Facebook megathread

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.”

 

[Corbin Dallas Multipass]

what up with all those headless people in topless bars?

They took the name literally?

 

[Recoil]

what up with all those headless people in topless bars?

I just snapped a bunch of their popular covers. The headless body one is their most famous headline ever, from the late 70s & regarding a mafia killing.

 

[Tasty Tatty]

We all should break free from Facebook.

I'm sorry if I sound dramatic, but I think Facebook, Twitter,and Tumblr (and others) have proved we aren't ready to deal with Social Media. It's like when Cate Blanchet's head exploded in Indiana Jones IV. It's more information and interaction than we're capable to process.

 

[Calooby]

Facebook is gay.

I don't like gay!

 

[Dante Alighieri]

How?

What would this look like and how would it change anything?

 

[Sīn the Moon Daddy]

We all should break free from Facebook.

I'm sorry if I sound dramatic, but I think Facebook, Twitter,and Tumblr (and others) have proved we aren't ready to deal with Social Media. It's like when Cate Blanchet's head exploded in Indiana Jones IV. It's more information and interaction than we're capable to process.

The Patriots were right!
I'm still revolver ocelot fuck you guys

 

[Tealeaf]

How?

What would this look like and how would it change anything?

you can break Facebook either (1) functionally, e.g. split the company into advertising, infrastructure, social networking etc. companies
or (2) geographically, breaking the global network into smaller chunks each taking a portion of the user registry. or both to some extent.

these big websites might seem like an atomic, integrated monolith that can't be split apart. that's what they present themselves as, and to some extent it's true. it's very beneficial for them to appear as a single point of access.

but they can be split. splitting them will take work. but it's just work. it's nothing intractable.

 

[QI 541]

If you think the social media technocracy is bad, wait until every moves their internet infrastructure to AWS. Amazon will own the internet.

 

[Jewelsmakerguy]

Breaking it would mean part of it still lives. I suggest we just kill it and move on.

 

[whatever I feel like]

This is the dumbest shit. Google needs regulating because its the road of the internet, how you get from place to place (and engages in anti-competitive practices while having a monopoly, giving the government legal recourse regardless.) Facebook needs regulating because what? People like it?

 

[Sprig of Parsley]

This is the dumbest shit. Google needs regulating because its the road of the internet, how you get from place to place (and engages in anti-competitive practices while having a monopoly, giving the government legal recourse regardless.) Facebook needs regulating because what? People like it?

I honestly don't think even Google needs regulation, it needs COMPETITION. Issue is, of course, what the fuck could possibly compete with Google as it currently exists? DuckDuckGo and others don't even WANT to get into the things Google's into.
RE: Facebook - I just really don't like anything about it. I actually don't want to give the government that "in" on regulating things on the Internet, but if Facebook imploded overnight I wouldn't shed a tear.

 

[Your Weird Fetish]

We all should break free from Facebook.

I'm sorry if I sound dramatic, but I think Facebook, Twitter,and Tumblr (and others) have proved we aren't ready to deal with Social Media. It's like when Cate Blanchet's head exploded in Indiana Jones IV. It's more information and interaction than we're capable to process.

Bullshit, the internet and social media are fantastic. It's just those services that suck. The entire modern biotech industry would be impossible if we couldn't share data on the scope we do now. Crowd funding has led to a lot of scams but it has also created an economic outlet that otherwise would not be there and given us some great opportunities like that 3d circuit board printer, making everyone richer. Crowd sourced autists on the internet are sometimes even doing the work that journalists should do.

Zuckerberg is a lizard man but he's a pimple on the ass of the internet and we won't even really notice when he's lanced.

 

[Karl Franz]

If americans are still using facebook after all the shit zucc pulls, they deserve to be misled, data mined, accused of hate speech, mind controlled by russian bots, not shown ads for good neighborhoods, banned from messaging and forced to work in Amazon wage cages.

Government intervention will not help in the long run if people are not capable of boycott.

 

[Wallace]

This is the dumbest shit. Google needs regulating because its the road of the internet, how you get from place to place (and engages in anti-competitive practices while having a monopoly, giving the government legal recourse regardless.) Facebook needs regulating because what? People like it?

Because it's become a surrogate public square. Think of how many people get their information from Facebook or Instagram. Do you want an unaccountable private corporation to decide what gets broadcasted in said public square and what doesn't?

 

[whatever I feel like]

Because it's become a surrogate public square. Think of how many people get their information from Facebook or Instagram. Do you want an unaccountable private corporation to decide what gets broadcasted in said public square and what doesn't?

I do not care, Facebook is a cesspool of nothing for grandpa and ads. I care about Google's search and the financial powers of Amazon, Pay Pal and the credit card companies and, perhaps, for companies like Comcast, Cablevision etc if they start throttling content.

 

[Alec Benson Leary]

Well, something has to be done. One thing Hughes gets right is that these techlords honestly believe it's their place to decide the entire future of humanity. They have a lot of power to do this and no one elected them.

 

[Dante Alighieri]

you can break Facebook either (1) functionally, e.g. split the company into advertising, infrastructure, social networking etc. companies
or (2) geographically, breaking the global network into smaller chunks each taking a portion of the user registry. or both to some extent.

these big websites might seem like an atomic, integrated monolith that can't be split apart. that's what they present themselves as, and to some extent it's true. it's very beneficial for them to appear as a single point of access.

but they can be split. splitting them will take work. but it's just work. it's nothing intractable.

That's dumb as shit and completely irrelevant to anything at all. There is no "breaking up" Amazon, Facebook, Twitter, Google because "breaking up" businesses is a dumb as fuck idea that barely works to physical companies with a physical product, let alone internet companies that benefit from government investment and regulation.

 

[BlueSpark]

TL;DR Facebook didn't do enough to suppress anti-Clinton content (reeeeeeeeee Russians!), I'm bitter that I'm only a humble millionaire instead of billionaire like the Zucc and the only way towards the perfect future is to allow leftist politicians and "activists" to meddle directly in the type of communications and content that users are allowed to see and distribute.

This guy doesn't give a damn about privacy and free speech, he's just another bitter liberal unhappy that private corporations aren't doing what he considers enough to forward his political agenda.

 

[Your Weird Fetish]

Well, something has to be done.

Not really. Just stop using facebook.

 

[Tealeaf]

That's dumb as shit and completely irrelevant to anything at all. There is no "breaking up" Amazon, Facebook, Twitter, Google because "breaking up" businesses is a dumb as fuck idea that barely works to physical companies with a physical product, let alone internet companies that benefit from government investment and regulation.

I assure you people said the exact same things about every single antitrust breakup.

I would say breaking apart mostly cloud-based tech companies is much easier than breaking up physical infrastructure of oil extraction and refining, railroads or even analog phones. Yet all of that was actually done.