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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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CatParty said:
“It’s definitely a positive change, but you have to look at it in context, which is that this is something they should have been doing from the get-go,” Brody told Motherboard. “How much credit do you get for doing the thing you were supposed to do in the first place?”
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It should not be any site owner's responsibility to police the opinions of their patrons.
Cosmos said:
Facebook is a private company, if they don’t want to host chucklefucks like Richard Spencer they don’t have to.

There’s also a big difference between not hating yourself for being white and hating non-whites to the point where you want them all ejected from your country. Again, I don’t blame Facebook for not wanting literal white supremacists on their platform.
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I'm all for letting the higher ups run plebook straight into the ground. My only hope is that they don't stop short at banning only the top layer of undesirables and go full turbo sperg.
Captain Ahab said:
The problem is that these platforms are no longer an option.
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"Fuck this, I'm going back to MySpace! It's just like having your own website!"
 
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Prompt Critical said:
If my private company decides they don't want to host blacks or gays, how would that work out for me in the great United States of Freedomland? Oh, that's illegal?
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Gays aren't a protected class federally. You can discriminate against them in many ways.

But to be clear, the anti-discrimination laws that protect blacks equally protect whites. Content is speech and speech is not subject to anti-discrimination. Facebook could equally ban black supremacist groups too, they just don't want to.
Prompt Critical said:
To answer this somewhat less flippantly, you're only sort of correct here. The current US system could be called Schrödinger's Free Association. For example, race is a protected class, and it is illegal to deny someone entry based on race... unless you're running the campus Black Student Union, in which case a-ok to restrict entry purely on the basis of race. It's illegal to deny someone service based on sex... unless you're operating a women-only spa, in which case it's a-ok to restrict service purely on the basis of sex.
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No, school clubs with an official connection to a state school cannot discriminate based on protected classes. They have to let you into the Black Student Union.

Sex segregated spaces like spas and showers and stuff are a limited exception because people are naked. As noted, there are also ones for men. And regardless, the laws themselves are sex neutral in how they're phrased.
Prompt Critical said:
As of right now, it's perfectly acceptable to penalize whites and asians in college admissions (asians may change based on the outcome of the pending Harvard discrimination suit).
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College admittance is the only situation in the US where affirmative action is legal. I think you misunderstand the Harvard discrimination lawsuit though.

The situation isn't that they have a limit on asians and the lawsuit might lift that. They can't say "5% asians, 2% jews, 60% whites, rest mexicans and blacks", that's illegal.

What's actually happening is that since race quotas themselves are illegal, colleges have to come up with other ways of boosting minority students. In the case of Harvard, they use goofy personality quizzes and the Asians claim the personality quizzes are tuned to keep Asian admittance low. The lawsuit will outlaw the personality guizzes.

Another trick colleges use is accepting the top X% of students in each district. But obviously the top 10% in the ghetto isn't intellectually comparable to the top 10% in the suburbs, so they get an artificial boost in minorities.

But with whatever tricks they use, the only reason any of this is legal is because the Supreme Court gave a temporary exception for college admittance. Nowhere else in US law is otherwise illegal discrimination permitted because one group is "underprivileged" or whatever.

With our boy Kavanaugh on the Supreme Court, I think within the next decade we'll see the last bit of legal discrimination sunset in the US.
xxXDxx said:
Tech giants have reached a size and a position where they are almost indistinguishable from government agencies.
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lol
 
Cosmug said:
I unironically support all forms of bigotry and prejudice having their own corner of the web, so that we can find it and laugh at them. Putting it all on Facebook and Reddit just makes it easier to find with a simple search. That’s the worst part of this whole social media monopoly thing that now I have to go looking for people who hate me for my race and have some fantastically stupid conspiracies to read and enjoy over cocoa.
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You wouldn't have that problem at all if you were white though. Sucks to be non-white, you can't even find people who hate you for your skin color.
 
I'm not going to defend Facebook's handling of this and how it relates to free speech, but Facebook is a turbo-normie platform, and it seems weird that counter-cultural groups would even want to colonize it. Also, linking your full name with white nationalism and white supremacism is either very brave or very foolish when considering the consequences.
 
Marvin said:
Gays aren't a protected class federally. You can discriminate against them in many ways.

But to be clear, the anti-discrimination laws that protect blacks equally protect whites. Content is speech and speech is not subject to anti-discrimination. Facebook could equally ban black supremacist groups too, they just don't want to.

No, school clubs with an official connection to a state school cannot discriminate based on protected classes. They have to let you into the Black Student Union.

Sex segregated spaces like spas and showers and stuff are a limited exception because people are naked. As noted, there are also ones for men. And regardless, the laws themselves are sex neutral in how they're phrased.

College admittance is the only situation in the US where affirmative action is legal. I think you misunderstand the Harvard discrimination lawsuit though.

The situation isn't that they have a limit on asians and the lawsuit might lift that. They can't say "5% asians, 2% jews, 60% whites, rest mexicans and blacks", that's illegal.

What's actually happening is that since race quotas themselves are illegal, colleges have to come up with other ways of boosting minority students. In the case of Harvard, they use goofy personality quizzes and the Asians claim the personality quizzes are tuned to keep Asian admittance low. The lawsuit will outlaw the personality guizzes.

Another trick colleges use is accepting the top X% of students in each district. But obviously the top 10% in the ghetto isn't intellectually comparable to the top 10% in the suburbs, so they get an artificial boost in minorities.

But with whatever tricks they use, the only reason any of this is legal is because the Supreme Court gave a temporary exception for college admittance. Nowhere else in US law is otherwise illegal discrimination permitted because one group is "underprivileged" or whatever.

With our boy Kavanaugh on the Supreme Court, I think within the next decade we'll see the last bit of legal discrimination sunset in the US.

lol
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I like Marvin tbh.
 
Xarpho said:
I'm not going to defend Facebook's handling of this and how it relates to free speech, but Facebook is a turbo-normie platform, and it seems weird that counter-cultural groups would even want to colonize it. Also, linking your full name with white nationalism and white supremacism is either very brave or very foolish when considering the consequences.
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Quite a few people have alt accounts on Facebook just like they do on regular forums and such.
 
This was going to happen eventually. White Nationalists are no strangers to deplatforming, so they should have anticipated this would be in the works.

The take home for the WNs reading this: don't discuss pro-white politics on normie social media even in good faith because your avowed enemies think your position is bad faith by default. It sucks to have to be banished to e-ghettos, but it's the only option for those who want to speak their mind.
 
Long post with a lot of points, I'll try to address them in a coherent manner.

Marvin said:
Gays aren't a protected class federally. You can discriminate against them in many ways.
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Note the important distinction here "federally". Even then it's not strictly true - for example, SCOTUS struck down a state law prohibiting making gays a protected class as far back as 1996 (Romer v. Evans) and as recently as last year they very carefully danced around the question by issuing a very narrow ruling in Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission. Sexuality is of course a protected class in 25 US states either by legislation or state court ruling, which may also be worth mentioning at this juncture.

Marvin said:
No, school clubs with an official connection to a state school cannot discriminate based on protected classes. They have to let you into the Black Student Union.
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Can you provide an example of this happening? I was not able to find any with a search before posting, although I didn't spend a huge amount of time on it.

Marvin said:
College admittance is the only situation in the US where affirmative action is legal.
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Haha, no. This is not just wrong, it's outlandishly wrong. Look, to provide a single example, let's consult the US Department of Labor on the subject.

For federal contractors and subcontractors, affirmative action must be taken by covered employers to recruit and advance qualified minorities, women, persons with disabilities, and covered veterans. Affirmative actions include training programs, outreach efforts, and other positive steps. These procedures should be incorporated into the companys written personnel policies. Employers with written affirmative action programs must implement them, keep them on file and update them annually.
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Also worth noting that affirmative action and quotas are just an example of positive discrimination. US law is also rife with areas where de-facto affirmative action exists by way of banning negative discrimination, e.g. Griggs v. Duke Power Co.
 
Feline Darkmage said:
racism is bad and uncool
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trombonista said:
You're an idiot if you're tard raging about niggers and spics on fucking Facebook.
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If there's one thing Current Year + 4 has taught us, it's that global tech megacorporations are really good at making fine distinctions between "racists" and "people who have an icky opinion that offends my bay area sensibilities", so if they say they're just going after racists we should have nothing to worry about.

On an unrelated note, is alt-right white supremacist forum Kiwi Farms still blocked by ISPs in Australia and New Zealand? Asking for a friend.
 
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