Surely Apple also knows this, so when are they going to follow their own App Store policy and pull Meta's apps off the platform?
They won't because rules for thee, not for me. It's OK if someone big enough violates Apple's rules, but if a smaller dev does it? You get booted off the store.
Those are the Human Interface Guidelines, which are basically suggestions on how to make a proper app. They don’t impact policy and Apple has been shitting on them for years now. Liquid Glass breaks so many rules it’s not even funny. What you want to link to is the App Review Guidelines, specifically 4.5.4.
No, this is not as simple as Meta calling internal APIs that can be detected. This is Meta developing tricky ways of identifying users from patterns of usage without regard to opt-in. If users consent, the app can use the Apple API to track. Easy. If users don’t consent, Meta tracks through tricks matching behavior stored on their servers.
This is Meta abiding by the letter of the Apple developer agreement but not the spirit of the agreement.
> No, this is not as simple as Meta calling internal APIs that can be detected.
Yes, it is. It's just more manual.
Meta has repeatedly done this sort of thing. It's clear that Apple knows they're up to this stuff, and it's clear that Meta will continue to do it, and it's clear that Apple doesn't have the will to kill their apps over it.
Which they would absolutely do for an app you or I made.
And it doesn't even really matter if it's perfect. While they are subverting the intent of their users, they are also certainly subverting the intent of their advertisers and portraying a targeting ability that is an exaggeration of what they actually can do. The advertisers may even realize it; in advertising no targeting is perfect, and if your ads are within the blast radius of most of your intended eyeballs, that's good enough.
Meta is run by people with no regard for ethics, and if that surprises you, that’s on you. Their whole model is just packaging and selling you with whatever tech they can grab. If you’re worried, don’t install Meta apps. I’ve got WhatsApp on Android and Instagram on iPad, They’re already getting eaten alive by TikTok and AI girlfriends
Most people are not the Hacker News types who know this. The Facebook movie is the closest the average person has come to knowing how evil this company is.
Most people if they know, don't care. They don't see an issue with their data being harvested and sold. They think "who cares, why would anyone be interested in me, besides, everyone does it."
They use supermarket loyalty cards to save $0.25 on a gallon of milk. They install tracker apps to save money on gas. People don't care.
> Most people are not the Hacker News types who know this.
many "Hacker News types" happily work for FAANGs, see little to nothing wrong with the social ills their labor causes, and benefit handsomely from it... and would benefit little from acknowledging that or working to change those conditions (or their employment situation).
So is Google and Apple themselves. There is no entity here which is a paragon of virtue in the valley. I do believe that cynicism is detrimental to mental health, and hope stems from assuming things can and do get better sometimes.
> Meta is run by people with no regard for ethics, and if that surprises you, that’s on you.
I genuinely do not understand why someone comments this, so I am earnestly asking you what do you wish to convey or accomplish with such a remark.
Yes, many of us on HN know Meta is deeply unethical. But not everyone does, or to which extent, and everyone has a different “final straw”. Someone may still think they operate within laws, for example. Furthermore, being known for being unethical should not leave them above reproach or criticism, nor should victims be blamed. It’s like seeing a report on increased killings by the KKK and answering “well, the KKK are a bunch of racists, and if that surprises you, that’s on you”. Information doesn’t have to be surprising to be useful.
Is it due process where we’d send someone to prison for life for this without any other evidence. No, it’s not.
Does it fall in with our existing perception of Facebook created by them railing against Apple’s privacy controls, even to the point where Apple shut down their account and they were locked out of their own offices, or how they approach privacy on other platforms or their overall activities regarding privacy for over a decade Fits their m.o. pretty well.
15 years ago it was celebrated in the media as a “cool inventive cutting edge idea” that Facebook was running psychological experiments on it’s users without consent.
Most of the media I remember from that time was less celebratory and more skeptical. [1] [2] [3]
Do you have some examples of the media celebrating Facebook's psychological experiments? Perhaps you live in a different influence sphere or filter bubble than I do.
To check my centiment, I asked ChatGPT "What was the media sentiment ten years ago about Facebook running psychological experiments on people?" and here was its top-line response:
> Short answer: largely negative — shocked and critical. Journalists, ethicists and privacy advocates framed Facebook’s secret “emotional contagion” experiments as an ethical breach (lack of informed consent, manipulation of users’ moods, corporate research without proper oversight), while a smaller group of commentators pushed back saying large-scale A/B testing is routine for tech firms.
Not to derail this, but Apple at the launch event last week. "We estimate that we will send high blood pressure alerts to over 100M users with this feature".
Is that based on ... what? Or has Apple been surreptitiously mining this data on existing users without their consent?
"What size segment of Apple Watch users have undiagnosed hypertension" seems a challenging product discovery exploration, otherwise.
>Meta also secretly linked user data with other information to track users’ activity on other websites without their permission — despite Apple in 2021 introducing measures explicitly requiring consent, according to Purkayastha’s filings.
That's frustratingly vague, not to mention it hinges on the complaint of a disgruntled employee. Facebook finding some way to bypass cross app tracking restrictions would be much more controversial than if they bought purchasing data (grouped by email) from data brokers, and then joined that with their own datasets, for instance.
This is exactly why App Tracking Transparency was never going to work. Apple gave users a consent dialog but didn't actually prevent the data collection - they just made it slightly more annoying.
Device fingerprinting, session replay, and a dozen other techniques make the whole 'ask permission to track' model fundamentally ineffective. The data is still flowing, just through different pipes.
a friend of mine said one of his oddest interviewer moments was when he asked the candidate to describe a project they were proud of, and the candidate brought up how hard it was to do this sort of thing on an iphone and how their team at meta managed to find a way.
Apple itself collects the data it says is against it's rules for others to collect. They used Privacy as gate-keeping for it's walled garden App Store monopoly.
I am not surprised that a surveillance-advertising company will go to these lengths to ensure their being able to continue their shady-ass business model.
Readit News
They won't because rules for thee, not for me. It's OK if someone big enough violates Apple's rules, but if a smaller dev does it? You get booted off the store.
https://developer.apple.com/design/human-interface-guideline... says "before you send [marketing push] notifications to people, you must receive their explicit permission to do so".
Apple themselves have started doing that, so zero chance of the rule being enforced.
> https://developer.apple.com/design/human-interface-guideline... says
Those are the Human Interface Guidelines, which are basically suggestions on how to make a proper app. They don’t impact policy and Apple has been shitting on them for years now. Liquid Glass breaks so many rules it’s not even funny. What you want to link to is the App Review Guidelines, specifically 4.5.4.
https://developer.apple.com/app-store/review/guidelines/#4.5...
can be disabled via:
settings > communication > push notifications
but the worst part is when they add a new category (eg uber teen accounts) and surprise it’s enabled by default.
Ditto New York Times "Breaking News" alerts pushing features that were published a week ago, but didn't get enough traction for some editor.
No, this is not as simple as Meta calling internal APIs that can be detected. This is Meta developing tricky ways of identifying users from patterns of usage without regard to opt-in. If users consent, the app can use the Apple API to track. Easy. If users don’t consent, Meta tracks through tricks matching behavior stored on their servers.
This is Meta abiding by the letter of the Apple developer agreement but not the spirit of the agreement.
Yes, it is. It's just more manual.
Meta has repeatedly done this sort of thing. It's clear that Apple knows they're up to this stuff, and it's clear that Meta will continue to do it, and it's clear that Apple doesn't have the will to kill their apps over it.
Which they would absolutely do for an app you or I made.
They use supermarket loyalty cards to save $0.25 on a gallon of milk. They install tracker apps to save money on gas. People don't care.
many "Hacker News types" happily work for FAANGs, see little to nothing wrong with the social ills their labor causes, and benefit handsomely from it... and would benefit little from acknowledging that or working to change those conditions (or their employment situation).
https://www.sfgate.com/sf-culture/article/facebook-movie-soc...
I genuinely do not understand why someone comments this, so I am earnestly asking you what do you wish to convey or accomplish with such a remark.
Yes, many of us on HN know Meta is deeply unethical. But not everyone does, or to which extent, and everyone has a different “final straw”. Someone may still think they operate within laws, for example. Furthermore, being known for being unethical should not leave them above reproach or criticism, nor should victims be blamed. It’s like seeing a report on increased killings by the KKK and answering “well, the KKK are a bunch of racists, and if that surprises you, that’s on you”. Information doesn’t have to be surprising to be useful.
Does it fall in with our existing perception of Facebook created by them railing against Apple’s privacy controls, even to the point where Apple shut down their account and they were locked out of their own offices, or how they approach privacy on other platforms or their overall activities regarding privacy for over a decade Fits their m.o. pretty well.
Do you have some examples of the media celebrating Facebook's psychological experiments? Perhaps you live in a different influence sphere or filter bubble than I do.
To check my centiment, I asked ChatGPT "What was the media sentiment ten years ago about Facebook running psychological experiments on people?" and here was its top-line response:
> Short answer: largely negative — shocked and critical. Journalists, ethicists and privacy advocates framed Facebook’s secret “emotional contagion” experiments as an ethical breach (lack of informed consent, manipulation of users’ moods, corporate research without proper oversight), while a smaller group of commentators pushed back saying large-scale A/B testing is routine for tech firms.
[1]: https://www.wired.com/2014/06/everything-you-need-to-know-ab... [2]: https://www.cnet.com/tech/services-and-software/the-ethical-... [3] https://www.yahoo.com/news/facebook-changed-way-experiments-...
Is that based on ... what? Or has Apple been surreptitiously mining this data on existing users without their consent?
"What size segment of Apple Watch users have undiagnosed hypertension" seems a challenging product discovery exploration, otherwise.
https://arstechnica.com/security/2025/06/meta-and-yandex-are...
That's frustratingly vague, not to mention it hinges on the complaint of a disgruntled employee. Facebook finding some way to bypass cross app tracking restrictions would be much more controversial than if they bought purchasing data (grouped by email) from data brokers, and then joined that with their own datasets, for instance.