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Comment by knoepfle | Hacker News Reader

What is this describing? First-party apps with Facebook integration and/or OS features connecting to Facebook? The leakage of Facebook information onto MS/Apple/Blackberry servers would be concerning, but having Microsoft software connect to Facebook on a user's device sounds harmless (to the extent we trust MS/Apple/Blackberry software to not leak information so accessed). Right now I'm giving Apple similar access to every single communication I make through my computer, to my bank accounts and health records, to all the work I do for my employer.

This distinction wasn't made clear in the story (or I can't read) and it's an important one. Privacy is complicated enough already.

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Yes, I didn't quite understand that. Apple had this to say:

> An Apple spokesman said the company relied on private access to Facebook data for features that enabled users to post photos to the social network without opening the Facebook app, among other things.

So is this like what connecting your Facebook account in Settings does? Allow you share pictures through the share sheet in Photos or whatever? What does Apple get to see, and what stays on the device?

>is this like what connecting your Facebook account in Settings does?

It depends on the platform.

On iOS you could post various types of information to Facebook, and you could sync Facebook contact and calendar data to the local device.

https://www.cnet.com/how-to/understanding-facebook-integrati...

Aside from letting you share information and sync Facebook contacts and calendars, Windows Phone 7, for instance, pulled in a lot more data to populate it's People hub.

>For all intents and purposes the People hub is the Facebook app for Windows Phone 7. If you’ve supplied your Facebook login, the default “what’s new” tab will serve as your news feed.

https://www.anandtech.com/show/3982/windows-phone-7-review/7

Apple told the Times that it wasn't involved with this since September of last year. I wonder if this is why it's no longer possible to update your Facebook status from the Notifications panel.

Apple is basically outsourcing user data mining to Facebook so that they can take the high groud.

Didn't Tim Cook just two months back bragged about how Apple doesn't do certain things? He was right. He asked Facebook to do that for him.

Apple dropped social media integration from their upcoming operating systems.

I believe it's describing "First-party apps with Facebook integration and/or OS features connecting to Facebook". It was OS-level integration to provide you with convenient access to Facebook data and features. The best example in the article was from Apple, who used it to allow users to post photos to Facebook directly from the standard Photos app. It wasn't so that the device makers could rifle through your data and influence elections or sell you things.

There's nothing to see here, but it sure makes for a provocative headline that will get lots of clicks and make the NYT lots of money from personalized ads. You have to love the irony.

> Facebook allowed the device companies access to the data of users’ friends without their explicit consent, even after declaring that it would no longer share such information with outsiders. Some device makers could retrieve personal information even from users’ friends who believed they had barred any sharing, The New York Times found.

There's a dangling "their" in there which is causing trouble. What I think this means:

- Alice adds their email or phone number to their Facebook account. Alice sets this to "private".

- Bob is friends with Alice

- Bob's phone has access to Alice's phone/email, even though this wouldn't be normally visible to him.

(The Windows Phone social media integration in the contact maanger was absolutely excellent at presenting everything about your friends on every platform in one convenient place)

I don't think that's right. They clarify this somewhat further into the article. "Facebook’s view that the device makers are not outsiders lets the partners go even further, The Times found: They can obtain data about a user’s Facebook friends, even those who have denied Facebook permission to share information with any third parties." I'm pretty sure this is a reference to the setting which disabled sharing information with Facebook apps used by friends. If I'm understanding correctly, it's more like this:

- Alice adds their email or phone number to their Facebook account. Alice sets this to be visible to friends, but not to third-party apps they use.

- Bob is friends with Alice.

- Bob's phone has access to Alice's phone/email, even though this wouldn't normally be available to third-party Facebook apps like games.

Edit: Facebook's response at https://newsroom.fb.com/news/2018/06/why-we-disagree-with-th... also clarifies this. "Contrary to claims by the New York Times, friends’ information, like photos, was only accessible on devices when people made a decision to share their information with those friends."

>What is this describing?

The "build new private APIs for device makers through 2014, spreading user data through tens of millions of mobile devices... and other systems outside Facebook’s direct control" makes it sound like they were making deals with the manufacturers where the device would auth and fetch data through the manufacturer's infrastructure when accessing Facebook? The Blackberry Hub app is used as an example in the infographic.

This might explain why I got random people's profile pictures assigned to my phone's "$MY_CITY Taxi" address book entry... people who have I have 0 shared friends with, who happened to add the local taxi service's phone number as their phone number as a joke or whatever.

The distinction wasn't made clear because we're talking about some 60 different agreements with various companies, with each company acting differently.

As stated in the article: Facebook acknowledged that some partners did store users’ data — including friends’ data — on their own servers. .. which meets your definition of concerning.

It will likely be some time before we learn the extent of all of these agreements and how the data was used.

For one, Facebook obviously had access to contacts and photos, without any way for user to disallow it.

Why would it be "harmless" if you weren't even aware it was happening, let alone give you consent?

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