihaaly 2y ago

Noo! They shouldn't try finding new ways to carry on! There is a huge risk that they will do!

iamcalledrob 2y ago

This also affects communication apps, like email clients. It's a real bummer for the user experience, honestly. Yes, people can say "share all contacts", but the user experience is confusing, and many people won't. This means that all 3rd party mail and messaging apps will be lacking contact information -- whereas of course Apple's own will have it by default. Again, it's shameful API design by Apple, because they don't have to use their own APIs/permission systems. This could be mitigated, by the way, by having a rate-limited "lookup" API where an app can say "Can I have the contact for bob@example.com, if it exists?". Most legit apps don't need a copy of your entire address book, but they may need to query it occasionally.