Dickhead of the Week: Instagram CEO Adam Mosseri | Hacker News Reader

Dickhead of the Week: Instagram CEO Adam Mosseri

daringfireball.net

308 pointsdavidbarker193 comments

Watch “The Social Dilemma” on Netflix, see how far off the rails the industry has gone, then come back and tell me that Apple is the bad guy here. Someone needs to start standing up for what’s right, and Apple is probably the only one with the size and cash reserves to be able to do it.

For all the free market cheerleaders, remember this: we already have laws in place preventing or regulating businesses from engaging in certain activities, like exploitation, gambling, addictive drugs, etc. And these companies fighting Apple want to do exactly that: Epic wants to sell digital gambling (loot) boxes to children. Facebook and Instagram want to track everything you do every second of the day, for the dubious goal of making advertising “more relevant to you” (and just happens to have the small side effect of being a tool currently in use to topple democracies around the world). Social networks are hooking into addiction centers of the brain to keep people hooked on misinformation that is actually killing people.

Is Apple perfect? No. Is this one thing going to stop all that I mentioned? No. But you have to start somewhere.

You can support a company for some of its actions while also condemning it for others. It's totally legitimate to be on Epic's side in the Apple vs Epic lawsuit while also supporting Apple's privacy measures.

I agree with this belief, as well as not letting perfect be the enemy of better, as in this case: I can choose Apple over FB while still not liking Apple.

The problem is it's really hard to hold these apparently contradictory positions in your head at the same time. We love binary distinctions on single dimension axes because our brains are more efficiently with this paradigm. In truth the world at any degree of scale does not work this way and we've got to do a better job developing more nuanced personal positions.

Yep. Totally agree.

I appreciate apple's attempt in the privacy space as well as loathe their 30% mandatory in app purchase integration which EPIC is fighting against. You need someone who is big like Epic to stand against apple as they the resource to battle it out legally.

One of my clients is a small player and they have stripe integration for their service. The android platform uses the stripe integration where as the apple platform has forced in app purchases down their throat. In app purchases should be an option and it should be upto the customer if they want to use it or not.

Apple cares about their bottom line, they're privacy focused only because it works for their business model.

If they stopped being anti right to repair then maybe i'd be interested.

That's it right there, business models which align with (or are constrained by) society's values.

isn't this how we'll get privacy the easy way(tm) though, by making it a valid business model?

What do you lose by doing this though? I think a monopoly is just as dangerous as unregulated/unrestrained capitalism. I don't think taking the easy way is the right way.

So much this. I hate that closed app stores are currently the best way to achieve it, but Apple is fighting malware for its users plain and simple... at least when it comes to the socials.

The loot boxes issue is new to me though. Citation?

You've clearly never played Fortnite. Epic doesn't sell loot boxes, they sell skins. You get exactly what you pay for, there is nothing sketchy about it.

While I agree it’s not sketchy in that you get what you pay for, the true cost of what you are paying is obfuscated casino-style from their player base, which is mostly kids. Case in point, my son will want to spend 2500 vbucks on a skin until I put that into real dollars for him - “are you sure, that’s $25 of your money” (a bit less with package bonuses notwithstanding).

Perhaps this is my penance for working on FarmVille and Zynga Poker back in the day.

I don't understand how Apple protects by taking a large cut of same?

You're getting down voted, but you're right. Apple filters heavily, they know everything in the apps they allow or disallow. Anything that is allowed and that they profit from, they are complicit in.

Certainly looks like karma.

Worked at Zynga? Damn dog, you don't deserve any time at the mic regarding MTX.

Or maybe his sordid past gives him deep experience that qualifies him for more "time at the mic" than other HN randos speaking from places of inexperience.

There are no democracies being "toppled" via instagram, there are only some liberal parties being voted out of office as their policies have been massive failures, which is democracy working as intended.

Their policies are only failures if you’re looking through the eyes of a conservative. The left sees the world differently than the right, and, as such, focus on different issues. To the left, Trump has been an absolute failure, but the right adores him. Who’s right?

The right hates Gavin Newsom; They’re on their third recall attempt. But he wasn’t elected for no reason; He was elected because his campaign promises were what the people who put him there wanted.

That’s democracy working as intended as well.

It’s not that simple. Newsom has accomplished little of his agenda and it’s not because of “the right,” which hardly exists in California. The Democrats in California torpedoed the latest housing bill, which merely attempted to legalize duplexes statewide, evoking the apocalyptic destruction of single family neighborhoods as it’s result.

The world is also not as simple as “left” and “right,” and I’ve found that it’s unwise to tell someone else what it’s like from their POV. We should instead speak for ourselves, and be genuinely interested and curious why others think the way they do.

> [...] “the right,” which hardly exists in California.

“The right” make up about a third of the state[0] if the 2018 gubernatorial election is anything to go by. I wouldn’t call that “hardly exist[ing].” They may not be powerful enough to vote in who they want, but they’re there.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_California_gubernatorial_...

They are failures in the eyes of people who used to vote for them but now don't. This is not a left/right thing. Neither is the wider liberal movement that includes most conservative parties, a destinction most likely lost on US-based uppercase Liberals who interpert my comment as a attack on them. It is an observation about the wider liberal project that is in decline everywhere.

You should read this book: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/44244963-breaking-the-tw...

I agree that democracy in the US is shaky, but it has more to do with failures of both sides caused by the system. Really worthwhile read.

Lower case liberal was meant as in Liberalism, the wider movement that came out of the Enlightenment and most certainly includes parties from "both sides". Traditional conservative parties are being rejected as well.

> Epic wants to sell digital gambling (loot) boxes to children

Fortnite hasn't had loot boxes like this for about 18 months. The contents of the box are visible and change each day.

https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2019/01/fortnite-puts-an-end-...

Which is still gambling, just on the contents of the next box. It’s obfuscating the gambling, and it’s unfortunately working.

Either way, Apple takes 30% of the revenue. Apple isn't standing up to Epic's gambling, they''re profiting a lot from it and their only issue with Epic seems to be that they want to keep profiting from it. The Epic and Apple case started when Epic circumvented Apple for in app purchases and lowered their prices accordingly.

They don’t get a commission for the sale of the Fortnight software, or for marketing Fortnight on their own dime; do you believe that they don’t deserve to get any commissions for providing Fortnight a platform and publicity?

I guess this is the crux: are they providing a platform and marketing, or are the gate-keeping rent seekers between the developer and their customers?

Honestly, both positions are arguable. But, and it's a big but, the fact that it is their hardware and their OS points to the former (their platform, their marketing).

Ultimately, it's their storefront, so who they do business with - and the terms of that business - is their choice (as is so often argued when free speech and platforms comes up here on HN). Competition exists, in the form of other hardware and other OSes (though, Epic's Fortnight was kicked off Google's store for the same reason as it was kicked off Apple's).

As a developer, I have no desire for Apple to market my software for me. Fortunately for me, Apple has never chosen to highlight and market my software for me. Unfortunately for me, they’re still taking 30% of the revenue for distribution alone, and there’s absolutely no way that’s fair, given that I can self distribute on every other platform for about 4%.

I already have a cloud footprint as my apps depend on it. The bulk of that 4% is in payment processing. The rest is just background noise on my hosting bills.

Epic tried “self distributing” on Android with side loading. Guess how that worked out?

> I have no desire for Apple to market my software for me

Yet you do have a desire for it to run on Apple's hardware, under Apple's OS. And thus you have a desire to do business with them. That you disagree with their rules for doing business by itself doesn't make them the bad guy.

They're offering many of the same terms offered by Microsoft, Google (Android Play store and Stadia), and Sony after all.

This is the mistake, as a developer I want my app to run on your hardware, and the hardware of millions of others, it hardware that you happen to have bought from apple, but it's no longer theirs, and if you want to run my app, and I want you to, that should be our choice, not Apples.

> your hardware

This is a problem that's bigger than Apple, and it's not a problem that will be solved by allowing more stores on the phone - it won't make it somehow "your" hardware.

You can blame Apple for doing this with their phone all you want, but you're fighting against the tide with a shovel. It's an industry standard to lock hardware down to the point where they'd rather the hardware be bricked (the Nintendo Switch and its hardware fuses) than run "libre" software on it.

“Apple’s hardware”?! Is it not the customer’s hardware? We aren’t talking the cloud here, these are devices that the individual customers have already paid for. Apple should have little say in how a customer wants to use their own hardware.

So, jailbreak it, and install your own Epic App Store.

But, as I pointed out in a sibling reply, this hardware, firmware, and OS is, practically speaking, not ours. No matter how much as we’d like it to be.

then there should a law which makes hardware and software I paid for - mine.

If they want to charge Epic and other developers of free apps and games, that's one thing. Apple have made a calculated business decision to charge developers $99/year for those expenses, and it's not like they don't profit anything from having a large game and app library. They're not charging for providing a platform and publicity though, they are forcing developers to use their payment processing for in app purchases, which IMO does not contribute 30% of the produced value for those purchases.

But my main point was that trying to frame it as heroic Apple against evil Epic, where Apple tries to save their users from gambling by taking a large cut of the loot, isn't entirely truthful.

That doesn't meet any definition of gambling I'm aware of. It's equivalent to having a daily sale on a set of products.

If you purchase a lootcrate, a new lootcrate is revealed for you. Sorry if that wasn’t clear.

That makes sense as point... Yes I can see that giving the same feeling as old lootboxes.

If you want to get all the cool items, you can wait till tomorrow for one of them to maybe show up as an offer, or you can buy boxes until they are offered to you. It might be the very next box!!

Does buying a product at full price constitute gambling because tomorrow it might go 50% off?

And Epic has been found guilty since then of illegally convincing minors to spend money in Fortnite.

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20191008/08591443147/epic-...

The linked article neither found Epic guilty (they settled) nor was it even about Epic convincing minors to spend money, but about Epic suing Fortnite cheaters, one of whom apparently was a minor.

Please don't willingly spread misinformation like this.

Wrong link.

https://www.sportskeeda.com/esports/news-fortnite-sued-trick...

> U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers announced a ruling yesterday which stated that Fortnite had convinced minors to spend money in game without parental consent. This ruling keeps Epic on the hook for its misleading business practices.

The article you linked says no such thing, it talks only of an out of court settlement.

https://www.sportskeeda.com/esports/news-fortnite-sued-trick...

Was this also an ”out of court settlement”

No.

What's your point? The other one was, that's all I was directing my reply to.

Apple cares so much they will take 30% of those loot box profits.

Except they kicked fortnight off the store, so they are now getting 0%. And since Fortnight is free to buy, Apple would also get $0 if forced to allow non-IAP purchases.

Weren't they already getting 0% since Epic snuck IAP outside of Apple's system into their app to bypass Apple's requirements? So Apple had no choice but to ban them. You're implying that by not kicking fortnight off the store, they'd still be getting 30%

'would' not 'will'. Since they banned the loot box, Apple cares so much they actually 'are' giving up that 30%.

Loot boxes became illegal, as they were determined to be a form of online gambling. It wasn't a stance that Apple took to protect their customer, it was a federally mandated action handed down from the courts.

Apple is a giant corporation with varied interests. In some areas they align with consumers (they’re not heavily in advertising... yet) while in others their anti-competitive behavior is harmful.

Writing these impassioned posts like you’re defending the decisions of your favorite sports team that can do no wrong... oof.

When Apple rejects Epic from its App Store for violating its TOC, is that being 'anti-competitive' ?

The anti-competitiveness is even before that: when Apple decided not to allow sideloading.

Remember when Microsoft was sued for bundling IE with Windows? Now imagine if they blocked other browsers from existing on Windows back then.

And in the US, that lawsuit went nowhere and they never stopped bundling IE.

MS was sued for a number of things including forcing OEMs to pay a license fee for each PC sold whether or not it was shipped with Windows and not allowing third parties to ship alternative browsers.

Yes, not allowing third parties to ship alternative browsers, that was anti-competitive behavior because MS was in the browser business. Now if Apple had a loot box in their game and wouldn't allow Epic to have a loot box in Epic's game, that too would be anti-competitive. But not allowing anyone to have a loot box at all, isn't.

> And in the US, that lawsuit went nowhere and they never stopped bundling IE

Your specificity of “in the US” suggests you know that’s not how it went down in the rest of the world, and that they did infact have to stop bundling IE (and other components) in other countries / regional blocs.

And that also did little good in the EU where they had browser choice...

https://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/11/technology/11eubrowser.ht...

What did it look like a year after, two years after, five years after, when compared to the US market?

A single datapoint doesn’t tell the whole story.

Yes Chrome started taking over. Do you think that was because of browser choice or because it was heavily advertised on the home page of the most visited site on the internet and it was included as bundleware on unrelated products?

I don't see any part of the comment that implies that Apple can do no wrong.

but Gruber's post is certainly implying as much.

> That’s exactly what Apple is doing — giving users awareness over what is going on, and control over it.

That doesn't imply that everything Apple does is good, it states that in this case Apple is doing good.

The two are not mutually exclusive, and stating a general practice ("giving ... control over it") without further criticisms or clarifications in a given post is exactly what creates a general implication.

I'm not really here to debate. You can disagree, but considering John's well-discussed pro-Apple bias (e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9345312), it seems others agree that his writing often goes out of its way to frame Apple in more of a positive light than Apple likely deserves.

It's fine to praise specific actions, but Gruber's known for praising Apple so much that his Apple critiques tend to make news for how rare they are.

> they’re not heavily in advertising... yet

haha, remember iAd? That failed quickly.

Didn’t it fail because they used non targeted ads? But those aren’t as effective, so no one used them.

Why aren't they as effective? Contextual ads is what made Google big in the first place, and intuitively it makes sense why they would be the best. It's really weird that personalized ads work well! Makes no sense. Everyone hates how they get ads for stuff they already just bought and so on.

Given that Android supports side loading, what’s the most obvious harm Apple customers are getting with only the App Store? For example, are iOS customers routinely left behind while the Android ecosystem is vibrant? Are iOS customers getting noticeably inferior bang for their buck?

There’s nothing wrong with the free market. They just unfortunately don’t give a crap about privacy.

So what about all the other gaming apps on the iOS store? Literally thousands of them are specifically designed to get (trick) kids to spend money on them. Apple is more than happy to enable In-App purchases for them and then promotes them heavily through its own advertising on the app store. How is Apple not part of the problem in this whole system?

It’s got to start somewhere. Punch the biggest bullies in the yard down and everyone of their comrades will get the point and generally fall in line. Or you’ve got smaller fries to then make examples of on your own time. If you start at the bottom and work your way up the bigger players will just benefit from lack of competition and not see a need for change. The whataboutism is really an argument against change at all than it is a question of tactics.

Apple and Facebook have both been sued for this. Facebook were literally calling it friendly fraud and trying not to prevent it.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2019/01/25/facebook-tu...

The FTC alleges Apple allowed the same thing on their platform for three years after they became aware.

https://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/16/technology/government-and...

But what's really amazing is Google, Amazon and Microsoft have all been sued for the same thing too and it still not illegal to have games where kids can spend unlimited amounts and conduct unlimited transactions using obfuscated virtual currencies.

Apple has parental controls to prevent this, and basically forces you through configuring them when you set up an iDevice account for a minor.

I have three kids and have never had an in-app or other purchase that I didn’t approve.

>Watch “The Social Dilemma” on Netflix

I'm sorry, but that show was really, really dumb and unrealistic and I couldn't sit through it.

3 engineers (notably: cringey white dudes) are never following one single user and controlling his interactions like that and it did more harm than good by pretending it works that way.

This implies someone is directly accountable, showing up to work every day and fucking with people's attention regularly, when in reality, it's soulless machines programmed to do this while the engineers are several degrees away from inflicting harm like this.

That's what makes it so dangerous -- not that tech companies have unlimited money to build situation rooms dedicated to following single users around.

Why bring up the skin color of the people in the show? What relevance does it have? And I am brown Incase you were wondering as I know skin color is important to you

Diversity in tech is a problem and this show was reinforcing that.

What are you on about? The show is about how Apps are made addicitve regardless of race, why are you pulling the race card when the tech is indiscriminant? Its like saying I shouldn't watch a documentary on the NBA cause the documentary is not diverse enough, where are all the brown, white, yellow people at? xD

>when the tech is indiscriminant

It sometimes isn't, but why did they put 3 white dudes in charge of messing with someone's life when they know that's the prevailing stereotype of SV engineers?

Could it be that they were trying to capitalize on that stereotype for shock value? I'd think so.

> why did they put 3 white dudes in charge of messing with someone's life

Maybe because they earnt their position through merit? Maybe because white males are still a majority of the work force in Google, Facebook, and may more? The probability of picking 3 random senior people who are white are not that slim.

I as an Asian man take issue that just because you see white people in the show and automatically assume what the show has to say is not representative of whats happening in the Ad-industry. You could literally replace any color of race and claim it is not representative and disregard the bigger message here. This is a classic reverse-racism.

>Maybe because they earnt their position through merit?

They earned the position of representing a wildly exaggerated view of how tech companies influence their users?

Give me a break, this show was just dumb. It added no value to the conversation around tech companies.

They weren't engineers. It was shows attempt to humanize the algorithm.

I agree it was cringy but the shows intent wasn't bad.

We don't humanize statistical methods or other math formulas in similar fashions, we (should) blame the people that wield them irresponsibly.

The show, up until I stopped watching, felt like slow-rolling click bait.

The 3 engineers are just a representation of the user-tailored AI algorithms, that are trying to optimize user engagement and session duration.

Engineers are controlling interactions of single users, even though they are not sitting there as it happens and making decision after decision. The algorithm however, acts as an extended mind of the actual engineers that effects the engineer's choices and decisions. This dynamic is hard to communicate and I think the visual chosen by the show works quite well.

I think you might benefit from learning about literary devices like allegories and metaphors. You are taking that way too literally. The show is trying to explain complicated things to regular people.

apple is perfectly happy for epic to sell loot boxes as long as they get a cut

Calling apple to be a social justice warrior is the most ironic thing I heard for a while. We are speaking about the company who actively encourages developers to go to subscription model no matter what the app does, the company, which does everything in order to make businesses unable to fix their devices, so stop their give competition for their outrageous repair prices and methods, the one who do everything to monopolize cash transfer for their sweet 30% cut for literally everything, the one who is using exactly the some components for a new model of a laptop, while they already have internal documentation about said component to be often failing in a short time. So LOL

Having just finished watching The Social Dilemma about fifteen minutes ago -- then hopping onto HN to satisfy the itch before bedtime (the irony is not lost) to read some commentary about Apple, Instagram, and Facebook.

"There are millions of [small businesses] out there that rely on us to target customers and to reach those customers." (quote from Instagram CEO)

I'm not an Instagram user / customer / product -- but it seems disingenuous for the CEO of Instagram to claim the company's primary concern is these myriad tiny companies, other than in the context of them indirectly buoying up Instagram's business.

Edit: accidentially replied to wrong post

There's nothing wrong with getting paid to help people. That's the whole moral justification for capitalism.

But there is something wrong in harming billions of people just to help a few businesses.

I doubt that anyone at Facebook cares about small businesses beyond making money off them, but they do have a point here. Instagram & Facebook are at the center of a lot of small businesses/side hustles. Those depend pretty heavily on advertising to generate sales or to monetize their posts.

I'm dubious that all this tracking really is that effective for ads. But linking a purchase to an ad is undeniably important. If you can't do that then the current system breaks down. Hard to know if what replaces it will be better or worse.

Personally, I find basically everything about Instagram bad. The only reason I use it is because a lot of my friends share their pictures there.

Their app is full of bugs, at least on my regular Android phone, dark mode always messes up, ghost notifications, random crashes, etc.

The platform is full of bots. My profile is set to private, so everybody who wants to follow me needs to request first. On some days, I get requests from 10+ profiles trying to sell porn. And that's without following any big influencers, just friends.

The bots also invade basically every public comment section, trying to sell porn or NSFW snapchat. I don't get why they are successful, but I assume they are, given the scale they operate.

Their TikTok clone feature that basically completely spams my discover/search tab is full of content taken from TikTok or barely dressed girls trying to push their OnlyFans. Maybe that was the plan, I find it just annoying.

And now to their ads, easily one of the most annoying parts. Given how much data Facebook/Instagram is collecting, you'd assume they'd somehow manage to show interesting and relevant advertisings. At least for me and some friends I talked to, that is absolutely not the case. While it feels like every third post is an ad, there is nothing relevant at all. Basically all ads I get on instagram are trying to sell me 100k passive income online courses, cheap Chinese drop shipping products, knockoff products or trading apps (something I was never remotely interested in either).

I was an early adopter of both Instagram and the iPad. (As an iOS developer, even at the time; I have to keep up with the ecosystem as it evolves.)

I waited for years for them to create an iPad-compatible version. It is literally one of the only apps I use that still uses iPhone mode on an iPad.

'According to Mosseri (Instagram CEO), the reason for Instagram’s iPhone-only app is that the company doesn’t have the resources to develop for both platforms.'[1]

Eye. Roll. If little indie shops can have this out of the gate, I'm sure you could figure out a way to allocate some of your resources to a tablet version.

It's been ten years since both the iPad and Instagram. I get that Instagram is a photo-taking app; and typically you'd use a phone for that. Many of my friends are iPad-only on the Apple ecosystem; and they enjoy taking and editing photos, especially with the Apple Pencil, on the device.

The new iPad Pros have excellent cameras for the hardware - not nearly as great as; say, the iPhone 11, but worthy of taking pictures and it happens all the time.

[1]https://9to5mac.com/2020/02/16/instagram-ipad-app-excuse/

The recommendation engine is bizarre too. I have had minimal interaction with the app, and follow a handful of people. Once I've read their updates, I get 'recommended' posts that are mostly pro-Trump stuff with the occasional random same-looking model from wherever the fuck.

Considering that my Instagram account is linked to my Facebook account, they should be able to figure out that I'm a left-leaning European nerd with very little interest in puffy-lipped models...

Meanwhile TikTok has been eerily good at recommending stuff that amuses or interests me, with very little input from my end of things.

I might be one of the few, but I like the ads I see on Instagram and have purchased lots of things via IG ads. I can’t think of any other app/site where the ads have sucked me in.

I realize this is besides the point, but I thought it was worth sharing in terms of how they might be doing personalization. For me, it’s so good that it actually works.

Are the ads that good for you to be tracked by these companies everywhere you go and sacrifice your privacy?

But can't you still have that same experience? Isn't Apple simply requiring Instagram to ask you if would like to be tracked?

It does annoy me that this isn't mentioned more often. Apple aren't taking this away, they're enabling the user to opt-out.

That these are almost constantly being stated as the same thing, only shows that the vast majority of users do not want to be tracked, and the vast majority of adtech has no respect for the user's wishes. If neither of these were true, having the option would not be an issue.

I added “beside the point” because I believe so, yeah.

Sure, but the ideal framing here is that Apple is not going to assume that on your behalf. It is very welcome to have someone in the space who is willing to say that my phone isn't necessarily a platform built for advertisers.

Would you have bought these items otherwise? If the answer is no, then you were "sucked in".

Google AdWords was great, you search for product X you definitely wanted to buy X, that's reasonable personalization.

Now they want to know who you are, so they can optimize manipulatating you to want X even if you didn't before you saw their ad.

There's a big difference between the two type of advertising, although they're both personalized. One is aligning stake holders interest, the other forms an adversarial dynamics.

Of course, in reality, these are the two ends of a spectrum, I dichotomized it to make my point clearer.

None of the items were life or death essentials. These were things like protein cookies, pet-themed gifts, exercise equipment, etc. I wouldn’t have bought them if I never saw the ads.

But wanting and needing are different things. I wouldn’t consider it manipulation to show me something I might be interested in that I wouldn’t have known about otherwise. For instance, I just discovered (via ads) the galaxy night light trend and I’m now thinking it might be fun to get one.

That's a completely false comparison. just because you want something doesn't mean (a) you need it or (b) the stuff being advertised suits your need.

When you want something, it just means someone else already advertised it to you.

Advertising is merely a tool. The value of products is what matters.

I question the words "sucked in." Influenced is more appropriate.

Before VisiCalc was invented by Frankston and Bricklin, nobody wanted it. Many people had the problem it solved, but nobody knew it existed, so they didn't go looking to buy it.

Advertising and public relations (see PG's essay "the Submarine") influenced people to buy it. A lot of those folks were people whose businesses improved after buying it, which is why "spreadsheets" went on to become one of the most important product categories of its age.

I think the difference between "influenced" and "manipulated" has to do with informed consent. An ad, clearly marked as such, influences. Advertorials masquerading as independent opinion, paying influencers to use a product to generate faux social proof, manipulating social media algorithms to make it appear as if a preponderance of people you know share a particular viewpoint...

That's all manipulation because the recipient is either completely unaware of what is going on, or dark patterns are used to make it difficult for them to discover what is going on.

But using keywords to target people and then giving them an ad that is clearly labeled as an ad? I think that's just influence.

I think that "sucked in" shouldn't be confused to awareness.

There is one thing to manipulate someone into buying something and a different thing to just point to the existence of that product.

You may see it that way, but the overall effect of this on humanity is bad (see https://voxeu.org/article/advertising-major-source-human-dis...).

From my experience, I don't enjoy relentless targeted pressure to give up my money for goods I don't really need. I don't like wasting precious time consuming adverts, each braying for my attention in one way or another. I don't think it's ethical treatment of impulsive types and folks who are less aware of what's really happening them. Interestingly, I have felt less pressure to buy anything since installing advert blockers and ignoring TV. I remember feeling strong sensations that I needed to buy a new phone, that I needed to upgrade my PC. Now I've had the same phone for four years and a PC for even longer. Those pressures and sensations are gone and my wallet thanks me.

A strong case could be made that little would be lost to the world if we banned advertising outright. Also consider, it would be better if we could be recommended goods and services by those who don't have a financial incentive from the providers of goods and services.

That's fine, but then you have no need for instagram at all, since it it 100% unnecessary, so the ads won't nother you either.

Even worse, advertising incentivizes business models whose primary goal is to create addictive behavior, because the side effect is that you see more ads. So, for example, social media companies will do anything they can to increase “engagement”, even if it means spreading conspiracy theories and inflaming politics. Advertising is the root of this problem, because it is the funding mechanism.

I agree - I (and at least one friend) feel the same way. There’s some great stuff being made for nerds like us and IG/FB ads have been a fun way to discover.

That being said - why doesn’t someone just cut out all the BS and just design a system that lets me give you my preferences - “show my interesting new products and services related to tech, cooking, coffee, and bicycling” - and then just show me the ads! I’d actually browse that if the ads were as good as IG/FB.

Would save everyone a ton of effort and hand-wringing.

How do you discover new interests?

Why do people selling cycling junk deserve to be privileged over people selling galaxy nightights?

Stop clicking on ads and start blocking them.

I hate being in a position to defend Facebook or Instagram, but independent of the size of any of the platforms, Apple is a gatekeeper for them, not the other way around.

Are you of the opinion that Apple increasing security and anonymity for the end user is a bad thing?

Is it that simple?

However, hasn't this happened just because they themselves wanted to be mobile first - mostly due to the fact that it was (and partially still is) a "virgin territory" in which abusing users privacy is easer? Sounds like they should only blame themselves...

> However, hasn't this happened just because they themselves wanted to be mobile first

Not just "mobile first", but they were iPhone-only for the first eighteen months:

* https://techland.time.com/2012/04/03/no-joke-instagram-is-fi...

* https://www.cnn.com/2012/04/03/tech/mobile/instagram-android...

>Apple is a gatekeeper for them, not the other way around.

Given that Android has a 75% share[0] of the mobile OS market, that isn't really true. Apple is a gatekeeper for the 23% or so of mobile devices.

I think that giving end users control over what data about them is exfiltrated from their devices is a good thing. And assuming that applies to Apple apps as well, it sounds like a win for IOS users.

N.B.: I do not currently, nor have I ever owned an Apple device. Even the Apple ][ I built from a kit in high school was a clone and not Apple hardware.

[0] https://www.statista.com/statistics/272698/global-market-sha...

Should be noted that in the United States, iOS has the majority share ~59%

https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/mobile/united-sta...

I CAN'T WAIT for decentralized infrastructure to finally become robust enough that clones of instagram and facebook can all share a network -- they'll all become portals to the same social graph data. When that happens, there will no longer be any reason to put up with this abuse of privacy garbage.

Mastodon and Pixelfed already exist and are very functional, the issue is that all instances of the above are run with a hobby-grade SLA and mixed moderation policies and users that do not understand federated services. Even domains on emails get defaulted to gmail.com when in doubt now.

If these will be as popular, we'll still be left with mass disinformation campaigns and culture wars though.

all become portals to the same social graph data...privacy

How will we have privacy when the graph is open?

same as now, encryption and permissions. We'll just have more options and less lock-in.

Never going to happen. Ever. Decentralized means it's inevitably more cumbersome to use. If you make it easier you're taking shortcuts somewhere, especially if you want a platform that's resistant to censorship and is supposed to provide anonymity. And if you actually do succeed in this you'll inevitably end up with a platform where highly immoral content is just a wrong click away.

It'll be this cycle of a new platform being fresh and trendy, then they become bigger, care about being taken seriously by traditional media, for getting ad deals with the big players, then a new platform pops up, cycle repeats.

> Decentralized means it's inevitably more cumbersome to use.

Which will lead to a lot of users being hosted on a single instance which provides convenient access, which completes the loop to centralized. See gmail.

> And if you actually do succeed in this you'll inevitably end up with a platform where highly immoral content is just a wrong click away.

I don't think that is necessarily a problem for most users.

> It'll be this cycle of a new platform being fresh and trendy, then they become bigger, care about being taken seriously by traditional media, for getting ad deals with the big players, then a new platform pops up, cycle repeats.

This is, though. See Reddit :(

How many people (outside of the HN circle) actually use Gmail for personal email now? It's mostly been killed by Facebook, WhatsApp or their alternatives.

And most of these alternatives still need an E-Mail to sign up, which loops back to gmail. Statista puts the number of its users at 1.5 billion in 2018[0]. There are some alternatives, yes, but if you ever tried to run your own mailserver you'll quickly find out that gmail users not receiving your mail is very much a problem.

[0] https://www.statista.com/statistics/432390/active-gmail-user...

Fastmail? Protonmail? Others? It's not as though the only options are gmail and running your own mail server. They aren't free, but neither is your time to run a mail server and gmail is only gratis, not libre.

I've never said its the only option. I use a rather unknown hoster myself. But the majority of the users are with very few companies; for the US and EU gmail probably dominates the private user market.

Or, let's say it this way: If someone selfhosting his mail server doesn't receive your mail, it's his problem. If gmail users don't receive your mail, it's your problem. And that's not a sign of decentralisation.

I think that, given the change we expect to see in human-computer interaction over the next few decades, you can't say never. The majority of the obstacles you outlined are not fundamental but rather implementation problems that can be solved by motivated parties with time and effort. Of course, saying this doesn't mean someone will solve them, just that someone can.

As an example, the censorship and immoral content dilemma is easily solved by letting the user "censor" their own feeds of content they themselves find objectionable. This is already trivially done via block lists and word filters, in the future thanks to ML there can be a much more sophisticated level of control exposed including fuzzy sentiment metrics. I wouldn't be surprised if tools like this are already being built. The key idea here being that the control is with the user rather than with some 3rd-party whom may or may not be taking the users own preferences into account.

I would instead say that the problem is political (or marketing) rather than technical: Facebook and Google were set up by an undergrad in his bedroom and three PhD students respectively. Building alternatives is easy, getting people to use them will be extremely difficult.

Building alternatives that people will use is itself a technical problem, just not one that's as crisp as the algorithmic issues related to distributed computing.

Well, the Fediverse made a start and it is only at the beginning of its evolution. Not billions of users, no, but ever more interconnected apps with features similar to the big platform (but void of algorithmic feeds, ads and many of the dark patterns)

Just a general response to some of the skeptics here (I hear your points, I just think we're still early in the game). I do believe this will happen. I believe it's inevitable, it will just take time. The main advantage over current networks+apps is that it breaks the barrier to entry for new competitors. Mastodon etc are still early newcomers who still have to break that barrier. But once there are many of them playing in the same water, they can gradually build a competing network - slowly at first, then they'll win over the entire new generation. Whatever the next "tik-tok" is could be decentralized, and then the flood gates open. Advertising and privacy issues will still exist, but it will be competitive. There will no longer be a monopoly gate keeper who that sets the rules. Lots of details to be worked out for sure. We need user interfaces to improve and get simplified. I agree that right now federated platforms like mastodon are still too cumbersome for users. But I believe all of this will improve and this will work eventually. I think it's coming this decade.

>I CAN'T WAIT for decentralized infrastructure to finally become robust enough that clones of instagram and facebook can all share a network

What? We HAVE this TODAY. It's called the INTERNET. How would another internet solve the problems that thrived in this version.

I stand with Apple!

I deleted my FB account years ago, never used Instagram. Unfortunately I am forced to use WhatsUp because of my family :( .

I think it is time to put a stop at this selling user data business. Selling user data and ads is not an Apple business, so I trust Apple vs Google, where the majority of their revenue comes from ads.

Apple has to share your data with advertising partners whereas your data doesn't leave Google.

Apple patents trivial programming language features and curved phone corners.

Apple deceptive marketing is well known.

Google has actually contributed lot more than Apple to open source.

There is a FOSS app store for android, because it is not a walled garden like iOS.

There is privacy, as in Linux culture, and there is "Privacy!!" as in apple marketing.

I am not affiliated to Google. But the hate they get here is undeserved.

> And give me a fucking break with bringing the pandemic into this. It’s especially infuriating coming from Facebook, of all companies. Maybe if they weren’t the main vector for the disinformation and anti-science nonsense that has prolonged the pandemic by turning it into a needless culture war, their “concern” would ring more true.

If companies are responsible for the content posted on their platforms, wouldn't that make iPhone the main vector? Especially since they take the most active filtering stance for any app onto their device.

Nope

Companies like Facebook not only show you content, they use algos to show you more of certain content. They provide an editorial choice over what content you should see.

Sure Apple could ban Facebook, but I know you’re just making a stupid argument for sport, not that you actually believe that makes sense and that they should.

Gruber believes Apple should regulate iOS content, which they do all day every day. Apple has banned Gab because of user content.

The question is why they make an exception for Facebook but not for Gab.

I don't see what's different about it. Apple quality control is also just a type of algorithm. They have an algorithm that filters apps with algorithms. It is an editorial choice as well. Stopping after Facebook but before Apple is arbitrary.

There's a pretty simple solution to both sides of the problem people are complaining about in here. Make a personal choice to stop using Apple, Facebook, Instagram, and Epic products. It's pretty easy and there's no cloudiness ethically to this solution. Take personal responsibility and vote with your $currency and attention.

I hope this will be much easier for people to do when there are decentralized options. (other thread here discussing that.) And then the big players can't just buy the competitors and keep locking us into the same problem.

I can't take personal responsibility for how the behavior of a million moron voters affects me.

As long as democracy exists, the crap poured into other people's brains is my responsibility.

> But Facebook has 2.5 billion users and Instagram 1 billion — and they’re the sole gatekeepers of their own massive platforms.

What's good for the goose, not the gander type of mentality at play here.

However, using these numbers 2.5 BILLION users for FB and 1 BILLION users for Insta. Even if these platforms have to go with non-targeted ads, that's still a huge pool of potential eyeballs for an advertiser. If you we placed in front of 1% of that pool, that's 10 MILLION viewers. You'd be hard pressed to get those numbers for a national TV ad. So even 0.5% brings it down to 5 MILLION people. These are very large numbers.

This is a minor variation of the "spammers fallacy" of believing 1% is the smallest number.

What it it's 0.1%? Or 0.00001%?

You're missing the larger point. I'm very well aware that numbers are smaller than 1%. I just used 1% as easy number to do math with larger numbers. The FB/Insta platforms are such a large market for an advertiser. As with all advertising, you can spend as much as you want to hit your numbers.

> Mosseri said Instagram’s advertising business requires certain data to show users relevant ads and to provide value for its advertisers, the majority of which are small and medium-sized businesses.

And they're always showing me utterly irrelevant ads and content ^_^

Not that I complain, I like that they haven't managed to track me well so far. But then again, I do wonder if they'd ever share that info (or if it was leaked), which companies/people would believe about me: whatever I say, or the flawed model that they've built.

The reason Instagram's founders are no longer there is because they could not stomach being forced by facebook to publicly make these kinds of statements.

> but if their ads are less effective without privacy invasive user-tracking, then so be it, they’re less effective

For end advertisers IDFA is not about effectiveness, it's about measuring: we've spent $N on ads at platform X and got Y installs/purchases. Then they can tag those customers with source X and track lifetime value per source.

Without analytics like that we are back to times of TV and newspaper and billboard ads, and small business just may not afford that.

I think that's the point of original quote. I am not a big fan of Facebook and Instagram, but their ad targeting is indeed best on the market. I understand Apple just want to redirect that cash stream into it's own pocket (see "Apple own search engine" leak couple of weeks ago).

Honest question: Does Facebook app on iOS need IDFA that much? A user is logged in and identified anyway, Facebook can deliver personalized ads.

Facebook loses data about user activity outside Facebook, but is it so important? Isn't in-platform data not enough to personalize ads?

For Facebook at least, it's not about 'ads'. Personalised ads are a distraction. Not being able to track outside of their platform takes away the ability to extend the profile they are building around the user. Their customers are interested in this profile because they can use that information to manipulate the user. And we're not talking about choosing Bosch over Whirlpool for a new dishwasher...

You're weirdly obliquely referring to political ads. Those are ads.

Not just ads, but yes ads.

If I friend/follow a lot of people, and I have a simple timeline, I see what they're thinking about.

But if there's an algorithm selecting which posts I see from my social circle, and it happens to shade one way versus another, there are no ads, no synthetic content, but I have still been manipulated.

FB experimented with this quite famously a while back, they used sentiment analysis to see if they could manipulate people into being more or less depressed.

Without informing users, obtaining their consent, or following any of the other rigorous requirements for doing psychological research that we demand from medical proactitioners.

Yes and no. Yes, in the literal sence. Political ads like "Vote for John Doe; the law and order candidate" when you profile as a conservative is fine. Pushing "We send the EU £350 million a week, let's fund our NHS instead" when you profile as conservative isn't, because it's a lie designed to provoke a reaction and rile supporters. Or filling your feed not with just ads, but "news". Yes, that's paid for too.

Edit: braythwayt said it far more eloquently than I...

I might be wrong about this, but it’s my impression that Facebook tries really hard to track everything possible, not just what you’re doing on FB/IG/WA, using those silly like/share buttons people embed everywhere, and other technologies. Considering their vehement arguments against this change in iOS, I’d guess they think those off-platform streams of information are quite important. And I can see why - a user might not use Facebook for hobbies or interests, and tracking them around the web would give a much better view of someone. It’s quite sleazy.

I remember a study showing that 25% of the top 100 Android apps were sending data to Facebook.

Developers working on building adtech are just as unscrupulous and complicit in undermining our privacy as Zuckerberg and Mosseri are in defending their money-printing social media spyware platforms.

Change my view if you disagree.

Also Instagram has lots of other ways to get info on you. eg if you follow or like photos in CityX then they can assume you are interested in that city and show you ads about it. And so on, about any subject.

This article is not correct.

Does Apple track user information? Yes, they just don't sell those data to adverisers but keep those information for themeselves and use it as advantage to sell their services and devices.

The number of Facebook users doesn't mean anything because Facebook and Instagram are free services, there are a lot of inactive accounts and bot accounts. In order to publish their apps to app store they have to get approval from Apple and Google. So Apple is still the ultimate gatekeeper.

All cylinders firing on this one. Couldn't agree more.

Apple seems to be on a PR offensive after a few weeks of bad press and it seems they are employing their usual bloggers to entertain the developer audience. I dunno why devs participate in this PR circus.

And btw the author is wrong about comparing to facebook’s platform, which is still the most open, free to use large platform out there.

That's a bit like saying "the most open, free" jail...

Yes if course. Developers need to treat all commercial platforms with cynicism and realize that they re honeytraps. You are always allowed to eat at first but then you gotta run out asap

I find this article stupid for the primary reason that everyone has been absolutely bending over backwards to justify Apple's stance vs Epic, where everyone's argument in favor of Apple comes down to a pro-capitalist, dog-eat-dog, "if you don't like it, don't buy it" type of thing. But for other apps actually powering the iPhone's popularity, this argument is completely absent, and by behaving the same way, these companies are "dickheads." The hypocrisy is unbelievable.

How many users Facebook or Instagram has is beside the point which is that Apple is most definitely abusing its market position.

Could you share your reasoning as to why this is Apple abusing its market position?

To me it appears that Apple is simply giving users control and transparency in what data is being used. I understand your point to be that because Apple is so large and controls a large market, they can't make changes like this? Correct me if I'm wrong, but if that is your point, then I would have to disagree. By this reasoning, what could Apple do that wouldn't count as accusing I its market position?

You're 100% right. Everything Apple does can be construed as "abuse" if someone is willing to argue in bad faith.

iOS now tells you when one app pastes content from the clipboard, if the contents of the clipboard came from another app.

e.g., You copy a zip code from Messages, and then switch to the "HN-Maps" app. If HN-Maps sniffs the clipboard in order to suggest that zip code as a destination, you see a notification that "HN-Maps pasted from Messages."

That sounds like a good feature for me as a user, but a terrible feature for app developers that want to constantly and silently scan your clipboard for keywords they can add to the data they sell on their shady data exchanges.

They can and will complain that Apple is "abusing" its monopoly power, but this isn't abuse at all. Next, I expect them to complain that Apple's feature that shows you which apps are draining your battery is also abusing their power to make users uninstall apps that are greedy for battery.

iOS is a shopping mall, and when you write apps for the platform, you're renting a space in the mall and must able by all the regulations in the lease that were put in there for the benefit of the landlord. Part of the landlord's interest is their pocketbook immediately--see the app store's 30% haircut--and part of the landlord's interests are the long-term viability of the mall.

The landlord--Apple--has to care about things like user satisfaction, because the tenants--facebook, et al.--would happily burn down the entire platform for a buck or two.

> iOS now tells you when one app pastes content from the clipboard, if the contents of the clipboard came from another app.

Does it do that for all apps, or only non-Apple-apps?

Just tried it on iPadOS 14, and yes, "Messages pasted from Safari."

Definitely also includes Apple’s apps, I’ve just tested copying in Safari and pasting into Notes.

All, including Apples built-in apps. It tells you where the data was copied from and which app it was pasted to.

You'd expect first-party apps to handle this properly. The intention is that you probe the clipboard metadata (which doesn't display this warning) to see if the clipboard looks like it might be useful to you - and then act (or offer to act) if it does.

So first-party apps should have bought into the data-detectors stuff wholesale.

An example of this would be the url bar in Safari. If you try to paste into the address bar, you'll be offered "Paste and go" if the clipboard offers a url-like object, and "Paste and search" if it's a non-url stringy object. You'll get the "Safari has pasted from Mail" warning after you select one of these, because the contents were not exposed during the metadata operations. This is the expected behaviour.

Maps actually make a perfect example of why this needs to exist, even without malicious actors.

Your zipcode example starts off as a perfectly well-meaning example of clipboard-sniffing, but after a very short meeting with "reality", quickly turns into passing strings to a geo API because there's a lot more addresses than just zipcodes we'd like to detect.

And it just so happens that the most significant provider of such an API, is also one of the most significant providers of adtech going ..

You can see how quickly it goes from "providing seamless UX" to "the road to hell is paved with good intentions".

You are preaching to the choir on this subject!

No. If Apple would be using the data and deny others access to it, then it would be abuse. I don't think that is happening. Apple is just improving their product.

Maybe. But I would say this is a case where the consumers’ interests aligns with Apple’s.

Neither Apple nor Facebook own my privacy. The fact that some people are turning this into an argument about Apples walled garden is a very convenient way to side step the real issue which is that some organisations feel entitled to my data when in fact that should be up to me if I want to share it or not.

By offering knowledge to their clients? I wouldn't call it abuse, I would call it a service.

I'd be way more interested in actually reading this if the headline didn't contain pointless profanities. Like this, I tag it Fanboi-ism and move on.

Eh, it's a reasonable post if you look past the headline.

The profanity likely comes about from frustration with facebook (particularly for playing the pandemic card) which I don't think is particularly unjustified or from a place of fanboy-ism.

Frustration is fine. But a professional with an audience of millions should proofread their work. Content that isn't allowed in HN comments shouldn't be in HN posts either.

That's how you know the author is cool and irreverent. An iconoclast!

lol

I agree that the headline is in poor taste. (And I say that as a frequent DF reader.) Still a good article though.

It's completely justified in context.

Nobody could be mislead into thinking that "Vitamin Water" is a healthy drink.

Same level of idiotic justification for the detriment of the consumer.

> It's completely justified in context.

Personal abuse like this is never justified. We should always challenge it when we see it.

welcome to the world of grown ups. there is effin and jeffin everywhere

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