Zuckerberg wants to 'inflict pain' on Apple for privacy changes
appleinsider.com
appleinsider.com
Both companies are trying to sell more of their product.
Of these two I am much more concerned about Facebook because I have much less control over the transaction.
Facebook is easy to ignore. As an app developer there is no way for me to ignore half of all phone users in the US.
If you don't like some other app store, don't shop there.
And, as an iPhone user myself I want this option. So, you certainly do not speak for all iPhone users.
Sure, that's why I said this, explicitly- "Many of us that love our iPhones partially do because of the AppStore."
> That still doesn't explain how giving us a choice of app stores causes a problem.
I'd say, Apple shouldn't and doesn't have to offer another app store because their platform doesn't suck, because of their decisions. I don't want outsiders setting the precedent that people like you are going to be telling Apple how to run their business, it works very well right now without you.
Zuckerberg level mindless ambition wastes everyones time and energy. He has no clue what outcomes his network is going to produce tomorrow morning but stands around acting as if what comes out of his head matters. Its like watching the guy in Jurassic Park still believing things can be fixed after the kids are missing, the power is gone and the raptors have escaped.
Its really mind boggling the patience people have show this buffoon running essentially an unapproved social psyc experiment on 2 billion lab rats, imposing a half baked reward system, that amplifies randomness.
Agreed with what you said, but that's a very inflated figure FB wants us to believe. Most people I know have 2 or more accounts, also all those profiles of dead people, companies manage other fake accounts for promotion, and there are spam actors that run huge amounts of fake profiles. So there might be around 100 million rat labs or way less.
The very point is that it doesn't amplify randomness but content that provokes emotions.
I happily use Facebook (as does almost everyone I know).
I don't consider myself a lab rat, and think it's kind of an offensive way to view your fellow humans in general.
You don't need to be so morally outraged on my behalf - Facebook provides a product that I love using, and I use it, with the understanding that they get advertising money out of it. I'm fine with that transaction, as are most people. You don't have some secret knowledge that I don't have (I imagine) - I know the same things as you, and yet I decide that for myself, using FB is worth the tradeoff of the privacy/advertisements vs. the product itself.
The same as when I decide to eat ice cream, even though it's bad for me. Do you want to put ice cream makers in prison too on my behalf?
Facebook is just a site you don't pay anything to use.
made me immediately think "just don't use Facebook?".
This is like telling people who have privacy concerns about 23andMe / Ancestry DNA "just don't use them." Meanwhile their parents or siblings happily open up the floodgates.
But it's also true that FB probably has way less data about you if you don't use it.
Given that, most people still happily use it (including me).
https://www.newsweek.com/facebook-tracking-you-even-if-you-d...
https://www.publicaffairsbooks.com/titles/shoshana-zuboff/th...
1) If you're in tech then the concepts are obvious. But if you're not then plenty of context and education is in order. Most people are the latter. The book is for them.
2) She takes the matter _very_ serious. Rightfully so. The depth and breadth is a form of counter defense. She's thorough and pro-active about plugging holes.
It's not any easy read. But how do you make "privacy as you knew it is on life support" sexy and fun?
https://www.econtalk.org/shoshana-zuboff-on-surveillance-cap...
Not as thorough as the entire book but maybe listening to the interview would help persuade you?
Providing a marketplace like this might loosely be construed as "selling customers" but it is in a massively different class of less abusive behavior than how facebook sells customers.
https://www.wired.com/story/install-apps-outside-app-store-s...
And if they switch to another mall Apple will make their messages green on white to make it harder for elderly parents who stayed in the mall to read and keep up with their kids. That's pretty abusive too, a sort of excommunication via inscrutability.
Facebook through extremely good targeting has turned into the no 1 app discovery tool. This is a fact. This is not to Apple's advantage. They need the app store control for the future of the iphone.
This is simply a way to regain the control. It's the only goal.
It's much harder to go about life without a smart phone than to go without a Facebook account. If you don't register for Facebook and block websites from loading JS snippets from Facebook with e.g. a simple HTTP proxy or domain-based filter, you can more or less block Facebook from getting and selling any info about you.
With iOS or Google's version of Android it's damn near impossible to not hand out all your data.
EDIT: Thanks for the downvotes, I guess criticism of Apple isn't welcome here as usual. But I stand by my right to be suspicious of what they do behind a walled garden OS.
An exception where a smartphone can make a huge difference is travelling — maps, translation, transportation etc all within your fingertips truly are priceless.
I do understand that I'm not the standard model user though, I usually only get a new phone once the last one literally isn't usable anymore.
A lot of places and apps are moving to require smartphones, and I hate this trend.
In China for example you can't even open a bank account without a smart phone, vending machines require smartphones, and even some robotic grocery and convenience stores are requiring a QR code scan to enter the store. I even saw a public restroom once that requires a QR code scan and SMS verification to dispense toilet paper. (That's right, no shitting at that toilet for foreign business professionals without a local +86 phone number and bank account.)
The whole world tends to be moving in that direction now. Uh, welcome to the future? On the US side I've had meetings with clients using Microsoft (R) (SM) (C) (TM) Teams that require a smartphone to authenticate. I have to deposit checks to my bank with a smartphone because they refuse to implement a web version and they also don't have a lot of physical branches. Even Signal, probably the only trustable E2E encryption app, wants a smartphone to log in (ugh).
The phone fulfils almost no other function in my life. Replaced grudgingly every 5-8 years, when it falls apart. I'm on my 4th mobile phone.
Not the "standard model user" either (thank god).
BTW, I keep one separate "security" phone for authentication. Ancient (my 2nd), internet off, stays put.
* There are some feature phones that supposedly support it. These are hard to trust, and probably won't work once Whatsapp has an non-backward compatible update.
[1] Brazil
Isn’t this whole Apple-Facebook feud due to Apple trying to allow users to have more say in their data? It seems weird you’re criticizing them for sharing data in a thread about them trying to let users have more say about their data than competitors and their competitors wanting to sue them over it.
How do you tell 80% (being generous) of the people to go about with JS disabled? Let alone setting-up a proxy, or setting your phone to even allow you to block domains.
I didn't downvote you because you criticized Apple or Google. I downvoted you because I don't think you made a very strong argument to support your claim about going without smartphones. There are reasonable options available with smartphones that don't spy on you. They're not flagship quality, not the fastest phones, but they work fine if your needs for a smartphone are to stay in contact with people for work/personal life, browse the internet, etc. PinePhone for example is gaining popularity & much cheaper: Their new version just sold out but they're taking pre-orders for the next shipment. For something a bit closer to flagship quality you can go for the Librem 5.
I just ordered a PinePhone in the latest batch. From what I’ve been able to find is the software support is a little better for the PinePhone, but the hardware is slower than the already slow Librem 5. It’s closer to being a daily driver, but not by much.
Neither of these phones are a replacement for what most people consider smartphones. Maybe through Android emulation they could be, but if it’s not available as a Linux application or a website then it’s not available for these phones.
And It really amazes me how some people take articles like this at face-value, believing anything they say. If they said "this" person said "this" thing, as-long as they hate him, they'll instantly jump on believing and ridiculing.
Nobody here talk about money making, there are things more important in life. Like, you know, not running drug traffic or mass espionage.
But I still think a capitalist who is a threat to US democracy is not a good capitalist.
Not good for democracy, not good for other capitalists and/or entrepreneurs, not good for the capital itself, and not good enough for me.
People who say this are a higher threat to democracy, tbh.
Oh Jesus Christ talk about over-exaggerations.
> Tim Cook calls out Facebook's business model, says it leads to 'violence,' 'polarization'
This statement seems to stand on its own, without a need for "proof". If the business model itself leads to this, the conclusion is that the internal conversations about protecting that model also lead to violence and/or polarized thinking. If we look at the alleged occurrence, we can then draw a conclusion without the need for "reputation". There's also the manifesto.
That means the WSJ is convinced he said it.
> Behind closed doors, Zuckerberg allegedly wanted to bring Apple down a peg, supposedly telling his team "we need to inflict pain" to the iPhone maker.
As for the headline... well, it’s a decade past time to acknowledge that clickbait headlines are the norm. It’s how they get people to read the article, where they can make money from ads. The headlines will always be clickbait until this changes.
or you have the genuine reputation to be taken
for your word (good luck with that)
Traditionally, a big publication would vet stories like this. Maybe someone who knows more about journalism than I do could weigh in re: the state of editors and fact-checking in 2021. Given that publications today expect their writers to churn out story after story, the vetting process has probably gone downhill.
I am thinking this is a very low bar for anything.
If we want to be technical, according to Quantum physics, doesn't anything have non-zero probability? :P
This is such a perfect observation! My very intelligent and well-educated friends, most of them successful engineers in the Silicon Valley, behave exactly as you described. And it's not at all limited to the current political divisions in the US.
Why would seemingly smart people trust random posts on internet, as long as those posts confirm what they want to hear?
Unbelievable but true. Very sad indeed.
And that is the big problem.
It’s a form of disenfranchisement: Lowerclass people more often have Androids and have much less choice in tracking, while higherclass people can at least choose, by the sheer design of their phone.
It should be required that Android did the same. After all, a pure market is where people are fully informed and have a choice, so there could be a theoretical basis for requiring Android not to be confusing with permissions.
Assuming you go through Google Play, which you aren't required to. And assuming Google Play actually reviews apps, including every single update, which it sometimes does but crappily.
https://www.scmp.com/magazines/style/news-trends/article/300...
Probably not nearly enough to cancel out the rest of their behaviour but at least some.
"The enemy of my enemy..."
Is still very much my enemy, and I'd be a fool to let my guard down.
Facebook plans a smartwatch with deep ties to Facebook to compete with the iPhone. Talk about a hard nope for me.
I just assume it's a direct feed of all your bodily activity direct to Zuck Central. Supported by real time advertising direct to your brain.
Without having an OS to back it up like the Apple Watch has iOS and the Android Wear has Android, it’ll just be a worse smartwatch.
What would their killer app be?
I don't think they will.
Apple dominates the smartwatch category because they are the only ones willing to invest in CPUs and components to make them really work well. Well that plus iPhone integration.
> What would their killer app be?
My theory would be perhaps the "Killer" feature would be communications. If they could come up with a killer cellular watch that just goes around the smartphone entirely, they might make something appealing.
But Facebook has shown zero capability to actually come up with good ideas on their own so I doubt this will go far. If Samsung with all their hardware chops can't really come up with a decent Apple Watch competitor, is Facebook with no hardware experience going to come in and hit a home run? Or even a single?
Seems unlikely
Why would they have to?
With Facebook money I could write a new OS, put it in a smartwatch, and give them away free.
Plus start a new app _store_ to go with it.
>What would their killer app be?
Anything that was free.
Maybe I shouldn't be giving them any ideas . . .
Why? Facebook, of course.
See also: Amazon
Supposedly the Portal is actually nice hardware wise, but the Facebook association was just toxic for them.
In fact, why don't they release their own version of spotify for the sole reason to prove how anticompetitive apple is with pricing.
If someone has the financial resources to do that, and the actual shareholder interest, it's Facebook.
*Pending FTC approval, which is questionable.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTC_First
https://www.cnet.com/news/heres-why-the-facebook-phone-flopp...
https://www.gsmarena.com/flashback_the_motorola_rokr_e1_was_...
They’ve very little chance to make their phone cool. Maybe if they use the Instagram brand.
FB has a lot of engineering talent and experience on distributed operations and services side, so if they really want to diversify, perhaps should leverage that.
Facebook has leverage - if their future on iOS (and maybe even Android at some point) is at risk, they could very well release a Facebook phone and offer incentives to their users to move.
Developers would also be onboard if Facebook offers incentives to them. Despite all the bad reputation Facebook gets on the surface, most tech companies happily use and depend on Facebook for their marketing & advertising efforts, so they'd be more likely to embrace the Facebook ecosystem if iOS is interfering with their marketing ability.
I do not see Facebook playing catch up with Google, Samsung, the Chinese and Apple in OS, services (like maps) and hardware development, as it is too expensive to get FB into a competitive state in regards to tech, even if they forked AOSP instead of starting from scratch. A mere Facebook branded AOSP will not cut it (and then they'd still need to develop services on top, because people want more than just a facebook App, and app developers want more than just a generic AOSP + FB API)...
Then they'd have to solve the supply chain to get production rolling.
And then they would have to convince people to use their product, which is the toughest problem they'd have to overcome. Their reputation simply isn't great.
Any subsidies can only be limited. How much money could they reasonably offer a FB phone user (in exchange for their data) after having burned through billions in development, production development and marketing? Something like 50 bucks at most I'd think, if they want to still stay profitable. That's not yet a "convincer". Apple users do not mind paying a premium already, and in the Android world you already have lots of products at all prices. And let's not forget that phones (other than Apple phones) are relatively low margin.
Microsoft tried and failed to enter that market, already. And MS reputation with consumers compared to FB was a LOT better.
It's not impossible, but it would be a moonshot, and a moonshot that would be betting the company's well-being.
Entering the smartphone market is a lot harder than creating a new market like they try with Oculus, or Tesla did with electric cars[1]. And Zuckerberg isn't exactly an Elon Musk either[1] when it comes to public perception, or a Cook or Jobs or Brin or Page or even Bezos or still-at-MS Gates.
[1] The market was essentially non-existent and the few products that you could get were all rather subpar. Tesla essentially still had a first mover advantage, and supported their R&D with a limited premium car production with high margins, convincing investors to throw money at them and massive debt.
[2] Tho I have heard Zuckerberg described as a Martian, something that Musk aspired to be :P
However, the tables have turned to the point where Facebook's future on iOS appears to be in jeopardy, so a hardware bet might make more sense - as in they might not have a choice if they want to keep growing and maintain/increase their valuation.
It might not be severe pain, but we should not underestimate FB power as it controls our individual feeds.
Google doesn't know what they are doing. They have so far shown nothing, zip, zero in strategy and vision. And their execution aren't that good either.
Microsoft, despite the new direction are somewhat better in execution. But it is arguably much the same as they were in the 90s. I guess Steve Jobs put it best, the lack of taste.
If you think the criticism is hash, that is because the comparison is relative, it doesn't mean they are bad in absolute terms, it is just Apple is on another level with strategic play and execution. ( Apple started their Qualcomm play in early 2014, and likely even earlier off record before they sued Qualcomm in 2017 )
Both Google and Microsoft are busy expanding their Cloud business. All while Apple is slowly squeezing all the money out of all online Ads as an industry ( cross site, targeted or not ). Moving the most lucrative user ( iPhone user ) away from Ads and web to Apps. Collecting more Raw Profits Per User with Google Default Search Engine. i.e Apple is increasing the cost of Google doing online business while taking away their revenue generating opportunity. This is a double squeeze. And using iPhone, iPad as leverage to slowly move Fortune 500 Enterprise towards using Mac. It actually isn't as far fetch as people may think when Java and Office works perfectly on Mac M1.
But Apple isn't perfect. It has its own Achilles heel. App Store Revenue, Google Default Search Engine, and Monopolistic behaviour. Today, the iPhone has 66% market share in the United States, 75% of U.S. App Store revenues, and over 80% of time spent on the mobile internet. If Zuckerberg plays his cards right, aiming at the first two item alone is close to 50% of Apple's Net Profit. And he doesn't even have to do it himself or using Facebook to do it. He just have to fund it.
Otherwise FB impact amounts to nothing and the company has zero worth.
The classic Zuck quote, "They trust me — dumb fucks" still applies.
https://gawker.com/5636765/facebook-ceo-admits-to-calling-us...
A common mistake software developers make is believing their software is important enough to warrant the investment in time it takes to learn it.
It usually isn't.