Let's crash the integrated browser in Facebook | Hacker News Reader

Let's crash the integrated browser in Facebook

github.com

242 pointsstedaniels119 comments

Bear with me here.

I remember of a time when Microsoft used to force you to use Internet Explorer on a default Windows OS install. They got sued for this which forced them to give user a choice to choose one browser from a selection of browsers (story: https://www.extremetech.com/computing/196170-microsoft-is-fi...)

The more I think of it, the more Facebook becomes the equivalent of an operating system for the average user. You can send/receive messages, do image editing, surf the web, but you have no choice of which software to use to do these tasks Once you're in FB ecosystem you're forced to use their array of services.

I see the same pattern happening again. I wonder if people will rise to the occasion and put a halt to this, just like it was done to Microsoft a decade (or so) ago.

I'd love to hear your thoughts?

On a different note: Apple app store has strict guidelines on any app that is trying to recreate an "app store" or OS system in their store and would reject/remove such an app. FB might be playing with fire here?

This was only illegal because Microsoft was deemed a monopoly. One could certainly argue that Facebook has a monopoly, but such an argument would definitely be much more difficult than the one against Microsoft.

i see, you've got a point. When we think FB, we should be reminded that FB also owns other major social companies like Instagram and Whatsapp to name a few.

FB might be a bigger fish than we might be aware of.

Thoughts?

> ...than we might be aware of...

It's a 400 billion dollar company and, as the GP noted, most people's default web experience.

to name a few.

Those are the only ones.

>FB might be a bigger fish than we might be aware of.

I think we're aware of the size of the Facebook fish, but you might not be aware of the size of Microsoft at its peak.

Something like 75% of adults in the United States have a Facebook account[1], but at the height of their dominance Microsoft operating systems ran on ~98% of computers [2]. 75% is a lot, but it's probably not a monopoly - especially because Facebook does not make the devices or the OS on the devices. Lots of people use Facebook, but nothing is keeping them using it.

Being popular is not illegal.

[1] http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2015/01/09/pew-survey-soc... [2] https://arstechnica.com/features/2005/12/total-share/8/

Your calculation of FB marketshare seems wrong: the right one should be about the share of people who have social networks accounts.

Right, the question shouldn't be what percentage of people have Facebook (which at 75% is incredibly high), but "what % of social media users have a Facebook account".

Or perhaps it should be "only have a facebook account"....

How many people owned a Windows PC peak Microsoft? 25%?

I think you're right, but I'm not sure where to get those stats :)

I wonder if Bell Telephone is a more apt parallel for FB than Microsoft is. I agree FB is not a monopoly today, so I'm not saying this is the case right now, but if they continue to dominate social networks (both through themselves & their subsidiaries), I could see a day coming when they have an effective monopoly on "online social messaging".

Of course, Bell also had a vertical monopoly in that they owned the physical wires in addition to being the service provider, and I think that was part of what brought them down in the end. Unless FB starts buying ISPs they won't be in the same position.

> Unless FB starts buying ISPs they won't be in the same position.

They tried (are trying?) becoming that in poor countries with their 'free' internet initiative.

The 75% that use Facebook is much bigger than 100% of the people that used computers back in the late 90s.

Yes, but that doesn't really factor into any calculation of "monopoly".

Impact is important as "monopoly" is subjective. For example, in Googles financial filings they can't break down numbers because *the search industry is highly competitive and we face challenges from the many other players in the industry".

So a company might have close to 75% market share in an industry that matters and they would be a lot easier to prosecute vs the company w/ 100% market (a fleshlight, or other trivial niche thing)

By the same token, nobody was ever forced to use Microsoft at their peak either.

I'm only replying because you solicited thoughts. I think you dislike Facebook, and would love for it to be sued/ruled a monopoly/forced to break up. I think people are quite aware of exactly how big a fish they are, and that they are nothing compared to what Microsoft used to be.

More importantly, you could buy a computer and phone and live without Facebook (or Instagram. My life would be poorer without Whatsapp though).

Is Facebook abusing its dominance to prevent competition, allowing it to artificially inflate prices? This was a big argument against Microsoft in the 1990s - they prevented computer retailers selling computers with non-Microsoft operating systems. On that level, I'm hesitant to call Facebook a monopoly.

However, looked at another way, Facebook is now too important to be a private company. It has access to so much data about so many people that the potential for abuse is huge. I wouldn't want to see them become a government owned entity, as the potential for abuse would be just as great (maybe greater) while innovation would inevitably slow down.

But I would like to see a regulator that sits on Facebook's board, can review its source code and order changes.

My dream would be for Facebook to be broken up and turned into a protocol. But it seems that ship has sailed.

Actually, you're allowed to be a monopoly. They were accused of abusing their monopoly status.

Exactly. You can be a monopoly or you can be anti-competitive, but you can't be both.

There's actually a setting to open links in your preferred browser. I changed it so I could keep all my history in one place.

There is? Does it exist on iOS? If so, how do you get to it?

On Android it's Menu -> Help & Settings -> App Settings -> Links open externally.

It's more buried than maybe it needs to be (to be fair there are a lot of obscure settings in this monster of an app), but basically findable.

Rather than crashing the thing, it's probably more productive for web developers with serious compatibility issues just to detect it and tell users how to find the setting.

On Android, if you install a new application that can handle links, Android will ask you the next time you click on a link how you want to handle it.

On Android if you are not a heavy FB user you should be using something like Metal or Swipe.

By convention, many apps on iOS detect whether Chrome is installed. If you click on a link, the application pops up a dialog asking whether you prefer Safari or Chrome and remember the choice. Sadly, this is done completely at the application layer.

Where is this setting?

On Android: App Settings -> Links open externally

>The more I think of it, the more Facebook becomes the equivalent of an operating system for the average user. You can send/receive messages, do image editing, surf the web, but you have no choice of which software to use to do these tasks Once you're in FB ecosystem you're forced to use their array of services.

This is an assertion I see relatively regularly, is it based on a gut feeling or is their some evidence to back it up?

If so what does it really mean - surely all(?) users do some things outside of facebook (email, news websites and so on)? Are you saying that most users will not look anywhere beyond facebook for any service?

There certainly are many people who use facebook but don't have an email account; and many people who use facebook but don't browse the web, especially mobile-only people in the developing world.

Couldn't find good statistics quickly, but https://qz.com/333313/milliions-of-facebook-users-have-no-id... is relevant.

Thanks, that's an interesting article.

One big question it brings up for me does this just reflect that people don't know what "the internet" is at all? Like would you get a similar result if you asked "did you use Google?" or even "did you use Chrome?".

Also I don't know about everyone else but a quick glance at my face book feed and the vast majority of stuff is people posting articles from various blogs and talking about them. Do those respondents really never click and visit anything outside the facebook eco-system?

The median visitor of HN should consider themselves not representative of the median worldwide internet user, we're a demographic that is very different than the majority in most aspects.

This includes your friends and contacts - if you look at the people around you and observe that everyone does/has X, it's still quite likely that most people worldwide look to people around them and observe that everybody has/does not-X. For us, personal experience is not really representative of reality (coincidentally, this is a common problem for startups and their market understanding), we often have to intentionally go much beyond our normal circle of contacts to see how the majority of "normal" users actually behave. Blogs are a particular example - actually, for most of general public, there's such thing as independent blogs; and most content providers are available without leaving e.g. the facebook ecosystem, insomuch that a regular reader can be unaware that it's "not facebook".

It's kind of similar to sociology/psychology, where studies often inadvertently are WEIRD (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich and Democratic) but the global average/median is very different from that.

    the vast majority of stuff is people posting
    articles from various blogs and talking about them

If a user were to only discover those articles via Facebook, and only see them within the Facebook app's browser, would they be savvy enough to know that these blogs aren't part of Facebook?

Issues of monopoly aside (as that's already been responded to) there is the addition difference that Facebook isn't the ones bundling a browser as they're just using the mobile OS's stock browser APIs.

relevant xkcd: https://xkcd.com/1118/

They are slowly trying to become the IoT. All of their applications try to, discreetly, integrate with each other.

For example, Messenger now has a "Share your Day" option which is nested at the very top blocking a huge chunk off.

What happened to just messaging users?

> What happened to just messaging users?

Snapchat happened.

A few years ago, Facebook wanted all posts to be completely public, in order to combat Twitter. Now they want to be Snapchat.

If they can't buy a rising competitor, they try to become it.

Is the "share your day" feature not a public facebook post?

That was my assumption, and in that case I have no idea how it competes directly with Snapchat--Facebook basically invented that feature.

Instagram copied Snapchat as "Stories". Messenger now demands you put any picture you send to anyone in an Instagram story and shows it to all your friends in the Messenger app, despite it not being messaging.

No, "share your day" only show up in the messenger app and they only show up for a limited time. It is basically the same as Snapchat stories. They even put a camera button front and center of messenger that defaults to publish the pictures as a story.

Would PM if i could, but just fyi, the phrase is https://www.grammarly.com/blog/bear-with-me/ :)

E: Please don't upvote this, it doesn't help the discussion!

thanks, i fixed it (sorry my native language is French, so it felt weird to write "bear" with me, like a teddy bear? Ain't making no sense to me now, thanks!?! (double negative = positive)

Bear also means something like "support/carry", which will be the root of this idiom. i.e. you are asking your listener to carry the weight of your long story in order to get to the point.

iOS won't let you change the default browser (neither the default everything).

I only use Facebook from Chrome or Firefox, never from their app, even on mobile. I think that keeps them nicely contained in an appropriate box, from a technology perspective.

If I need to use FB messenger on mobile, which is rare for me, I'll load their page in desktop mode and use it that way.

You are in the minority unfortunately

But I think the point is that you have the option to use whatever browser you want to use Facebook; you don't have to use their native app.

>If I need to use FB messenger on mobile, which is rare for me

You can also use Trillian.

I've heard some good things about that.

The rarity is my use of instant messaging (outside of SMS/Google Hangouts and Slack)

I've stopped using FB app long ago (I think it was when news about their "clever" way of abusing microphone came out). I do use web version on iOS though and it also sucks, just in different ways. At least it does not suck my battery.

While you a right about "app store" kind of apps being forbidden (I've worked on one few years ago. We knew it was doomed, but higher-ups wanted to try anyway) what do you base your "OS system" comment on? I'd say WeChat is even more OS-like and still does fine.

I will never install their ugly applications in my cell phone. Just mobile browsing is enough.

I was surprised to read Facebook's in-app browser accounts for 48% of mobile internet traffic from iOS (versus 34% for Android). Thank you https://twitter.com/BenedictEvans for that stat.

While I am all for escaping the "black box" that is Facebook's in-app browser due to our inability to see what they are loading/tracking on the backend, that likely won't happen until people stop using Facebook all together, as it is more convenient for the everyday user. Simply put, Facebook's in-app browser creates less visual noise than a link opening externally in Safari (where there is often the animation of a new tab being created). This ignores the fact, however, that Facebook requires this behavior and thus I cannot be sure that my above statement "everyday people prefer a more convenient / less UX noisy solution" holds true.

I hate every instance of the in-app browser. I always long press on a link and open it in safari whenever that's possible - those integrated browsers don't support my adblock plugin and are already slower than native safari.

TweetBot does a reasonable job here IMHO. It allows you to choose which browser opens links by default -- it supports Firefox, Chrome, Safari as well as its own in-app browser which is a WKWebView, which means it's just as fast as native Safari and respects your content blockers. Choosing a non-default browser is possible by long pressing on a link.

EDIT - (thanks saagarjha) newer versions of Tweetbot appear to use SFSafariViewController not WKWebView.

So I've heard. I've been meaning to install TweetBot for ages, just haven't gotten around to it (and Twitter.ipa is the app in which I most often do the long press to open links).

Actually, it's not that simple. There are a couple ways to load websites on iOS:

* UIWebView: Old, slow, but dead simple.

* WKWebView: The new "WebKit" drop-in replacement for UIWebView. It uses Safari's Nitro engine, and allows for full customization for the chrome, but does not allow for content blocking. Most new apps use this.

* SFSafariViewController: A "Safari view"; you have no control over the UI chrome (or browsing history, etc.), but it uses Nitro and loads content blockers.

* Safari app: The actual app. Loads content blockers.

What advantage does using WKWebView provide for an app over SFSafariViewController? Is it just the ability to change the color and icons to match the rest of the app's style?

Or are apps generally switching over to SFSafariViewController? Curious to hear some iOS folks' thoughts on the matter since I'm uninformed.

Most notably apps can inject arbitrary JS into WKWebView, making it much easier to track The user’s actions.

You can roll your own browser interface using WKWebView — if (for whatever reason) your app supplements the browsing experience, you'd use WKWebView.

SFSafariViewController provides its own Safari-like interface and has an extremely limited set of configuration/customization options.

You may be interested in a little iOS app I wrote that gives you the native Safari experience in almost every app that supports the share sheet: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/browsecurely-secure-browsing...

Android solved that UX issue with Chrome custom tabs (https://developer.chrome.com/multidevice/android/customtabs). It uses a seamless UI exiting the app and everyone uses the up to date browser on the phone.

iOS also provides a way to have similar UX using Safari View Controller. https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2015/504/

there are problems with both, though. i like to click on something and then give a break, and read later. with CCT, I have to consciously go and click on "open in browser", which doesn't work well for me.

Otherwise, CCT and SVC should be the way to go, still much better than FB. Aside from tracking and all, it doesn't get the niceties of a full blown browser.

iOS has Reading List for this purpose, and SFSafariViewController has a button dedicated for this.

I only know detail about the iOS equivalent (https://developer.apple.com/reference/safariservices/sfsafar...) but I'm not expecting Facebook to implement it any time soon as it makes it a lot harder to track where a user goes (you can't access that) and/or inject content into the webview.

On the current Android and iOS implementations a user is far less likely to share on, say, Twitter, because they won't have their Twitter login cookies in the Facebook browser. I suspect Facebook is quite happy to keep things that way.

Android also supports a real Firefox, so one needn't trust one's web browsing to the tender mercies of Google.

Can you actually link to the stat you mention?

Facebook in app's browser is total horror and I refuse to do any work related to it, even if it would cost me my job!

A while ago I made a website for the company I work for, everything was working flawless across all major browsers including mobile. Then some e-commerce dude asked me to fix a few style issues for Facebook browser. I didn't even know of it's existence by then!

This browser goes way beyond IE6 incompatibility, I spend 2 days in hell trying to fix the style issues, which is nearly impossible because there is not even a proper way to test your changes. To start I first had to install that stupid FB app/virus in my phone, after that everything you type in the address bar generates some totally useless crap suggestions and advertising all the way, it was quite a puzzle/hack to even reach my own development server through all this misery..

I eventually had to decide to redo the entire styling of the website so it works with FB browser, or simply give up. I very fortunately managed to convince my manager to not support FB browser, but I must have lost some credibility that I was not able to fix this seemingly simple style issue.

I too first learned of the Facebook browser when a client complained that his websites has some issues with it. Kinda weird how we as developers (that like to keep up to date with web tech) can be completely unaware of a browser that apparently generates 40% of mobile traffic .

Integrated browsers really bug me and I wish Apple would update their TOS to require launching Safari (or better the user's choice)

The problem with integrated browsers is the AFAICT the app doing the integration can read everything that goes through it. That means if you click link and it links to page that asks you to login the app hosting the integrated browser can read the keys/input/network traffic. How can I trust any such app not to be spying on me? Sure I have to trust Apple with Safari or Google with Chrome or Mozilla with Facebook but that's 3 companies to trust, not one company per app * every 3rd party library they integrated.

At maybe a more minor level it also means the hosting app can read every URL you visit from linked pages.

> Integrated browsers really bug me and I wish Apple would update their TOS to require launching Safari (or better the user's choice)

Making the users pick what happens when a browser action runs seems good, however opening a separate new browser (like many apps and even sometimes facebook on android do) is, at least to me, a horrible experience. Not sure what would be best as the current situation is not very good I agree.

I dropped off Facebook long enough ago that I didn't even know this was a thing. But I cannot imagine the thought process where someone thinks that Facebook is a good wrapper around web browsing.

Today i learned aomething, too. But almost half of internet traffic?!!

*Almost half of iOS traffic

Multitasking on mobile OSes still sucks, to the point where an application with an embedded web browser can be nicer than trying to use the application and your actual web browser at the same time.

Oh, I get that... but in my (possibly dated) mind, Facebook is a web site, and you run your mobile browser to view it, not the other way around. I mean, this feels to me like the days when dial-up was fading, but my parents would still connect to AOL to browse the Internet.

Do you really think more people tap the Safari icon and then type "facebook.com" in the URL bar than just tap the icon for the Facebook app? I can't imagine that ratio is even remotely close to 1:1. I'd bet a good dinner than 95+% of interactions on mobile are through the app.

I think Facebook is an app and then you click a link and you see the article. The rest is nerdetails.

A mobile app of that sort is basically just a single-purpose web browser. I agree that makes it generally less capable & shittier, but most of them presumably exist to be better at the one specific task they're designed for. Guess the jury's still out on whether Facebook has achieved that. Though it's also true that their goals and the user's are often orthogonal or opposed.

95 to 99% of people will use the FB app over the mobile site assuming they have access to the FB app.

This isn't really comparable to AOL at all is it? In this case some HNers are the odd ones out. And will be for some time at the very least.

Are you talking about iOS? Because multitasking works great for me on Android.

Talking about android. It's never quite clear where the back button will take you (sometimes it goes back to the previous app, sometimes not), some apps (in particular the google app!) lose their state on switch, the switch process itself is fiddly.

It can be quirky for sure, but I personally got used to the idiosyncrasies pretty quickly.

   It's never quite clear where the back button will take you

I have an Android phone where the back button is drawn on the screen, not a hardware button. Why can't it display some additional information about where it goes when I tap it?

Well, it makes a lot more sense from Facebook's perspective. They get a bit of control over people's browsing habits and most importantly, tons of browsing and behavioral data.

I just wish they allowed you to disable the in-app browser. Because of this, I deleted the facebook app from my phone and use my browser to access it. It's been great for productivity too.

The safest way to use facebook is to use a wrapper so it can't track anything, like Metal for Facebook or Swipe then open links of Flynx btw. I highly recommend this approach, floating browsers are pretty good for productivity.

You can disable it, at least on Android.

App Settings -> Links open externally

If you wish to avoid all FB apps (FB/Messenger) and still want to use messaging, use https://mbasic.facebook.com - it works, it's fast, it's HTML only, but yes, no push notifications and no browser lock-in as mentioned within the article.

"It's easier for them to track what you read on the web more aggressively and that's not very good."

That premise is right about Facebook but not necessarily with all iOS apps that have "in app browsers"

iOS provides two methods to provide an in app browser - the traditional webview where the parent app has access to everything you enter - but doesn't have access to your browser cookies from Safari, your bookmarks, history etc and the web controller which is basically a separate process running Safari inside your app. It looks basically the same except the app has no access to your cookies, passwords, bookmarks, but you do have access to all of the above functionality and any ad blocker you have installed.

I don't use the FB app for just that reason. I use the mobile site.

FB's integrated browser is also bad for accessibility. For starters, it doesn't support larger text, even if the user has set the OS-wide preference for larger text.

And if you want to open a linked article in an app that does offer large text or other accessibility features, Facebook doesn't make it easy? Instead of using the standard Share pane, they only show that you can share to Safari (which lets you then share to other apps, as all well-behaved apps do).

Why? Presumably because in the standard Share pane you'd see things like Email and Messages, and maybe you'd send the article via those channels instead of posting it on FB or sending it via FB message to a friend.

Basically, they want to keep you in the ecosystem, so they make it difficult to leave. And they don't mind if accessibility ends up as collateral damage.

To their credit, they recently added the ability to copy the link, which was missing when I wrote this article [1] on the inaccessibility of tech companies' news apps (including FB), which are much less accessible than media companies' news apps.

1: https://hackernoon.com/the-importance-of-text-accessibility-...

I install Firefox with uBlock extensions and set external links to open via FB app in that. It works fine for me on Android. What is annoying though and has FB has a habit of removing the preference to open in external tabs when you update. Dark patterns abound.

> First of all integrated in-app browsers suck.

I couldn't agree more. Every day I try to open a link in Facebook, Gmail, Slack, etc. and it opens it inside the app in a half functional WebView control and I have to go dig in the menu to try to get it to open in a full browser just to do whatever I need to do (usually request desktop site, then post some code review comments or squash and merge on github, etc.).

There used to be settings for some of these apps to avoid this. The Google app has a setting that let you skip it for searches entered in the search bar widget on the home screen, for example, but more often than not there's simply no setting to avoid it and you are stuck with the bad behavior for as long as you use the app.

I also hate when apps are doing this, especially when you can't disable it! I really don't know how doing that benefits the user.

Recently I was bit by Instagram app on ios (reported by the client, I am an android user) - it even breaks their own login flow! E.g. You can't open a link from within their app and login to some 3rd party site via Instagram. It simply times out and doesn't even replace the page - thus hides the actual problem. What is worse, is that typical user would blame site developers for this. In the end I had to refactor the flow to avoid login when user is coming from the app...

If you choose to do this, do it this right!

Reading this from the HN iOS app that, too, has this terrible popup-browser-feature. I doubt they track too much beyond clicks, so perhaps there's a user interface upside to this that I don't see? Are users actually happy with it?

What I'm missing is the public uproar: if Facebook were to open every website in an iframe I'm sure there would be a massive protest, but on mobile it seems like everyone is fine.

I don't think HN has an official app, iirc. I just save the bookmark to my home screen

There's no official HN iOS app. If the app is more modern, it'll use the new Safari View Controller that integrates content blockers (vs. the old web view).

Facebook tracks every link through their own (slow) redirect service, so they can track every link out. The "Like" buttons also act as page trackers, even if you're not logged in.

Is GitHub now a blog?

I actually noticed github being used like this a lot too.

There is code shared too, so it seems nice to have it all in one place.

With github.io, it's been a blog for quite some time. Putting contents in a readme is only a slightly different (though probably more inefficient for github) use.

Is the browser on Android in Facebook worse than using the default browser? In iOS, I think Facebook has to use the WebKit web view so it acts the same as Safari. (The criticisms about it being able to more easily/aggressively track you are still true though.)

Particularly since I don't use the default browser and I have a mode in my browser for reading articles nicely; yes it is much worse.

The option to use your real browser drifts in and out of messenger, I suspect I'm subject to some AB testing. Somehow FB always manage to forget my previous setting for this option :-(.

I don't know about now, but a year or two back I stopped using the (Android) app and used the mobile website because the experience was significantly better. I'm aware that my close friends are in the same position.

> Is the browser on Android in Facebook worse than using the default browser?

Yes. As I use Firefox as my default browser on Android. Then I miss all my extensions and features, like ad blockers and reading mode.

The "default browser" for most Android users is Chrome, whereas in-app webviews use the system WebView. Google have decoupled it from OS releases in recent years and it's updated through the Play Store, so it's not awful... but it still lags behind and is missing features.

Not to mention, the in-app browser has no shared cookie storage etc, so all your logins are wiped.

Tip, install a "secure browser" - it would be detected as a low end platform because it doesn't send everything they need to "optimise" the experience, and offer you a stripped down version.

Whoever installs fb on mobile is asking for it.

How much of a "browser" is this browser? Is it just a wrapper around some kind of web view or does it have a native engine and all that?

Wondering realistically what the surface area for compatibility actually is.

One can avoid any browser problems by accessing Facebook using another browser.

The only functionality that appears to be missing is Messenger, which, paradoxically, still works on the desktop-served web page.

I'm using the webapps wrapper on android, with user agent set to desktop. This gives me a mobile version of Fb where the messenger part works, really nifty. And sandboxed too!

Only because there isn't a desktop app... yet ;)

It'll be a strange day if I can ever apt-get install a Facebook app from the Debian repository.

This is exactly why I use Tinfoil for Facebook on my android phone. It's just a webview around FB's mobile site.

An iOS equivalent is Friendly

I only browse Facebook via mobile safari. I do not have the iOS fb app installed. It does way too much and it squeezes as much metadata as it can out of every single permission you grant it.

Is this for protest or mischief?

Yes.

Nice englando

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