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Meta bypassed Apple privacy protections, claims former employee
- daft_pink 1y agoI feel like everyone paying attention deep down knew that they were doing this. This is just the article that confirms it.
- nujabe 1y agoWhat were the signs ?
- dylan604 1y agoLike the hack they were doing to de-anonymize users? https://arstechnica.com/security/2025/06/meta-and-yandex-are-de-anonymizing-android-users-web-browsing-identifiers/ https://arstechnica.com/security/2025/06/meta-and-yandex-are...
- righthand 1y ago15 years ago it was celebrated in the media as a “cool inventive cutting edge idea” that Facebook was running psychological experiments on it’s users without consent.
- antiframe 1y agoMost of the media I remember from that time was less celebratory and more skeptical. [1] [2] [3] Do you have some examples of the media celebrating Facebook's psychological experiments? Perhaps you live in a different influence sphere or filter bubble than I do. To check my centiment, I asked ChatGPT "What was the media sentiment ten years ago about Facebook running psychological experiments on people?" and here was its top-line response: > Short answer: largely negative — shocked and critical. Journalists, ethicists and privacy advocates framed Facebook’s secret “emotional contagion” experiments as an ethical breach (lack of informed consent, manipulation of users’ moods, corporate research without proper oversight), while a smaller group of commentators pushed back saying large-scale A/B testing is routine for tech firms. [1]: https://www.wired.com/2014/06/everything-you-need-to-know-about-facebooks-manipulative-experiment/ https://www.wired.com/2014/06/everything-you-need-to-know-ab... [2]: https://www.cnet.com/tech/services-and-software/the-ethical-problem-with-facebooks-emotional-experiment/ https://www.cnet.com/tech/services-and-software/the-ethical-... [3] https://www.yahoo.com/news/facebook-changed-way-experiments-us-barely-181002316.html https://www.yahoo.com/news/facebook-changed-way-experiments-...
- FireBeyond 1y agoNot to derail this, but Apple at the launch event last week. "We estimate that we will send high blood pressure alerts to over 100M users with this feature". Is that based on ... what? Or has Apple been surreptitiously mining this data on existing users without their consent? "What size segment of Apple Watch users have undiagnosed hypertension" seems a challenging product discovery exploration, otherwise.
- ahahahahah 1y agoSorry, a disgruntled former employee saying something with no evidence or details isn't exactly "confirmation".
- daft_pink 1y agoIs it due process where we’d send someone to prison for life for this without any other evidence. No, it’s not. Does it fall in with our existing perception of Facebook created by them railing against Apple’s privacy controls, even to the point where Apple shut down their account and they were locked out of their own offices, or how they approach privacy on other platforms or their overall activities regarding privacy for over a decade Fits their m.o. pretty well.
- nujabe 1y ago[flagged]
- orochimaaru 1y agoYour bigotry is disgusting
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- nujabe 1y agoWhy do you think H1B employees, essentially functioning as indentured servants, are not vulnerable to engaging in unethical work?
- ceejayoz 1y agoWhy do you think American citizens are not vulnerable to engaging in unethical work?
- nujabe 1y agoOk you got me, should’ve said “significantly more vulnerable”.
- orochimaaru 1y agoThere are plenty of Chinese H1B’s as well including other nations. Somehow they aren’t immune to ethical issues. Only Indians are. Smh. Like I said - your bigotry is disgusting.
- nujabe 1y ago73% of H1b’s are given to India and 12% to China. We have an Indian problem not a China problem (with regards to this issue).
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- thewebguyd 1y agoSurely Apple also knows this, so when are they going to follow their own App Store policy and pull Meta's apps off the platform? They won't because rules for thee, not for me. It's OK if someone big enough violates Apple's rules, but if a smaller dev does it? You get booted off the store.
- andy_ppp 1y agoThey probably have an agreement that involves money and anticompetitive behaviour.
- ceejayoz 1y agoSame for Uber, which sends both important order updates and marketing as push notifications. https://developer.apple.com/design/human-interface-guidelines/managing-notifications https://developer.apple.com/design/human-interface-guideline... says "before you send [marketing push] notifications to people, you must receive their explicit permission to do so".
- latexr 1y ago> Uber, which sends (…) marketing as push notifications. Apple themselves have started doing that, so zero chance of the rule being enforced. > https://developer.apple.com/design/human-interface-guidelines/managing-notifications https://developer.apple.com/design/human-interface-guideline... says Those are the Human Interface Guidelines, which are basically suggestions on how to make a proper app. They don’t impact policy and Apple has been shitting on them for years now. Liquid Glass breaks so many rules it’s not even funny. What you want to link to is the App Review Guidelines, specifically 4.5.4. https://developer.apple.com/app-store/review/guidelines/#4.5.4 https://developer.apple.com/app-store/review/guidelines/#4.5...
- ceejayoz 1y ago4.5.4 is more important, and agrees with the "you must" bit in the HIG. "Push Notifications should not be used for promotions or direct marketing purposes unless customers have explicitly opted in to receive them via consent language displayed in your app’s UI, and you provide a method in your app for a user to opt out from receiving such messages. Abuse of these services may result in revocation of your privileges." > Apple themselves have started doing that Well, it's their platform. They've their own internal rules and app review processes, one would presume. Like how the cops can shoot people, but I can't.
- electric_muse 1y agoWhen the incentives are this large, it’s just too profitable to not “be evil.” We can decry this, but it’s just human nature. I also think this is a sign of late stage capitalism where the opportunities to profit “ethically” are becoming much harder to find and exploit. That leads to more pressure to find gray areas that others’ ethical or moral convictions prevented them from exploiting. I just installed graphene os on a brand new cash-bought pixel for the express purpose of not being left out of some important WhatsApp groups or missing out on some other experiences that require installing apps that I know won’t respect my privacy. I assume anything from Meta is hazardous at this point.
- KerrAvon 1y ago> it’s just human nature It's not, though. The universal avarice of the current era may not be unprecedented in history, but it wasn't the norm through most of the 20th century. There was a time when layoffs were considered painful failures at some corporations, instead of routine business strategy -- probably because the Great Depression was still in living memory.
- thepryz 1y agoI assume this is a secondary phone? Curious as I’ve been contemplating the same thing
- gruez 1y ago>I just installed graphene os on a brand new cash-bought pixel for the express purpose of not being left out of some important WhatsApp groups or missing out on some other experiences that require installing apps that I know won’t respect my privacy. I assume anything from Meta is hazardous at this point. There isn't much point in the "cash-bought" part when android has blocked non-system apps from reading hardware identifiers years ago. Not to mention that facebook can easily deanonmyize you through your social graph.
- Apocryphon 1y agoEnshittification really hits hard when the luster has fallen but the money printing must continue. The general perception that Facebook is somewhat of a utility app now, the young people have departed for more hip and current platforms, and it's just most used by grandparents and content-generating bots. (Though it's still useful for Marketplace and Events and so forth.) Also long before this, FB weakened a lot of its other features such as Groups, or Facebook Apps. So it makes sense that they're looking for more nefarious, scraping the bottom of the barrel, desparate behavior to keep the money printer churning despite increasing consumer apathy.
- ChrisArchitect 1y agoSource story from August: https://www.ft.com/content/be6a99d2-22de-48ec-9afa-1d2e2f709afc https://www.ft.com/content/be6a99d2-22de-48ec-9afa-1d2e2f709...
- gruez 1y ago>Meta also secretly linked user data with other information to track users’ activity on other websites without their permission — despite Apple in 2021 introducing measures explicitly requiring consent, according to Purkayastha’s filings. That's frustratingly vague, not to mention it hinges on the complaint of a disgruntled employee. Facebook finding some way to bypass cross app tracking restrictions would be much more controversial than if they bought purchasing data (grouped by email) from data brokers, and then joined that with their own datasets, for instance.
- caycep 1y agois this the incident where Apple pulled Meta's developer licenses or is this a new breach?
- toast0 1y agoIIRC, Apple pulled Facebook's enterprise developer cert over Onavo stuff; again IIRC, Apple had pulled Onavo from the app store, and Facebook continued to offer it to users by enrolling them in the enterprise developer system; on January 30, 2019 Apple revoked that cert: Onavo distribution was stopped in addition to Facebook's internal apps. This article says it's about Apple’s App Tracking Transparency (ATT), introduced in 2021. Facebook changed their name to Meta in 2021 as well.
- netdur 1y agoMeta is run by people with no regard for ethics, and if that surprises you, that’s on you. Their whole model is just packaging and selling you with whatever tech they can grab. If you’re worried, don’t install Meta apps. I’ve got WhatsApp on Android and Instagram on iPad, They’re already getting eaten alive by TikTok and AI girlfriends
- ujkhsjkdhf234 1y agoMost people are not the Hacker News types who know this. The Facebook movie is the closest the average person has come to knowing how evil this company is.
- SoftTalker 1y agoMost people if they know, don't care. They don't see an issue with their data being harvested and sold. They think "who cares, why would anyone be interested in me, besides, everyone does it." They use supermarket loyalty cards to save $0.25 on a gallon of milk. They install tracker apps to save money on gas. People don't care.
- nozzlegear 1y agoI think people do care, but cynical tech types aren't very good at explaining why using a loyalty card or installing an app to save money on gas is ultimately about trade-offs and could be bad for them in the long run. We can't just shake a stick at them and say "abandon your grocery and gas discounts, fools, big tech is always watching!"
- ujkhsjkdhf234 1y agoPeople not knowing how to communicate to other people is the core of all problems.
- Manuel_D 1y agoIs it inconceivable that people actually see lower savings in exchange for tracking shopping habits is a beneficial transaction? Safeway can more effectively distribute products. I get to save money. Safeway has an incentive to keep this data secure - if it leaked then their competitors gain an advantage. And even if it does leak, how are my grocery shopping habits being published really going to negatively impact me? I mean, I guess I can see how a dieting influencer secretly buying donuts might be scandalous... but 99.9% probably DGAF if their grocery lists were leaked. I often find that people just reflexively assume that data collection about their habits is inherently a net negative, rather than laying out the cost benefit analysis.
- rchaud 1y ago> Meta relied heavily on selling personalized advertising, which required it to be able to target particular demographics and interest groups. This was achieved by tracking individual users across different apps. Yet another reason to dump native apps (many of which are built using the Facebook SDK despite having nothing to do with FB) in favour of web apps.
- ujkhsjkdhf234 1y agoI like my native apps and I'm not a fan of PWAs because they cannot be made to easily run offline.
- nickthegreek 1y agorunning meta's social media apps offline doesn't seem particular compelling.
- ujkhsjkdhf234 1y agoI can't tell if you are deliberately being obtuse but they are talking about apps overall and not Meta's apps. Many apps use Facebooks SDK because of the Facebook Pixel for tracking and advertisement. Web apps don't prevent that and again, cannot be easily run offline so I'll stick with my native apps.
- rchaud 1y agoWhat third party app are you running offline? By third party I mean something not built into the OS like a notes app, file manager or camera app.
- ujkhsjkdhf234 1y agoFitness and calorie tracker, ebook reader, notes app (Android doesn't have a good notes app built into the OS), music player app for music I have locally on my phone, and an app that configures my bluetooth headphones.
- Refreeze5224 1y agoI am not surprised that a surveillance-advertising company will go to these lengths to ensure their being able to continue their shady-ass business model.
- zem 1y agoa friend of mine said one of his oddest interviewer moments was when he asked the candidate to describe a project they were proud of, and the candidate brought up how hard it was to do this sort of thing on an iphone and how their team at meta managed to find a way.
- selinkocalar 1y agoThis is exactly why App Tracking Transparency was never going to work. Apple gave users a consent dialog but didn't actually prevent the data collection - they just made it slightly more annoying. Device fingerprinting, session replay, and a dozen other techniques make the whole 'ask permission to track' model fundamentally ineffective. The data is still flowing, just through different pipes.
- haileyLlyod3 1y ago[dead]
- ddxv 1y agoApple itself collects the data it says is against it's rules for others to collect. They used Privacy as gate-keeping for it's walled garden App Store monopoly.
- catherinebrigg 1y ago[dead]