The change in question if you don’t want to read through half way across the article.
“In iOS 18, however, users who agree to give an app access to their contacts are shown a second message, allowing them to select which contacts to share. Users can opt to share just a handful of contacts by selecting them one by one, rather than forking over their entire address book.”
Sounds like how photo sharing permissions have worked since... iOS 16 or 17? You can choose as small a subset of photos for an app to have access to as you want, and then just add as you like, rather than sharing your entire photo library. Pretty handy.
In the first screen you choose one of None, Limited Access, and Full Access. Under Limited Access you select individual contacts, no "select all" option there.
The framing of this article is absolutely ludicrous. I'm no Apple apologist but this is genuinely a good feature that puts power to control who gets access to contacts back in iPhone user's hands.
"The city is helping citizens install locks on their doors to keep burglars out! That's going to really hurt all the new small-time crooks who might just be starting out!"
My reading of the article is quite neutral, it gives the pros and cons to that changes for all concerned parties.
The author even acknowledged that they like the new feature.
What if there are less challenges to the current social networks? is that not a more likely outcome, if the equilibrium settles toward stasis and lack of growth? I like my privacy, but I worry the cost for the collective is very high. I worry we'll be less likely to access all the many others ways in which social networks and algorithms and incentives might work, without the helpful pressure on incumbents...
One of the largest problems that needs to be solved in the space of social networking is flagrant disregard for privacy. Worrying that granting users the ability to protect their privacy may stymie the rise of new companies emerging to abuse their data in order to compete with existing problematic social networks is kinda nuts.
I’m not going to lose any sleep from making things harder for data theft startup. The incumbents will have to destroyed in a different way, on another day.
Do remember that in your example the city previously gave out crowbars to everybody in the city.
Like Apps can only do what Apple lets them. If they were doing something people didn't like; it was because Apple let them. Sure, it's good that Apple now is doing something but they're just filling in a hole they dug.
Even if a social app starts off as a scrupulous player who’s acting responsibly with your data, doesn’t mean they are going to stay that way.
It’s very common for companies that gain some traction, but aren’t on the path to be the next unicorn to get sold off to private equity firms who try to extract the most the value for the least effort. That often involves selling any all data to a data broker.
Personally, I’d treat most apps/companies as if they could be burglars, and only give them access that I need to get value out of the app. I don’t really want to be friends with my landlord or my doctor on the socials anyway.
Seems to me that social app devs sound a bit entitled. If their business model depends on slurping up all my contacts, maybe they need to find a new line of work.
I tend to agree—however I think the point of the article is that, regardless of whether this an ethical or "good" practice, it represents a pulling up of the ladder in a social media landscape that most users would agree is not in a great place with regard to the big names.
Maybe we already have enough social media apps, but also maybe the ones we have aren't very good, and things like this probably make it harder to compete in that space if you believe that you can create something better.
Also to be clear, while I'm sympathetic to that idea I'm not sympathetic to garbage people like Nikita Bier, who is basically saying this is what helped enable him to make two identical apps marketed directly to high-schoolers rapidly acquire a substantial userbase. He then subsequently sold these apps to Meta and Discord. So maybe this change is for the best.
I don't think pulling up the ladder is the correct analogy here.
The inability of users to prevent companies from slurping up all of their contacts creates an environment which greatly benefits those company which simply take the data since nobody can stop them.
Yes having that data has allowed the current crop of social media companies to grow very quickly, but look at the societal costs of that rapid growth. If we want social media companies of a categorically different kind, we need different rules so that the kind we currently have don't dominate again.
On the contrary, it allows users to better than current "all or nothing" which today leaves users holding their nose and feeling forced by social monopolies into feeding their entire graph to resell to advertisers, data brokers, government monitors, and the like.
Note that a minority of social apps have done the work to match your contacts with your contacts' affirmative disclosure on the social network, without giving themselves new shadow contacts from your phonebook. Only those who "want to be found" will match up.
> So maybe this change is for the best.
It's possible to ... slurp respectfully?
If everyone did that, this feature wouldn't be needed. If EU wanted to legislate something, they could mandate something like an extrovert flag: this is my name tag, I want to be found! Given an app respecting this method of matching, then allow matching to be seamless after the first OS level prompt.
This also affects communication apps, like email clients.
It's a real bummer for the user experience, honestly. Yes, people can say "share all contacts", but the user experience is confusing, and many people won't.
This means that all 3rd party mail and messaging apps will be lacking contact information -- whereas of course Apple's own will have it by default.
Again, it's shameful API design by Apple, because they don't have to use their own APIs/permission systems.
This could be mitigated, by the way, by having a rate-limited "lookup" API where an app can say "Can I have the contact for bob@example.com, if it exists?". Most legit apps don't need a copy of your entire address book, but they may need to query it occasionally.
I remember when LinkedIn would take your contacts, and bombard them with "friend requests." For me it resulted in some inappropriate "requests." I'm glad that isn't happening anymore.
At the same time, it's not like LinkedIn is paying any price for that.
So the rule is, engage in as much bad behavior as you can when it's permitted, because later it might not be an option.
I don’t have LinkedIn on my phone because I suspect they were listening to my microphone and serving me ads based on it. I didn’t dig deep to prove it but it seemed pretty clear at the time.
LinkedIn provides no mechanism to hide your profile from other members by default apart from an explicit block.
I was stalked on it by an unhinged bank employee, and even though he's blocked I still see people from his company have viewed my profile on a regular basis.
“Abuse early, abuse often” is the phrase used in video game culture for this concept. If a bug/loophole/opportunity exists, take advantage of it as much as possible before it’s fixed. Applying it to the real world feels slightly different though.
Even as a developer, I have started to think that almost any time a developer complains about something they can't do or a safety net on my device. It is likely a good thing that it exists.
We saw this with app tracking (just yesterday I saw "we want to keep this app free for you" alert encoruaging me to click "allow" instead of ask app not to track.)
This is already how photos works and its long time that contacts followed suit. Hopefully it leads to people being more aware of the data they are sharing but I guarantee that apps are going to throw up scary screens to encourage you to allow all.
IF this feature is somehow the thing that is blocking you from making a company, your company doesn't deserve to exist. And I apply that to the social media companies that already exist thanks to being able to mine this data before.
I’m genuinely surprised it took this long for Apple to do this. Having a full contacts list has long been one of the most valuable pieces of information for ad targeting. It’s why you can not be on Facebook but they still know everything they need to know about you because enough of your contacts are on their platforms.
Surprised because Apple is the company that made this sort of permission request so granular. Contacts contain some of the most permanent and “graph-building” data you can imagine, but they let this through for 17 years.
One possible reason they didn't address it sooner was Apple was receiving a cut of google's ad revenue on iPhone that had grown to 36% share, until Google's own antitrust case deemed the arrangement illegal earlier this year. The more data available to Google the more effective their advertising. /conspiracy
Says a lot about our world that to be successful with a 'friend-based app' you really need to dark pattern your way into hijacking a contact list and robo-inviting all the people who are totally not a person's friends.
If you paid attention, every single successful social app got so successful because of dark patterns that could be summarized as: spamming you and your contacts.
Readit News
“In iOS 18, however, users who agree to give an app access to their contacts are shown a second message, allowing them to select which contacts to share. Users can opt to share just a handful of contacts by selecting them one by one, rather than forking over their entire address book.”
Dead Comment
And it’s about time!!
Torben University +49 1234567890 notreal@not.gmail.com
who now gets tons of scams and cold calls.
But I guess you were joking a little, by now? Anything real would need to be powered by telcos... not very encouraging from a privacy perspective.
And improving on this devolves into a cat-and-mouse game like iCloud Private Relay, right?
Still would be an additional layer of obscurity for apps that try to coerce users into sharing contacts.
But even then, there must be enough people using the fake contacts, otherwise it's just a more precise fingerprint than not sharing at all.
Thinking about it.. we're not far away from apps requiring you to share your "verified contacts" -_-
Dead Comment
"The city is helping citizens install locks on their doors to keep burglars out! That's going to really hurt all the new small-time crooks who might just be starting out!"
Like Apps can only do what Apple lets them. If they were doing something people didn't like; it was because Apple let them. Sure, it's good that Apple now is doing something but they're just filling in a hole they dug.
It’s very common for companies that gain some traction, but aren’t on the path to be the next unicorn to get sold off to private equity firms who try to extract the most the value for the least effort. That often involves selling any all data to a data broker.
Personally, I’d treat most apps/companies as if they could be burglars, and only give them access that I need to get value out of the app. I don’t really want to be friends with my landlord or my doctor on the socials anyway.
Maybe we already have enough social media apps, but also maybe the ones we have aren't very good, and things like this probably make it harder to compete in that space if you believe that you can create something better.
Also to be clear, while I'm sympathetic to that idea I'm not sympathetic to garbage people like Nikita Bier, who is basically saying this is what helped enable him to make two identical apps marketed directly to high-schoolers rapidly acquire a substantial userbase. He then subsequently sold these apps to Meta and Discord. So maybe this change is for the best.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Entrepreneur/comments/12rqnk6/nikit...
The inability of users to prevent companies from slurping up all of their contacts creates an environment which greatly benefits those company which simply take the data since nobody can stop them.
Yes having that data has allowed the current crop of social media companies to grow very quickly, but look at the societal costs of that rapid growth. If we want social media companies of a categorically different kind, we need different rules so that the kind we currently have don't dominate again.
On the contrary, it allows users to better than current "all or nothing" which today leaves users holding their nose and feeling forced by social monopolies into feeding their entire graph to resell to advertisers, data brokers, government monitors, and the like.
Note that a minority of social apps have done the work to match your contacts with your contacts' affirmative disclosure on the social network, without giving themselves new shadow contacts from your phonebook. Only those who "want to be found" will match up.
> So maybe this change is for the best.
It's possible to ... slurp respectfully?
If everyone did that, this feature wouldn't be needed. If EU wanted to legislate something, they could mandate something like an extrovert flag: this is my name tag, I want to be found! Given an app respecting this method of matching, then allow matching to be seamless after the first OS level prompt.
It's a real bummer for the user experience, honestly. Yes, people can say "share all contacts", but the user experience is confusing, and many people won't.
This means that all 3rd party mail and messaging apps will be lacking contact information -- whereas of course Apple's own will have it by default.
Again, it's shameful API design by Apple, because they don't have to use their own APIs/permission systems.
This could be mitigated, by the way, by having a rate-limited "lookup" API where an app can say "Can I have the contact for bob@example.com, if it exists?". Most legit apps don't need a copy of your entire address book, but they may need to query it occasionally.
At the same time, it's not like LinkedIn is paying any price for that.
So the rule is, engage in as much bad behavior as you can when it's permitted, because later it might not be an option.
I was stalked on it by an unhinged bank employee, and even though he's blocked I still see people from his company have viewed my profile on a regular basis.
We saw this with app tracking (just yesterday I saw "we want to keep this app free for you" alert encoruaging me to click "allow" instead of ask app not to track.)
This is already how photos works and its long time that contacts followed suit. Hopefully it leads to people being more aware of the data they are sharing but I guarantee that apps are going to throw up scary screens to encourage you to allow all.
IF this feature is somehow the thing that is blocking you from making a company, your company doesn't deserve to exist. And I apply that to the social media companies that already exist thanks to being able to mine this data before.
Maybe one day: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/12/apple-admits-to-...
But then again - maybe not.
Judge them by what they do, not say