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https://www.theverge.com/2019/1/30/18203551/apple-facebook-blocked-internal-ios-apps
Apple has shut down Facebook’s ability to distribute internal iOS apps, from early releases of the Facebook app to basic tools like a lunch menu. A person familiar with the situation tells The Verge that early versions of Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, and other pre-release “dogfood” (beta) apps have stopped working, as have other employee apps, like one for transportation. Facebook is treating this as a critical problem internally, we’re told, as the affected apps simply don’t launch on employees’ phones anymore.

The shutdown comes in response to news that Facebook has been using Apple’s program for internal app distribution to track teenage customers with a “research” app.

That app, revealed yesterday by TechCrunch, was distributed outside of the App Store using Apple’s enterprise program, which allows developers to use special certificates to install more powerful apps onto iPhones. Those apps are only supposed to be used by a company’s employees, however, and Facebook had been distributing its tracking app to customers. Facebook later said it would shut down the app.

This poses a huge issue for Facebook. While Apple provides other tools a company can use to install apps internally, Apple’s enterprise program is the main solution for widely distributing internal apps and services. In an email, a Facebook spokesperson said “I can confirm that this affects our internal apps.”

In a statement given to Recode, Apple said that Facebook was in “clear breach of their agreement with Apple.” Any developer that breaches that agreement, Apple said, has their distribution certificates revoked, “which is what we did in this case to protect our users and their data.” Apple declined to comment on shutting down all of Facebook’s internal apps in an email to The Verge.

Revoking a certificate not only stops apps from being distributed on iOS, but it also stops apps from working. And because internal apps by the same organization or developer may be connected to a single certificate, it can lead to immense headaches like the one Facebook now finds itself in where a multitude of internal apps have been shut down.

Apple and Facebook have already been bickering over privacy, but this is the first instance of Apple taking an action that directly shuts down some of Facebook’s activities. Last March, Apple CEO Tim Cook criticized Facebook’s handling of the Cambridge Analytica data sharing scandal, saying, “I wouldn’t be in this situation” if he were running the company. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg later said the comments were “extremely glib” and spoke of Apple as a company that “work hard to charge you more.”
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There’s definitely gonna be some people getting unfriended over this.
 
Krokodil Overdose said:
This would be more informative if they told us what the stock mix was; since this proposal has any chance at all, the Zuck's 75% control of Class B shares mustn't represent the 50%+1 required for complete control of the company. I seem to recall Google getting slapped down by the FTC over similar share fuckery, to the point where they had to phase out their shares with multiple votes.

That said, there's nothing technically wrong with shares having more or less votes, so I doubt this is going to go anywhere.
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I don't think they keep their numbers very secret, I remember seeing a few months ago a basic breakdown of their stock owners and in pure numbers, Zuck does own significantly less than 50% of facebook. But his shares are all those class B high priority shares so that he keeps controlling interest.

It's really a reasonable thing for a company to do when they want public investors but don't want to get themselves hijacked. Any institutional investor who is confident in the direction behind a company might want to passively make profit off of stock without being interested in voting rights.
 
Zinc-less Zany Zuckerburg Zaps all Zero shares of his Zaggled Zealous Zowerswopped Zeitgeist, Zooms back to Ziggurat Zigzagging for his private Zoo.

(this one was fucking hard, okay? there aren't a lot of words that start with Z so i had to dip into some obscure vocabulary)
 
Coconut Gun said:
:optimistic: Please, God, let this lead to the death of Facebook. :optimistic:
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Even if the board voted to tie Zuck to a SpaceX rocket and fly him to Triangulum or wherever Elon's next destination is, as far as the world cares it would just be a changing of the guard, not notable in terms of the company's plans for the rest of us.

But that won't happen. Dr Gero put a bomb in Zuck's chassis when he built him so that if Goku ever threatened to conquer his company he could blow up the earth. I doubt he's going anywhere.
 
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