The idea of doing a public campaign over this is so myopic that I cannot fathom the thinking about it. Who’s going to rally for Facebook? Did they really expected Apple to change this?
The ad should scare investors much more than Apple’s move.
They can’t hire people with good ideas anymore because as we know money isn’t a great motivator (and besides, there are more ethical companies within 10 miles paying as much or more than Facebook). They can’t hire good people anymore because their mission is naive and their reputation precedes them.
> They can’t hire people with good ideas anymore because as we know money isn’t a great motivator
This is not entirely true. I have seen excellent people go to Facebook because they gave out the highest offers. Now whether they get people with good ideas is something I don't know.
I don't know if this generalizes across the company. They still have brilliant technical people, some of the best ML researchers, have open-sourced increbidly popular and influential frameworks like React and PyTorch. Just because their upper management or their business model might suck doesn't mean that they don't have great people working there.
Anecdotal, but I’ve seen several folks get offers from FB and other big tech, and I’ve seen FB throw much more money at people. They also have better perks.
I think they know they need to use money to overcome their reputation.
> because as we know money isn’t a great motivator
HR industry would like you to believe that, but it's an intentional bastardization of the original research by Kahneman and Deaton (1), twisting their words to fit their cost cutting agenda. The original finding states that past a rather high threshold (~$75k), additional raise alone is an insufficient motivator. Below that threshold, money alone works just fine as a motivator. Above that threshold, pay hike still enhances other motivators.
In Bay Area, I agree that ethical concerns likely dwarf money. $120k/year in Europe would let them scrape the creme de la creme, despite near universal dislike among tech-crowd.
> They can’t hire people with good ideas anymore because as we know money isn’t a great motivator
I know tens of people from my past who currently work in Facebook. When I knew then, they were all decent people with long careers in the tech industry. Yet, they chose to work for FB.
A fresh grad son of my ex-Boss is starting his career with FB.
Unfortunately FB's brand is not as tainted, yet, as it should be or as some of us in the HN echo-chamber like to believe.
When their internal memo about "connecting people" was leaked to the public, some FB employees wanted to actively select for loyalty in their hiring process:
> Leakers, please resign instead of sabotaging the company
> How fucking terrible that some irresponsible jerk decided he or she had some god complex that jeopardizes our inner culture and something that makes Facebook great?
> Although we all subconsciously look for signal on integrity in interviews, should we consider whether this needs to be formalized in the interview process?
> This is so disappointing, wonder if there is a way to hire for integrity. We are probably focusing on the intelligence part and getting smart people here who lack a moral compass and loyalty.
Tell that to John Carmack, who apparently is quite fine with tainting his legacy and wasting his last few good work years working for Facebook of all companies. And to top it all off, they're going to ruin Oculus, too (where Carmack is working), going by the latest moves in that division.
FB signaling is not targeted at you or me, Grandma, or most of the rest of the public.
It is to show a credible commitment to Apple's other adversaries, in an attempt to rally enough power to take them down a peg and (more importantly) win some control over the Iphone platform.
Given the wording, I still don't see how this works. A more long term, indirect approach would probably work better.
If Facebook had a continuous, long term, PR campaign, where they reasonably established themselves as helping small businesses, and then they did this. I would get it.
But like this? In isolation, it feels more like a knee jerk reaction and not a thought out messaging campaign.
My guess is that the root cause is one of internal perception vs external perception. They see the threat and honestly believe they're in the right. That's how they rationalize it, but the rest of the world assumes more nefarious intent (which is also exaggerated, the truth is likely somewhere in the middle).
I'm fascinated by the decision too. But I'm guessing it isn't driven by stupidity.
This campaign seems very unlikely it will change public opinion or make Apple change their position.
Perhaps the campaign helps to build a position in terms anti-trust legal proceedings? As the least vertically integrated of the big tech companies, it helps build a case that they are the victim, not the perpetrator - Apple is using its market power to shut them out.
But I don’t see them having a decent argument. Apple will (rightfully) say this gives their customers (who pay $$$ to get on their platform) a choice. They’ll also argue that “opt-in” is the right way to go for this kind of choice.
Facebook’s argument is “but it isn’t in our customer’s interests”, and they may add “if Apple adds such a feature, it should be opt-out”.
That first argument doesn’t have any value. Why would any third party have to accommodate Facebook’s advertising business? The second one is extremely weak, as ‘the world’ is moving towards, or already arrived at “opt-in is the only good choice”.
They also publicly stated that Apple’s opt-in doesn’t apply to Apple’s own adverts. _If_ that’s correct, they have a good point, but I think that’s a very, very big _if_.
Apple recently has gotten lots of issues with antitrust lawsuits, especially in EU. Probably this kind of public campaign will likely draw more attentions from other iOS developers who have enough complaints but scared to fight against Apple. And even for Apple, FB (+Instagram and WhatsApp) is not something trivial to crush unlike Epic or Spotify. FB alone might be negotiable, but this can grow into significant headaches for Apple if it lets other Unicorn-level companies to form a coalition with FB or other tech giants.
The proliferation of spyware has become unbearable. You cannot anymore use any app or service - even the paid ones - without having to worry that any of your data is being collected. And no, reading through piles of TOS and privacy disclaimers is not gonna solve this.
Users must gain control back and opt-in must be the default.
Full Open Source and Libre software will be a solution, as it has always been.
Is there any other real solution, besides emotional rhetoric? I don't believe regulation will really help, they will just skirt the lines and have lots of oopses.
> Full Open Source and Libre Software will be a solution
I'm all in for FOSS but in the current state of the infrastructure that would just swap reading TOS to reading source. It just is not feasible for every single user. The alternative is crowd trust but that problem tends to be solved naturally by institutionalization, which brings other requirements such as organization and solving monetary problems.
What we need is a change in infrastructure. Why is it allowed that IP addresses are geolocated in the first place? Why do browsers share the name of your graphics adapter by default? Why is the user agent not abolished?
I can't imagine that even the less technical, typically less privacy concerned public, is going to have much sympathy for Facebook disliking Apple's move to put privacy controls in users hands. In fact considering the political bipartisan dislike for Facebook at the moment, I can't help but see this as outright counter productive.
A better PR move would have been to say "We are always seeking ways to put the reins of control withing users hands, and are happy to see that Apple has similar goals. At the same time we will educate users on the value of working with Facebook on the benefits heightened user experience when Facebook is able to generate custom content and tailored user experiences"
Lies and generalities sure, but at least it isn't shooting themselves in the foot.
This isn't the end of facebook. These privacy changes will affect all social networks and they all run a free membership model. It will certainly change their profitability but facebook is earning so much money there's a long way to go before this becomes an existential problem. If anything these new changes might eliminate some of facebook's competitors because they will have a much harder time to grow their user base without the additional revenue from spying on their users.
The article's thesis is that the free content model is dying, and FB needs to pivot to a paid one.
It may rather be that the content market is bifurcating, with "free" going toward the lower end mass market. Which FB seems perfectly positioned to serve.
I was a big supporter of Apple for a long time and welcomed privacy focused initiatives when they first started making noise a while back.
However since then I’ve become much more skeptical. Apple is no less evil or different; okay, I take that back, they are slightly better but I’m no longer a fanboy.
I don’t think the Apple of today, who carefully monitor what everybody does on their macs and make it difficult / annoying to bypass the Mac App Store, cares about privacy or the consumer as much as they lead us to believe. Steve Jobs cared a lot about privacy, from what I have read, but the current group, whilst highly intelligent and producing great innovative products like the M1, are very much driven by profit and not vision.
Examples include not providing basic accessories with their expensive iPhone products (seriously I spent 1,000 for an iPhone 12 Pro Max for my Girlfriend and there is no wall plug? Give me a break with their environment saving reasons, they could easily donate a lot more money if they really cared about the environment and not try to trick consumers that they are do-gooders).
The more nefarious example is how Apple is pushing paid apps and subscriptions so much on their App Store, since they take a cut. It’s a core part of their services strategy. I don’t see too much ethical differences between selling users privacy for ads and aggressively taking advantage of the average consumer and trying to lure them more and more into more paid subscriptions (many which they don’t need and also are overpriced, but since it’s a monthly charge it is harder to tell).
I am not comfortable with Apple, Facebook, Google, Microsoft and Amazon being so large and controlling the tech landscape.
I’ve used MacBooks for the past 10 years, my next computer will 100% be a Linux.
The issue is supporting companies in general instead of the actions they take. I think this is a great move by apple to educate people on the privacy they are sacrificing with apps. That doesn't mean I'm a fanboy. Being a fanboy seems like it's almost always a mistake as it will just lead to illogical support of decisions that harm you.
> and make it difficult / annoying to bypass the Mac App Store
I'm trying to avoid cherry picking, but this isn't my experience at all. I use a Mac for work and haven't really made any use of the app store. Nonetheless, I have all the apps I need and homebrew fills in the rest. Is there something I've unwittingly avoided?
No, there really isn't. There are apps that I've bought through the App Store, some of which I actually use at work, and I don't really see value in "avoiding" apps just because they're in the App Store. But most of what I use is outside it, and if an app is available both inside and outside -- as many are -- I usually get the direct sale one.
(While I shouldn't speak for the OP, I'm a little suspicious that this is the "Big Brother Apple is going to lock down macOS just like iOS" narrative popping up again.)
As a recent switcher to macOS I certainly have that leash-like feel.
First, app versions often differ between the Mac App Store and developer's own website. "Independent" versions tend to be a bit less restrictive, packing more functionality or features that Apple forbids for any reason. For instance, the App Store version of Elmedia player does not have a video/stream saving feature. Other apps like Telegram (specifically, the App Store versions) restrict the user from viewing the channels/communities which have been marked as spreading "pornographic"/"pirate" content. Needless to say, the app variants obtained from elsewhere pack all the features.
Second, I was surprised (well, not really) to learn about "notarization" in the latest versions of macOS, which essentially means signing the app by Apple. These days it's not just about scaring the user into thinking that unidentified apps are inherently evil (which the OS does a lot), it's also actively preventing the user from actually opening such apps. In Catalina the default dialog for opening an identified app features something like two buttons, offering to "Cancel" and "Move to Trash". So you have to either go to the Settings and override the security control or know that a control-click spawns the same window with an additional "Open" button being available.
At this point one starts thinking, how long will it take before those overrides and control-clicks get taken away for good.
Privacy aligns with Apple’s revenue model (selling hardware) but not with Facebook’s (selling ads). This is the only reason you should have faith that Apple will work to protect your privacy, while Facebook will work to undermine it.
I don't believe this for a second. Apple's largest revenue growth has been in services, and they are sitting on a trove of data. They have a million bad incentives.
Honestly I can't believe we're even having this discussion. It's like Google all over again.
Apple says "trust us" but gives us no way to verify the trust. Trust without verification is a long-term recipe for disaster.
Everyone says that Apple’s business is selling hardware but that’s changing. Apple Music, Apple TV, iCloud storage and their commission on app sales are all clear software incentives. Yes, they’re still dominated by hardware sales but it’s obvious they are interested in diversifying.
For many if not most people, an iPhone's raison d'etre is to connect to these ad driven services. It is annoying that Apple gets a pass because their business is merely selling shovels rather than mining gold.
I don’t get the charger whining from people. If you add the price of the charger and the wired earphones to the price of the phone then with inflation it’s cheaper than the handsets were in 2018.
I’ve got 7 Apple chargers here as well. This is a completely rational decision which is transitional while we all move to USB-C slowly.
Your general point is right but it’s not the state of the company you need to look at but the direction they are travelling and Apple appears to be heading in the least wrong direction.
> then with inflation it’s cheaper than the handsets were in 2018
Inflation has consistently outpaced increase in salaries, so it still costs more on real terms
> I’ve got 7 Apple chargers here as well
And yet there's a substantial market for third-party chargers, even the smallest convenience stores sell them.
From personal experience the majority of everyday folk have one or two chargers in their house, and as many cables. If they sell or giveaway an old phone then a charger has to go with it.
I am not sure it's whining. Apple is cutting costs while pretending it's for a larger cause.
I might also have 7 chargers, but none of them are for USB-C - the type of the cable that they did include with the box. So I still have to buy a charging brick.
Apple from today is just similar to the Apple from 30 years ago, those that only know OS X post Apple are figuring it out now that they aren't in deep need of cash any longer.
It’s not, I quite like the Unix base of OSX. However there are many things where you need to tinker with the settings quite a bit to get apps to work well, that work out of the box on Linux.
I know Linux has enough / more problems than OSX, but I’m finally quite motivated to take a stance on this, it’s getting ridiculous on how much big tech want to control our machines.
If you mean installing Linux directly on my MacBook, sure that is possible — however I am happy with Catalina for now, so will just upgrade to the latest x86 Linux build in about 3 years. Unless M1 changes the computing world all together....
> I don’t see too much ethical differences between selling users privacy for ads and aggressively taking advantage of the average consumer and trying to lure them more and more into more paid subscriptions (many which they don’t need and also are overpriced, but since it’s a monthly charge it is harder to tell).
If you buy something, you're consciously making a transaction. You're handing money to someone in exchange for a good. In contrast, Facebook entices users to join their platform, and then subtly collects analytics about users through a variety of ways across the internet without any indication that they're there, save for some very subtle fine print.
I don't see how consciously exchanging money is even remotely close to ad-tracking networks. If anything, there should be at least the same level of friction for tracking as there is with a normal transaction -- which is what Apple is doing here.
Yes, Apple is totally motivated to push this, but in a capitalist society, what's your proposed alternative?
haha these companies like facebook, google are so shit. First they start monopoly and later say "We are fighting for small companies, people bla bla bla". Why not directly say we are greedy advertising company and we want all those data otherwise our unethical business will die. User should not know we are using their data to generate $60 for 6 months.
Any people who works on facebook should reconsider what damage they have done to world.
Isn't it a bit ironic that a magazine who’s page is PLASTERED by advertising and data collecting beacons is claiming the model is dead...
Has the concept of journalistic integrity gone by the way side? Do as I say, read these 10 things that you didn’t know about famous celebrity?
It’s in fashion to gang up on Facebook, it’s a lot harder to actually analyze the Ad market space, realize how we got here, and where the true dangers lie. But yea, that would take research... and well, journalistic integrity.
( newspapers didn’t adapt to the new media in the late 90s and they’ve been suffering ever since.. it’s sad.. but clamoring for the old days of TV and Papers domination of advertising is naïveté. Apple just wants to be the new network.. that’s all.)
Readit News
The ad should scare investors much more than Apple’s move.
This is not entirely true. I have seen excellent people go to Facebook because they gave out the highest offers. Now whether they get people with good ideas is something I don't know.
I think they know they need to use money to overcome their reputation.
HR industry would like you to believe that, but it's an intentional bastardization of the original research by Kahneman and Deaton (1), twisting their words to fit their cost cutting agenda. The original finding states that past a rather high threshold (~$75k), additional raise alone is an insufficient motivator. Below that threshold, money alone works just fine as a motivator. Above that threshold, pay hike still enhances other motivators.
In Bay Area, I agree that ethical concerns likely dwarf money. $120k/year in Europe would let them scrape the creme de la creme, despite near universal dislike among tech-crowd.
(1) https://www.pnas.org/content/early/2010/08/27/1011492107.abs...
I know tens of people from my past who currently work in Facebook. When I knew then, they were all decent people with long careers in the tech industry. Yet, they chose to work for FB.
A fresh grad son of my ex-Boss is starting his career with FB.
Unfortunately FB's brand is not as tainted, yet, as it should be or as some of us in the HN echo-chamber like to believe.
> Leakers, please resign instead of sabotaging the company
> How fucking terrible that some irresponsible jerk decided he or she had some god complex that jeopardizes our inner culture and something that makes Facebook great?
> Although we all subconsciously look for signal on integrity in interviews, should we consider whether this needs to be formalized in the interview process?
> This is so disappointing, wonder if there is a way to hire for integrity. We are probably focusing on the intelligence part and getting smart people here who lack a moral compass and loyalty.
https://www.theverge.com/2018/3/30/17179100/facebook-memo-le...
Dead Comment
It is to show a credible commitment to Apple's other adversaries, in an attempt to rally enough power to take them down a peg and (more importantly) win some control over the Iphone platform.
If Facebook had a continuous, long term, PR campaign, where they reasonably established themselves as helping small businesses, and then they did this. I would get it.
But like this? In isolation, it feels more like a knee jerk reaction and not a thought out messaging campaign.
My guess is that the root cause is one of internal perception vs external perception. They see the threat and honestly believe they're in the right. That's how they rationalize it, but the rest of the world assumes more nefarious intent (which is also exaggerated, the truth is likely somewhere in the middle).
This campaign seems very unlikely it will change public opinion or make Apple change their position.
Perhaps the campaign helps to build a position in terms anti-trust legal proceedings? As the least vertically integrated of the big tech companies, it helps build a case that they are the victim, not the perpetrator - Apple is using its market power to shut them out.
Facebook’s argument is “but it isn’t in our customer’s interests”, and they may add “if Apple adds such a feature, it should be opt-out”.
That first argument doesn’t have any value. Why would any third party have to accommodate Facebook’s advertising business? The second one is extremely weak, as ‘the world’ is moving towards, or already arrived at “opt-in is the only good choice”.
They also publicly stated that Apple’s opt-in doesn’t apply to Apple’s own adverts. _If_ that’s correct, they have a good point, but I think that’s a very, very big _if_.
Dead Comment
Users must gain control back and opt-in must be the default.
Is there any other real solution, besides emotional rhetoric? I don't believe regulation will really help, they will just skirt the lines and have lots of oopses.
I'm all in for FOSS but in the current state of the infrastructure that would just swap reading TOS to reading source. It just is not feasible for every single user. The alternative is crowd trust but that problem tends to be solved naturally by institutionalization, which brings other requirements such as organization and solving monetary problems.
What we need is a change in infrastructure. Why is it allowed that IP addresses are geolocated in the first place? Why do browsers share the name of your graphics adapter by default? Why is the user agent not abolished?
A better PR move would have been to say "We are always seeking ways to put the reins of control withing users hands, and are happy to see that Apple has similar goals. At the same time we will educate users on the value of working with Facebook on the benefits heightened user experience when Facebook is able to generate custom content and tailored user experiences"
Lies and generalities sure, but at least it isn't shooting themselves in the foot.
It may rather be that the content market is bifurcating, with "free" going toward the lower end mass market. Which FB seems perfectly positioned to serve.
However since then I’ve become much more skeptical. Apple is no less evil or different; okay, I take that back, they are slightly better but I’m no longer a fanboy.
I don’t think the Apple of today, who carefully monitor what everybody does on their macs and make it difficult / annoying to bypass the Mac App Store, cares about privacy or the consumer as much as they lead us to believe. Steve Jobs cared a lot about privacy, from what I have read, but the current group, whilst highly intelligent and producing great innovative products like the M1, are very much driven by profit and not vision.
Examples include not providing basic accessories with their expensive iPhone products (seriously I spent 1,000 for an iPhone 12 Pro Max for my Girlfriend and there is no wall plug? Give me a break with their environment saving reasons, they could easily donate a lot more money if they really cared about the environment and not try to trick consumers that they are do-gooders).
The more nefarious example is how Apple is pushing paid apps and subscriptions so much on their App Store, since they take a cut. It’s a core part of their services strategy. I don’t see too much ethical differences between selling users privacy for ads and aggressively taking advantage of the average consumer and trying to lure them more and more into more paid subscriptions (many which they don’t need and also are overpriced, but since it’s a monthly charge it is harder to tell).
I am not comfortable with Apple, Facebook, Google, Microsoft and Amazon being so large and controlling the tech landscape.
I’ve used MacBooks for the past 10 years, my next computer will 100% be a Linux.
I'm trying to avoid cherry picking, but this isn't my experience at all. I use a Mac for work and haven't really made any use of the app store. Nonetheless, I have all the apps I need and homebrew fills in the rest. Is there something I've unwittingly avoided?
(While I shouldn't speak for the OP, I'm a little suspicious that this is the "Big Brother Apple is going to lock down macOS just like iOS" narrative popping up again.)
First, app versions often differ between the Mac App Store and developer's own website. "Independent" versions tend to be a bit less restrictive, packing more functionality or features that Apple forbids for any reason. For instance, the App Store version of Elmedia player does not have a video/stream saving feature. Other apps like Telegram (specifically, the App Store versions) restrict the user from viewing the channels/communities which have been marked as spreading "pornographic"/"pirate" content. Needless to say, the app variants obtained from elsewhere pack all the features.
Second, I was surprised (well, not really) to learn about "notarization" in the latest versions of macOS, which essentially means signing the app by Apple. These days it's not just about scaring the user into thinking that unidentified apps are inherently evil (which the OS does a lot), it's also actively preventing the user from actually opening such apps. In Catalina the default dialog for opening an identified app features something like two buttons, offering to "Cancel" and "Move to Trash". So you have to either go to the Settings and override the security control or know that a control-click spawns the same window with an additional "Open" button being available.
At this point one starts thinking, how long will it take before those overrides and control-clicks get taken away for good.
Deleted Comment
Honestly I can't believe we're even having this discussion. It's like Google all over again.
Apple says "trust us" but gives us no way to verify the trust. Trust without verification is a long-term recipe for disaster.
I’ve got 7 Apple chargers here as well. This is a completely rational decision which is transitional while we all move to USB-C slowly.
Your general point is right but it’s not the state of the company you need to look at but the direction they are travelling and Apple appears to be heading in the least wrong direction.
Inflation has consistently outpaced increase in salaries, so it still costs more on real terms
> I’ve got 7 Apple chargers here as well
And yet there's a substantial market for third-party chargers, even the smallest convenience stores sell them.
From personal experience the majority of everyday folk have one or two chargers in their house, and as many cables. If they sell or giveaway an old phone then a charger has to go with it.
I might also have 7 chargers, but none of them are for USB-C - the type of the cable that they did include with the box. So I still have to buy a charging brick.
Deleted Comment
People keep making statements like this, but I have so far never seen anyone actually show any evidence for it.
What makes you think this is true?
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2020/11/mac-certificate-chec...
For what is worth, I that that Apple.
Those aren't mutually exclusive.
I know Linux has enough / more problems than OSX, but I’m finally quite motivated to take a stance on this, it’s getting ridiculous on how much big tech want to control our machines.
If you mean installing Linux directly on my MacBook, sure that is possible — however I am happy with Catalina for now, so will just upgrade to the latest x86 Linux build in about 3 years. Unless M1 changes the computing world all together....
Deleted Comment
If you buy something, you're consciously making a transaction. You're handing money to someone in exchange for a good. In contrast, Facebook entices users to join their platform, and then subtly collects analytics about users through a variety of ways across the internet without any indication that they're there, save for some very subtle fine print.
I don't see how consciously exchanging money is even remotely close to ad-tracking networks. If anything, there should be at least the same level of friction for tracking as there is with a normal transaction -- which is what Apple is doing here.
Yes, Apple is totally motivated to push this, but in a capitalist society, what's your proposed alternative?
Any people who works on facebook should reconsider what damage they have done to world.
Isn't it a bit ironic that a magazine who’s page is PLASTERED by advertising and data collecting beacons is claiming the model is dead...
Has the concept of journalistic integrity gone by the way side? Do as I say, read these 10 things that you didn’t know about famous celebrity?
It’s in fashion to gang up on Facebook, it’s a lot harder to actually analyze the Ad market space, realize how we got here, and where the true dangers lie. But yea, that would take research... and well, journalistic integrity.
( newspapers didn’t adapt to the new media in the late 90s and they’ve been suffering ever since.. it’s sad.. but clamoring for the old days of TV and Papers domination of advertising is naïveté. Apple just wants to be the new network.. that’s all.)