Uber for example doesn't seem to work from my phone browser.
What surprises me is how many engineers must be involved in this kind of scummy shit and keep it tightly under wraps.
But, they've managed to make "phones use apps, not browsers" a social norm that enough people accept tacitly, perhaps because near enough everyone has the ability to install apps on their own phones.
And then their app is just a webview wrapper. But that still gives them more access to your device.
Not long ago Facebook (Meta) was caught spinning up localhost server on Android devices to gather activities outside of the app.
And if you are concerned with your privacy, it’s nonsensical to buy a phone run by an adtech company that only made the operating system in the first place to sell ads and collect your data
Pwa with permissions granted gives access to: Location, create notification, phone state, phone #, IMEI, motion data
Mobile app with permissions gives access to EVERYTHING a pwa gets PLUS, Contacts, sms, notification content, biometrics data, web browsing data, phone activity history, location history, camera access, microphone access, NFC access, near device history, nearby wifi listing, saved wifi networks, Bluetooth device ID, Bluetooth beacons nearby, some device settings, personal data access(photos/music)
And iOS doesn’t allow third party apps to intercept SMS messages.
It was a bit of a longer one, but still far below Instagram's supposed character limit. The fact that they somehow broke copy-paste functionality really baffles me.
It's such a pervasive pattern and somehow always in the direction: the app works better than the website. If there even is a website.
Remember when uber wouldn't work for regulators either?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controversies_surrounding_Uber...
Also I don't think these people know how capable PWAs are. There's very little you can't do in a web-app that you can do with a native app.