Apple and Meta go to war over interoperability vs. privacy

https://techcrunch.com/2024/12/19/apple-and-meta-go-to-war-over-interoperability-vs-privacy/

by aquir • 2 years ago

154 157 2 years ago

Can we see the interoperability requests that meta submitted? That would clarify if the shade is legit.

mrweasel• 2 years ago

While I don't trust Meta, at all, I can see some reasons for legitimate requests. This could for API access so that the Meta VR headset could work as a substitute for Apples own, in some cases, or Facebook Messenger and iMessage interoperability. I sort of doubt that this is what Meta is trying for, but that would reasonable.

It's probably a bit of both. One part Apple being monopolistic jerks and one part Meta wanting to hoover up even more private data. One issue I can see is that the EU would side with Meta, knowing that the EU privacy laws will protect its citizens, but Apple has to consider the ramification for all users, including those not protect be the GDPR. So Apple is forced to open up and Meta will start using the opening to suck up private information on its American users.

F7F7F74• 2 years ago

Apple has shown recently that they are more than OK giving Europeans and some parts of Asia a different iOS experience than the rest of us.

If they are “forced to open up” in the EU it doesn’t mean they will here.

VertanaNinjai2• 2 years ago

From another comment here.

https://developer.apple.com/support/downloads/DMA-Interopera...

aurareturn• 2 years ago

Meta understands that in an AI agentic world, having access at the OS level is crucial.

The AI becomes significantly more useful if it understands your digital life more. Only Apple has OS level access for agentic AI but Meta wants it too.

vouaobrasil9• 2 years ago

The AI becomes significantly more useful if it understands your digital life more.

"Useful" is misleading. It should be "useful for the big corps for entrenching you further into proprietary technology so that they can take advantage of you later".

reactordev• 2 years ago

All so they can better target ads to you. Who needs cookies?

pretext-1• 2 years ago

for entrenching you further into proprietary technology

But isn’t this already the case right now? In my opinion this argument is kind of backwards because the lack of (or access to) APIs is precisely what’s preventing us from having alternatives!

Siri is proprietary, closed source, big corp, etc.

Want an open source, community based, interoperable, fully local, etc. assistant/AI? It cannot exist in today's world simply because it requires what Meta asks for.

I dislike Meta very much but I refuse to believe that creating or opening up such APIs would foster „entrenching you further into proprietary technology“.

vouaobrasil9• 2 years ago

At the very least, for apps that require this much access, such "interoperability" should be off by default with a big warning that says:

[ ] Check here if you want to share all your data (or something more precise) with Meta. Warning: possibly insecure. Use at your own risk.

doodlesdev• 2 years ago

Every user would just check that option and press yes. The reality is that most users don't ever read any message the phone gives to them, they just treat it like any other popup and press yes. Take a look at any normal person using a phone when a permission notification appears or an error appears: they won't even read it, just press any button that closes it as fast as possible.

There's good reason to not have this prompt and not give these abilities to applications. Apple's reason to oppose the DMA and Meta here might be different, though.

vouaobrasil9• 2 years ago

Every user would just check that option and press yes.

Not if it's available in the developer options, or has more other sorts of friction to check the box. Or if it has a red warning label with the phrase "may increase the chance of hackers stealing your data and impersonating you".

One just has to make it unattractive enough to most.

jeroenhd• 2 years ago

I found MIUI's solution to this quite well designed, even if it's a little infuriating when altering permissions for a list of apps. There's a big red warning with a user friendly description of the danger and a countdown to prevent quick click through, locked behind an "I accept the risk" checkbox. You need to read at least one UI element that says "danger" before you can complete the interaction.

If such popups were introduced in iOS, they should be universal, of course, and the same danger prompts should show for Apple's software as for their competitors. Apple won't do that (outside of the EU) but it'd be a solution to the data hunger without compromising market accessibility too much.

A good alternative would be for Apple to remove APIs entirely, including for themselves. If they consider some data and some interactivity to be too dangerous for users, perhaps they shouldn't be messing with it either.

Apple makes a habit out of exaggerating the dangers of complying with any regulation. Just a bit of fear mongering gets their fans in a state where they'll maintain Apple's walled garden even when they stand to benefit from it being opened up.

ToucanLoucan2• 2 years ago

The reality is that most users don't ever read any message the phone gives to them, they just treat it like any other popup and press yes.

The only part I disagree with is that it's limited to phones, it absolutely isn't. It's any computing device, be it a general purpose PC, a tablet, a phone, your car's infotainment system, what have you.

The large majority of the population does not understand how these devices work, and what kinds of problems they can create if used unsafely, and they don't care to know. And like, I get why: life is complicated enough as it is. Simple fact is when Joe Consumer pulls a new TV out of it's box and it comes with the contrast and color saturation through the ceiling so everything looks like shit, and motion smoothing is adding 60ms of delay to the response of connected hardware, he's fine with that. I don't like that for him, and I wish he wasn't, but most people just don't care. Most people want to speed run whatever damn things they gotta click to make the stupid light and noise machine do what they need it to do, so they can resume their idle time.

That's why if we actually want to make progress on reigning in these socially corrosive services, we need not just options, but a set of default settings, mandated by law, that respects user privacy. As a user of electricity, I do not need to be informed about how electricity works to safely use my outlets. As a user of water, I do not need to be informed about how plumbing works to safely take a shower. I shouldn't need to know jack about smartphones or computers either in order to not have my personal information used to sell me gross new flavors of Coke.

smolder• 2 years ago

"Every user would check that option" is obviously incorrect. When given the option not to share information, a great deal choose not to. I won't pull a percentage out of thin air, but peoples tendency towards "deny" when given the option is the reason for a lot of the dark patterns that exist (e.g. spamming address book permission dialogs, non-compliant cookie dialogs) and for spying as much as possible without permission. Asking permission for things that might be considered invasive is still the ethical thing to do, and in the early days of computing before the profit motive became overwhelming, developers tended to do the ethical thing, unlike today.

threeseed• 2 years ago

We have decades of experience going back to Vista that this does not work.

Users trust companies like Apple, Google etc not to place them in harm's way.

And so when prompts like this are shown they will quite happily approve without even reading the words.

jsnell• 2 years ago

Only if Apple's uses of that data have to go through the same flow, with equally scary text.

vouaobrasil9• 2 years ago

I would support that, too.

joseda-hg• 2 years ago

I get a similar warning (Complete with red symbols and forced waiting so you're "forced" to read) when installing external APK's on Android While it feels like something Apple wouldn't do, it's a workable solution

oefrha6• 2 years ago

The Reuters report on this is much more detailed: https://www.reuters.com/technology/apple-slams-metas-numerou...

And yes, Meta isn’t denying requesting everything under the sun. Their only retort is Apple’s privacy concerns are anticompetitive excuses. Two things can be true: Apple is only protecting their own interests, and Meta is a terrible would-be guardian of all the data they’re requesting.

tempodox2• 2 years ago

The rename from Facebook didn't change the base nature of that company. Their product is selling user data. All their other “products” are just suction pipes for hoovering up that data.

paldepind23• 2 years ago

All their other “products” are just suction pipes for hoovering up that data.

I don't think that's true for their VR/MR hardware. That's Meta's attempt to get a product that is _not_ like that, but which instead gets them in a position similar to where Google and Apple are for phones. I.e., where they own the platform and can profit off of that.

zaptheimpaler2• 2 years ago

Also Apple's own apps request permissions the same way third party apps do

oefrha6• 2 years ago

They certainly don’t. We’re talking about apps like Phone, Messages, Photos, Files and system stuff like app tracking (Screen Time etc.).

NikolaNovak2• 2 years ago

I just got a new iPhone two weeks ago (corporate mandated:(.

I don't recall messages, photos, apple maps, notes, camera, calendar etc asking me detailed permissions. I think health did ask for some.

Installing equivalent Facebook messenger, Google photos, Google calendar, etc also of course did.

(Greediest award goes to whatsapp which basically doesn't work unless you grant it full access to contacts boo)

mort964• 2 years ago

Apple chooses to ask the user for permission about certain things, but they're not beholden to that "like any other app". No app can e.g use your microphone in the background to listen for trigger words, no other app can analyse your photos for search without a permission dialog, no other app can transmit nearby BSSIDs + GPS location in the background for the purposes of building a location services system. Apple does all these things. Apple is absolutely not doing things "like third party apps do".

paxys2• 2 years ago

No they don't. It is literally impossible to create competitors for Apple's native apps and companion devices/accessories no matter how many permission prompts the user approves. That is what this entire complaint is about.

crest• 2 years ago

Apple shouldn't be allowed to lock down APIs between system components to give themselves a competitive advantage, but that doesn't mean Meta should be allowed decide if they're getting that access. Let Apple offer users the option: allow once, allow permanently, refuse, or fake empty responses without telling the app.

gwbas1c• 2 years ago

Let Apple offer users the option

That's easy to say, and much more difficult to implement than it sounds.

Careful: There's a lot of nuance in how these kinds of options are presented to the user. Depending on how they're designed, "the general public" will default to yes or no; or get frustrated / overwhelmed with pedantic permission dialogs.

Thus, part of "Let Apple offer users the option" is a commitment to studying how that option is presented, and the overall implications of such an option.

Yeul• 2 years ago

You mean like on Android? Hell nowadays you can choose "approximate location" instead of tracking people. App permissions have come a long way.

mort964• 2 years ago

Users will be faced with a dialog saying "to use Facebook, you must accept XYZ", and their only options will be to accept or to not use the app. Facebook will detect empty or fake data and lock the user out unless they acquiesce.

franczesko• 2 years ago

We need devices fully under control of users. Neither Apple, nor Meta should be able to sniff aground once the device lands in costumer's hands

mulmen• 2 years ago

or fake empty responses without telling the app.

I thought the value proposition of the walled garden was that no app was malicious so this is a non-issue.

mgraczyk• 2 years ago

Meta is a terrible would-be guardian of all the data they’re requesting.

Do you have any examples of Meta misusing this sort of data in the last 7 years?

marketingtech3• 2 years ago

Meta’s request for interoperability is regarding their hardware, not their flagship apps, if you take it at face value.

They want their glasses and headsets to integrate as tightly as an Apple Watch or Vision Pro to show messages and other notifications, connect to WiFi, and share files with an iPhone, but Apple uses private APIs for their own devices. Meta says that is anticompetitive and the APIs should be public.

Apple lays out their rebuttal in detail here and it’s clear Meta asked for everything in the hopes that Apple will settle for some of these things: https://developer.apple.com/support/downloads/DMA-Interopera...

F7F7F74• 2 years ago

As someone who’s personally worked on dozens of M&A driven vertical integrations and “ecosystems” (lol)…interoperability is inherent to being a first party.

3rd parties aren’t going to get the same access or treatment for a number of reasons…many of which Apple has outlined.

marketingtech3• 2 years ago

There are several reasons for a platform to not want to offer 3p interop, from security to privacy to competition, but the DMA is targeted EU regulation to mandate interop specifically for the big tech cos’ platforms and this is one of the first major tests of the law.

ksec• 2 years ago

Meta’s request for interoperability is regarding their hardware, not their flagship apps, if you take it at face value.
They want their glasses and headsets to integrate as tightly as an Apple Watch or Vision Pro

Not agreeing or disagreeing but that makes much more sense.

yapyap• 2 years ago

Everyone wants more access to your (i)Phone

amelius• 2 years ago

Apple's iPhone.

enos_feedler• 2 years ago

If Meta is successful in gaining access to iPhone user data, will this be exclusive to Meta or would Apple be required to open access more broadly?

marketingtech3• 2 years ago

More broadly, but not unconditionally. They can apply reasonable (definition of that can be another point of contention) restrictions via their app review process as long as the restrictions are applied consistently to all applicants.

hnburnsy• 2 years ago

Here are some of Meta's ask according to Apple...

https://developer.apple.com/support/downloads/DMA-Interopera...

  AirPlay Continuity Camera
  App Intents
  Devices connected with Bluetooth
  Apple Notification Center Service
  iPhone Mirroring
  CarPlay
  Connectivity to all of a user’s Apple devices
  Messaging
  Wi-Fi networks and properties

bilbo0s3• 2 years ago

Wow.

I mean, where does a company get the balls to demand total access like this to the phones, networks and data of every phone in the US? These companies have zero fear of us as a people.

(They have zero respect for us as well, but that's another issue.)

gruez10• 2 years ago

I'm not sure how you read the above list and got the impression that meta wanted "total access like this to the phones, networks and data of every phone in the US". "Connectivity to all of a user’s Apple devices" probably means mDNS access for device discovery, rather than root access on all devices or whatever. Same for "Wi-Fi networks and properties". They probably want a list of wifi networks so they can connect to them, rather than low level access so they can run packet captures or whatever. Yes, even the limited access described above presents privacy issues, but there's no need to be hyperbolic and characterize it as "total access".

br0wnr1c32• 2 years ago

I think one of my personal issues with allowing Meta to access these private APIs is that they may not take "don't allow" for an answer.

I have WhatsApp to talk to some family and I recently disabled allowing all contacts in iOS 18. WhatsApp now has a persistent notification at the top of messages to "Allow All Contacts".

If Apple allows users to choose whether or not to give Meta access, and users choose "no", Meta can lock them out of the service entirely (e.g., "you can't use this Meta Quest headset without allowing access to your messages").

That being said, Apple is definitely fighting for its own interests here as well. It would obviously benefit them to sell their own watches, headsets, earbuds, etc.

bilbo0s3• 2 years ago

Here's the thing, take a look at just a bit of what Meta is demanding:

*AirPlay Continuity Camera

*App Intents

*Devices connected with Bluetooth

*Apple Notification Center Service

*iPhone Mirroring

*CarPlay

*Connectivity to all of a user’s Apple devices

*Messaging

*Wi-Fi networks and properties

Now ignoring the obvious societal dangers in this request. (I mean really? Should you be using a Meta headset while you're driving?) The scope of data that they are asking for is breathtaking. All the data, wifi, messages and notifications of not only every iphone in the US, but all of the user's other devices as well. To potentially include their cars.

We need to really think deeply about how we set up access to Apple data and APIs. Requests like this are putting me more in the "deny all requests" camp. If tech companies can't be at least a little more reasonable, then I don't think they should have access to our data.

lukeschlather• 2 years ago

Should you be using a Meta headset while you're driving?

The Meta HUD glasses seem like they're definitely designed to be used while driving, and provide a safer way to access info like notifications than looking down at your iPhone. That isn't "Apple data and APIs" this is a notification that someone needs to display on their HUD.

Really, the fact that Apple doesn't want to allow this sort of thing pretty clearly demonstrates they're acting in bad faith.

saurik2• 2 years ago

I have WhatsApp to talk to some family and I recently disabled allowing all contacts in iOS 18. WhatsApp now has a persistent notification at the top of messages to "Allow All Contacts".

If this is still possible, then Apple fucked up the implementation of this feature, as clearly there should be no way to differentiate not having bothered to fill out a ton of contacts and having limited access for an app to see your contacts; and since this is so obviously easy to do correctly, it frankly sounds actively malicious: there is a set -- probably a very small set -- of engineers and product managers who chose to build this incorrectly, in order to continue to maintain the status quo of the proxy war between Apple and Meta, to our detriment.

comex• 2 years ago

It’s part of the API:

https://developer.apple.com/documentation/contacts/cnauthori...

The documentation for ContactAccessButton suggests only presenting it if you have limited access:

https://developer.apple.com/documentation/contactsui/contact...

edit: but that’s intended to be used specifically to respond to a contact search. I don’t use WhatsApp, but a “persistent notification” sounds unrelated to ContactAccessButton.

jaredklewis• 2 years ago

No? For this particular case if the api exposed a bunch of bogus contacts then the WhatsApp app would be displaying and autocompleting non-existent contacts to the user throughout the UI, which would be a horrible UX.

There are cases where you can fake data and cases where you need to be able to block access and the apps should respect that.

skydhash• 2 years ago

If this is still possible, then Apple fucked up the implementation of this feature, as clearly there should be no way to differentiate not having bothered to fill out a ton of contacts and having limited access for an app to see your contacts

If you only allow a subset of your contact, WhatsApp proceeds to not display contact information for everyone and to disable the whole status feature.

br0wnr1c32• 2 years ago

My assumption was that WhatsApp was heuristically detecting the lack of full contacts access. I figured they looked at the number of contacts to down from a couple hundred (pre-iOS 18) to 5, and assumed I limited access. However, it could totally be a detectable API response to the app as well.

esafak• 2 years ago

Does anyone think Meta would give users the option to deny such a request and work properly? It's not a difficult question.

yrcyrc• 2 years ago

I got rid of all of Facebook and Google apps and services years ago I really hope they won’t get anything as they clearly can’t be trusted with any data. See Noyb.eu for illustration.

ChrisArchitect• 2 years ago

[dupe]

Earlier discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42457073

freehorse• 2 years ago

Well I hope all these interoperability regulations come with eventually forcing messaging services to expose their APIs and allow 3rd party clients so that we can use a crowdfunded FOSS client for messaging and ditch all this malware from our phones.

mediumsmart• 2 years ago

maybe the time has come for them to actually use this:

https://www.macobserver.com/tmo/article/apple_granted_patent...

it will burn down their own playhouse too of course

alex1138• 2 years ago

I dunno, I'm sure people have beef with Apple but Zuck's always taken other people's projects and acted dishonestly and their violating the terms with Whatsapp should be cause for breakup, and something like Apple is absolutely necessary (fine grained permissions) to stop the slurp-all-your-contacts parade that Zuckerberg loves

asix66• 2 years ago

Seems oxymoronic as Meta doesn’t allow interoperability in order to maintain its walled garden. Apple does the same but it’s generally done in the space of privacy- security and privacy going hand in hand. I have little faith in government, any government, when it comes to technology. Either through ignorance or motive, they usually make decisions that result in less privacy, less security.

luke-stanley• 2 years ago

Is this Hacker News? This is way bigger than Meta. Should individuals have the freedom to access to their own phone data without needing to be a device manufacturer? Or should we depend on case by case approval of access that is outside of the users hands and something only big companies can do?

Framing it as being about `Apple vs Meta` is exactly the line of thinking that Apple wants, and it does a disservice to real Apple users, who have repeatedly been locked into a ecosystem where they have little control of their own data, where even sharing photos over Bluetooth isn't even an option! It's so locked in it's really unreasonable to frame this as being about Meta. Of course users should be able to give none / empty / fake or even real data to Meta if they so choose. But really this is about Apple, user rights, the EU, and a more fair playing field. If you read the PDF Apple put out, they are not offering any kind of middle solution, they are just saying they will, as usual, review case by case device partnership opportunities as it pleases them.

Apple and Meta go to war over interoperability vs. privacy

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