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Comment by miracle2k | Hacker News Reader

The so-called "data breach" was always in reality a by-product of an open platform that hundreds of thousands of developers could easily build apps on top. You may err on the side of "more reviews" or "less powerful API", but in the end, those ideals are in tension. The more open the platform, the more open to this kind of "breach".

People who believe in the idea in this kind of platform having an API should have long ago spoken up in Facebooks defense. This is exactly what I was afraid would happen, and I expect worse to come from this "platform review". Given the kind of media coverage here, Facebook seems to have more to lose than to gain from letting random Hacker News kids build on their platform. And if so, they won't in the future.

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Apple got this right from the beginning despite years of criticism about the "walled garden". They took arrows for years: all the "open always wins" from the FOSS types, all the press coverage of some app developer crying about App Store rejections or onerous rules.

They didn't get it wrong because they know who butters their bread: customers. Developers are rightly prioritized last.

Fun to give this Paul Graham essay a read again [1].

[1] http://www.paulgraham.com/apple.html

> Apple got this right from the beginning despite years of criticism about the "walled garden".

Being a walled garden is independent of privacy. The calendar app on macOS Calendar app allows me to share my calendars in an open format (ICAL) and interoperates with other calendar apps through that specification. It respects my privacy by not sharing anything I don't ask it to without being "walled".

Signal is open and secure; iMessage could be a non-proprietary format and remain just as private.

> all the press coverage of some app developer crying about App Store rejections or onerous rules.

As far as I'm aware a lot of these weren't for privacy matters [1] and are sometimes a little much [2] (this one is specially absurd: [3]).

[1]: https://techcrunch.com/2017/12/08/apples-widened-ban-on-temp...

[2]: https://www.theverge.com/2018/2/8/16992830/apple-emoji-crack...

[3]: https://medium.com/@alariccole/apple-literally-stole-my-thun...

PS:

> all the "open always wins" from the FOSS types

I don't think that means what you think it means. FOSS and privacy are tangential matters.

> FOSS and privacy are tangential matters

I totally agree (because it's true of course). But do recognize that it's in Apple's interest to conflate the two. To make it even more interesting, add "secure" to the list of matters.

> FOSS and privacy are tangential matters

Actually, the only way privacy can be guaranteed is with code you control running on a machine your control. Free Software (and not Open Source) has everything to do with privacy, as it is about control.

You're comparing Apples to oranges (I'm sorry)

Apple doesn't have a social network. They also don't rely on advertising and 3rd party data brokering.

It's easy for Apple to be the 'good guys' here when they have physical products as their profit generators.

FOSS would have worked better in the Facebook case too as people and developers would know/discover a) where their data is and b) what risks it faces

Apple operated iAd before shutting it down. One of the former iAd execs said this to the WSJ [1]:

>“I don’t believe they are interested in this capability because they have a strict policy around what they do with user data,” Crawford said. “IAd has great assets and great capabilities, but they are going to follow Apple’s policy to the letter of the law.”

So they crippled a potential new revenue stream because of their privacy policy.

[1] https://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2015/07/13/drawbridge-hires-app...

You don't consider it at all possible that "because privacy" is the PR spin on it?

When iAd launched, it required mid six digit buys for ads. Users complained that they only would see the same half-dozen ads. Over the course of the next two years, that was steadily reduced, low six digits, fifty thousand, and the complaints stayed the same.

Before iAd shut its doors, you could get ad buys for a minimum of _fifty dollars_.

I tend to be a bit skeptical that instead of the platform being a failure, Apple realized after a few years of cutting buy prices that "hey, privacy is important".

That sounds a lot more like a PR soundbite.

Exactly, they failed to monetize their installed base through ads, so decided to call it a "feature".

Those ads were priced that high for a reason, to keep garbage off the iPhone. iAd only really made sense as a way to enable developers to make money from their apps in a high quality way. All the stipulations don't make sense for a pure ad-tech business.

And I don't think a former iAd exec has any reason to be doing PR for Apple when the purpose of that WSJ story and his cooperation with it was to pimp his new job/startup.

> Those ads were priced that high for a reason, to keep garbage off the iPhone.

Perhaps so. And only a few companies bought ads, which pissed off their customers (the ones that Apple is "fighting to protect") because of the repetition.

So Apple lowered the barrier. A failure to realize.

Not sure how this is a dispute of what I said, or somehow proves that iAd wasn't a failure, but a planned exit.

> And I don't think a former iAd exec has any reason to be doing PR for Apple when the purpose of that WSJ story and his cooperation with it was to pimp his new job/startup.

If you think that Apple (or any company of that size) doesn't have non-disparagement agreements with any corporate officer or down to SVP level, at the _very minimum_, you're mistaken.

Even those "we screwed up" articles you see are very carefully stage managed. They're (almost exclusively, save some very isolated high profile situations) scripted as a PR effort to manage customer satisfaction.

Exactly, Apple just doesn't need ads because of their physical product and brand strength. If you rely on ads, what actual value are you (or could you be) providing that you're not charging for. And then, why not, why choose ads instead and data harvesting? If Facebook started charging for their services, would people happily start paying or would they suddenly realise there are equal/better alternatives once cost is a factor?

Will be interesting to see what happens with Apple if the i-products do ever decline significantly. (I believe their Brand is strong enough to sell their other services effectively so long as they get the price right).

> Apple doesn't have a social network.

They tried, and failed.

> They also don't rely on advertising

They tried that, too.

The key issue (at least for me) is whether they've tried to benefit from marketing user-specific data. I can't recall any such effort, but will gladly to defer to someone more knowledgable. I'm not sure specifically why their multiple ad and social network efforts have failed, but it might be because they haven't been willing to do just that.

On a general note, I find it frustrating that a lot of the discussions around this area end up with people talking past each other. Some people are concerned about advertising, others about privacy, others about using user data, others about open source software/hardware, others about encryption. They've got some overlap when it comes to specific features, but often get conflated, making the discussion even more difficult. One thing I've appreciated about reading your comments is that you often are able to cut through that quite decisively. Thanks!

> They tried, and failed.

What are you thinking of -- iTunes Ping? That was never really intended as a general-purpose social network.

Is it wrong that I feel glad they failed?

“Apple doesn't have a social network.”

What about iMessage?

That's a social network in the same way the Pony Express was.

I swear there is some kind of downvote bot on HN - reasonable posts are often down-voted grey within the first few minutes (like this one's parent), and then eventually climb up to a reasonable place, when, what feels like, the humans have had time to see it - has this been noticed or discussed before? I'd be curious to know if some accounts are serial downvoters, especially as soon as comments go up - does HN look for that kind of stuff?

Of course part of the answer is that new comments have no votes so a quick downvote will make them grey, but there are frequent strange cases.

One thing for sure is that a lot of people downvote based on disagreement rather than a comment's quality - which in my opinion is not right (and I think against the intent of a downvote), but that's a different issue.

Dang said recent-ish* that upvoting inappropriate comments can cost you your voting privileges. Additionally, there is a karma threshold for downvotes. IIRC, you need 500 karma.

Between those two facts, I think downvote bots aren't a terribly likely explanation. You would need to establish an account with downvote privileges and then hope the mods don't revoke its downvote privilege in short order. It seems like a lot of work for probably not much pay off.

That doesn't mean there can't be downvote bots, but it just seems to me a much more likely explanation is people cruising the Comments page.

* https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16117475

I'm fairly sure there are multiple downvote bots operating on HN. Frequently, certain comments to topics considered by some as "political" on HN will get an immediate 2 or 3 downvotes in the first 30 seconds, and then over the course of the next 2 or 3 hours, be upvoted back up to black.

Although it's possible that there's some confounding happening here, such as the handful of people who hit refresh on HN hundreds of times a day are also ones who can't stand certain political viewpoints. But it seems unlikely. Far more likely is that there are a handful of downvote bots in operation on a keyword basis.

It's not a huge deal to me, but it does seem kind of obvious.

I get downvoted on agreeable comments on 4 day old conversations....there's definitely bots or something going on.

A downvote on a 4-day-old comment is unlikely to be a bot, since it's likely that no one will even see it. If you're seeing agreeable comments being downvoted after several days, it's probably just a grouchy misanthrope or two catching up on HN on their day off.

A downvote on a 4-day-old comment...

Is not possible since they turn downvotes off after 24 hours.

/pedant

As someone who incessantly refreshes HN and spends a fair amount of time on the Comments page, I see no reason why it wouldn't be people seeing new comments to older discussions via the Comments section rather than bots. Although I am a demographic outlier in multiple ways, I cannot possibly be the only person routinely cruising the new comments section.

Good point about the new comments feed. I think your parent either misspoke or misunderstood their parent's "[downvoted] comments on 4 day old conversations", which would mean a new (down votable) comment on a thread that started 4 days earlier.

Correct.....old conversation, new comment.

The giveaway, imho, is a downvote on a completely inoffensive comment, combined with certain other increasingly common patterns.

it's probably just a grouchy misanthrope or two catching up on HN on their day off.

I do this :)

just a grouchy misanthrope or two catching up on HN on their day off.

Who's calling me?

Similar behavior appears to happen with quality of comments. Initial comments on a story are often insubstantial, knee-jerk low-quality comments. With time, things generally get better.

From what I gather (but I don't have any comments at hand), the mods do pay attention to voting behavior, both to detect up-voting rings and to penalize those abusing downvotes. Their usual recommendation, when coming across a comment you think is unfairly downvoted, is to silently apply a corrective upvote.

> Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading.

FYI, want to start off with that to help indicate the likely reason for any downvotes you got on this post.

> One thing for sure is that a lot of people downvote based on disagreement rather than a comment's quality - which in my opinion is not right

Everyone is entitled to their opinion, but it doesn’t make it any more valid than other’s and doesn’t make it a fact either.

> (and I think against the intent of a downvote)

@Dang has said on multiple occasions that the intent wasn’t as you are assuming. Apologies I don’t have a link handy at the moment.

> FYI, want to start off with that to help indicate the likely reason for any downvotes you got on this post.

Thanks, I did know the price, no problem.

> @Dang has said on multiple occasions that the intent wasn’t as you are assuming. Apologies I don’t have a link handy at the moment.

I would be curious to read dang's opinion on this if anyone has it, it's not in the guidelines.

> Everyone is entitled to their opinion, but it doesn’t make it any more valid than other’s and doesn’t make it a fact either.

Yes, that is the definition of an opinion.

> "I would be curious to read dang's opinion on this if anyone has it, it's not in the guidelines."

https://hn.algolia.com/?query=author:dang%20downvote&sort=by...

A couple of the more recent comments:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16569778#16574021

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16336937

An API into a closed service is no more FOSSy than a graphical user interface into a closed desktop app. I don't really understand the comparison, what do you think motivates it?

Facebook has open-sourced a few internal projects, but none of them had much to do with our personal data.

In fact, it's difficult to blame the API when the problem was that the data was collected in the first place. Surely Zuckerberg has some political opinions of his own, if CA hadn't triggered this media storm what would have stopped him from supporting his own favorite candidate internally? In fact, what's stopping him from doing that right now? Would it even be illegal?

> all the "open always wins" from the FOSS types

Can you produce any quote from any Free Software or Open Source developer or advocate that supports your statement in this context of Facebook being better than Apple because they're "open"? Because even though both companies are terrible at freedom, they're terrible in very different ways, turning any comparison into a false equivalence.

The "open always wins" wasn't talking about access to other people's private data. It was talking about letting apps run and giving them the capability to act on your data. Big difference.

Nobody is complaining about being able to install a Facebook app that harvests your data. The issue is it could also harvest your friends' data by default.

Although honestly I think this is all manufactured outrage. The fact that this could happen was totally public in 2012 and the public weren't outraged about it then.

I hadn't seen that before, cheers it was an interesting read. I really want to believe that my mind still can't dismiss acknowledging that there is always a possibility they have undisclosed back doors, it's just a matter of what it takes for them to disclose it. As more time goes by my thoughts on that possibility lower though, as more people are exposed to the code as a potential outsider/doesn't agree with the practice.

This is completely misleading.

1 - I've yet to learn about a major open source project stealing data from its users.

2 - Open source guaranty the users have the right and access to check how it's data can be used. Apple's products do not. Actually, we discovered they were part of the PRIMS program, which means basically they gave ALL your data away already while actively lying about it (https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jun/06/us-tech-giants...).

3 - FOSS people like interoperability and choice, which is one of the major problems they blame Apple not to take care of. This has ZERO relationship with privacy.

So on one hand you have privacy savvy communities, giving their free time and work so that everybody can use it to built a better word an understand transparently what's going on.

On the other hand you have a multi-billion dollar black box giving away user data, using massive PR to pretend they are privacy oriented while they make money out of locked in devices.

Now I get people enjoy the Apple product experience.

I get they make a lot of things right for this experience, especially for user friendliness, and integration.

And I certainly get they made the industry progress from a technical point of view.

But do not compare their moral scale to the one from the FOSS folks. This is literally insulting them.

It’s the same problem Microsoft had. If your success hinges on unfettered access then you can’t hand wring and deflect criticism when bad things come of it.

In other words: if you power and prestige comes from getting others to do the work for you, then whose fault is it when they misbehave? It’s your fault.

Ben Thompson talks about this towards the end

https://stratechery.com/2018/the-facebook-brand/

There’s no helping if as an user, you give the keys to the house to the robbers. More specifically, everything posted publicly is public. It doesn’t matter how much the data is obfuscated by lack of API, it can always be mined. Any changes made in response, right now will be shortsighted. If an actor wants that data, he will get it, especially if it can sway elections.

This is buying into the idea that security and openness are at odds. Bitcoin is extremely secure, and also open to all. The way forward is people owning all their data encrypted, and revealing zero knowledge proofs about that data to services that want access.

> Bitcoin is extremely secure, and also open to all.

And it has zero privacy: everybody can see everybody's transactions.

That's because privacy was not a goal of that particular system. Pseudo-anonymity was the goal. (That's unrelated to my point about security and openness though.)

It seems pretty related in this case, since the kind of security that is being discussed here is around access to private data (and I'd note that it was you that used the word security here, not the OP who made the more correct contrast between openness and powerfulness).

One could equally make the point that Facebook is secure because no one has hacked their servers, and that it is open because it is free to join. That's a pointless thing to say though.

But in any case: yes, there is an inherent tension between privacy and openness.

I should have used Monero as an example instead of Bitcoin, but I thought less people would have heard of it. Privacy can also be achieved with these primitives.

That's still not the point though.

How do I openly share social information with some people without sharing it with everyone? These principles are in conflict.

I did some work way back when FB got popular on the idea of using probabilistic data structures (ie, Bloom filters) to store contact lists, which could then be shared so that (in theory) only people who knew the same people would also know that they knew them. I built a FB app proving this could work technically.

But there are clear security issues with it - it gives a veneer of apparent privacy but doesn't stand up to attacks.

This is what everyone is talking about and the point you seem to be missing: you can't have this both ways. There is a conflict between privacy and openness.

Since you seem fixated on the crypto-payment thing: Monero mostly solves anonymous payments, but then what? Say I want to buy a pair of shoes with it - how do I stop someone knowing where to deliver it? Any attempt at solving this runs into the same problem: you have to tell someone the same thing you are trying to keep secret, and if that person is the attacker then the system falls to pieces.

We've accepted trusted computing as a society, many phones have a secure element now, and I think this can migrate down to that level.

That's the real trade-off: we reclaim ownership of our data with knowledge of where it goes and who's using it for what, but that means a full embrace of DRM (something our community has typically been against.)

I'll take that as implicit acknowledgement that the OP's point was correct (DRM of course being the complete opposite of "open").

I agree that could work though.

> I should have used Monero as an example instead of Bitcoin, but I thought less people would have heard of it. Privacy can also be achieved with these primitives.

Well actually that’s very much still in dispute:

https://www.wired.com/story/monero-privacy/

>open to all

That's in direct opposition to security. When you grant people you don't even know much less trust access to your system, all bets are off. There's just no way to predict what is going to happen. You've lost the fundamental protection afforded by trust.

Today, computers are expected to be able to talk to and serve hundreds of thousands of random users. What if one of them has access to a 0day? They could own the machine. The world would be a lot more secure if servers dropped all incoming packets by default and talked to trusted users only.

Bitcoin is open to everyone and that's great, but it doesn't change the fact people managed to sneak a bunch of illegal pictures into its blockchain.

The Facebook API is, now at least, a capabilities based system where you ask the user for permission to access various bits of information. The major problem these days is that people don’t read through the authorization dialogs because they want to see which Star Wars character they are.

To my knowledge, you're not able to reveal just your first name, or just a proof that you're a FB verified user. And once you grant access, it's forever. We may be at a global maximum for user permissions, but I doubt it.

The problem is we can't try anything new - since it's all stored in FB's servers, we have to wait for them to build new granular capabilities.

The truth is that Facebook engineering & UX has been either incompetent (incredibly unlikely given the caliber of people they have) or willfully / inadvertently avoiding clearly communicating to users what permissions apps need.

The thought that they can't "do better" than dialogs / strings identifying each permission is laughable.

It's not rocket science.

You're using "open" in different contexts, one applying to a platform (e.g. blockchain or facebook app api) and another in regards to access control.

As platforms, blockchain is more open than facebook and for access control it's less open. GP was referring to security being at odds with openness in the sense of access control.

> The way forward is people owning all their data encrypted, and revealing zero knowledge proofs about that data to services that want access.

Who has a financial incentive to build and maintain that system?

Cryptocurrency projects.

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