
Apple leaves Facebook offices in disarray after revoking app permissions - andyjohnson0
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/jan/31/apple-facebook-campus-permissions-revoked-teens-access-data-iphone-app
======
warp_factor
FB is a company with a completely rotten top-down culture. Nothing is going to
change until a huge set of executive leadership swap, or they are forced to by
mean of legislation.

After apologizing thousands of times, they internally justify each of those
breaches by rejecting the fault to "users" or other external factors (source:
several friends working at Facebook, and reading public tweets of Facebook
leaders).

The culture there is inherently anti-privacy and whoever fundamentally
disagree is about to leave or has already left.

~~~
ucaetano
Not just that, the top-down structure is shaped after a cult of personality.

Talking to my friends who work at Apple, FB, Google, Amazon and others,
facebookers are the only ones who seem to be willing to defend their leader on
a personal level, as if they had a dear friend being attacked.

My other friends couldn't care less if someone criticizes or attacks Bezos,
Tim Cook, Sundar and so on.

The only other company I can think that behaves in the same way is Tesla with
Musk (well, an Apple with Jobs in the old days), but the key difference is
that most Muskians don't seem to work for Tesla, and the folks I know at Tesla
aren't actually obsessed with Musk.

In the case of FB, it is the opposite.

~~~
happy_man
This is mostly a millenials thing. I don't know why young people are fixated
with the Zuckerbers and Bezos of the world. Did I miss something the past 15
years?. I'm in my 40s

~~~
snowwrestler
Having idols is a young people thing. Young folks just didn't used to attach
to business leaders as much as they do now. When I was a kid, typical idols
were music stars, actors, sports stars. The Internet created a new category of
success for young people, and therefore created a new category of idols for
young people.

~~~
happy_man
Geez, we are lucky the Koch brothers build their empire before the social
media was a thing, otherwise they will be also considered "influencers and
trend setters"

------
macinjosh
I understand how FB was not using Apple's enterprise development program in
good faith. Apple clearly has a right to do what they did.

I don't understand why FB is in hot water with the public for what they did.
Users were informed that data collection was taking place and they were
compensated for it. Now, was it wise on the users' part to join this program?
Perhaps not, but last time I checked this is still a free country and people
can sell their property for as much or as little as they want.

On NPR this morning I heard the argument that a lot of the detail of what is
collected and how it is used is buried in the T&C. So what? Have we lost sight
of personal responsibility? How naive are people? If you are getting something
for free from a large corporation you're not getting it out the kindness of
their heart. They are making money somehow. That is how the world works.

Panic, moral or otherwise, about this sort of stuff is going to push the tech
industry into realm of regulatory capture. Well funded companies will be able
to afford and absorb compliance costs where small bootstrapped startups,
lifestyle businesses, and indie developers will be pushed out of the market.

~~~
dominicr
I think the issues are: \- they were collecting data from users who were below
legal age for responsibility and/or local laws about collecting data about
minors. \- The general public know very little about everything. Companies
have a moral duty to not only educate their users but also to not do wrong.

Personal responsibility is a flag many people wave but it's a farce. That
argument can be used for anything, from seatbelts, to smoking, to privacy. It
is impossible for everyone to know enough to make informed choices about
EVERYTHING. There is a need for societal organisations (governments, NGOs,
responsible journalism) to provide guidance to the public and legal limits in
order to provide protection to the whole.

~~~
freeopinion
How interesting that you would choose as your examples "seatbelts", "smoking",
and "privacy".

If you print in large letters on every pack of cigarettes, "SMOKING KILLS" and
people still choose to smoke, should a benevolent government be allowed to
prevent an individual's poor choice?

Right now, we allow the sale of cigarettes and prohibit the sale of raw milk.

Don't you see any room for personal responsibility? None?

~~~
wwweston
Smoking is an interesting example because the negative effects aren't just
confined to the individual. Smoking a cigarette is the atmospheric equivalent
of peeing in the pool except it also causes cancer and other health issues.
Maybe it's actually an _important_ example because it's an undeniable
illustration of 2nd order effects, which are less pronounced in other cases
but probably still exist.

And "any room for personal responsibility"? There are plenty of domains of
behavior that aren't regulated; there's a whole _world_ of choices individuals
are responsible for alone.

Various forms of regulation regarding smoking, seat belts, and yes, even raw
milk are all working in areas where limited human capacity for evaluating risk
meets deadly consequences. Privacy is arguably different since it's unlikely
to be directly deadly, but it does meet risk evaluation limits and adds in
that incentives of 3rd parties are against individual incentives, and many of
those 3rd parties have incredible resources available to them in order to
obscure behavior and subvert protections. A collective response is a
reasonable one.

~~~
Pharmakon
Privacy also meets your test for “second-hand” negative effects. You can be a
monk, but someone snapping a picture and writing up a post can destroy your
privacy as well as using the service yourself. More realistically, you can use
FB for the bare minimum, but if your friends and family use it a lot, your
privacy is gone again.

------
ghaff
It’s really hard to not be brought joy by Facebook being kicked like this. But
on a less emotional level, if one wants to change Facebook culture and
behavior, it’s hard to see causing a lot of individual employee pain (in
addition to the business as a whole) as in any way a bad thing.

~~~
chris_wot
I agree. It was individual employees who violated the agreement - if it makes
Facebook employees actually think about their actions then overall it’s a good
thing.

It’s gotten to the point where I start to ask myself - if you work or
Facebook, are you a good person? My personal opinion is that you might be, but
you are likely are not.

~~~
jakear
This reminds me of the saying way back in 2016 American elections:

“If you vote for Trump, it doesn’t mean that you’re not a good person, but it
does mean that someone being a bad person isn’t a deal breaker for your
support”

I think that sentence could start off with “If you work for Zuck...” just as
well.

~~~
coldtea
Or the person is not 15 years old, and doesn't believe there are "good
persons" in politics, or that the alternatives (in GOP or Dems) were better
people.

Or the person goes even further, and doesn't believe the puritan tenet that
"good person == good politician". There were excellent politicians that were
bad in their behavior, and vice versa.

E.g. the person might care more about not encouraging a hawkish member of the
establishment, that continued to beat the drum of American supremacy and
threatened even more wars and tension coming on (e.g. with Iran) -- compared
to merely voting someone who is e.g. sexist (as if that matters for the kind
of decisions a President takes).

~~~
jakear
Being sexist doesn’t matter for the kinds of decisions a president makes?
Excuse me? Supreme Court justice nominations, for instance?

In fact, the Supreme Court invalidates your entrie argument, because guess
what: I want people I think are “good people” to be in charge of interpreting
the constitution. I think everybody can agree with that.

~~~
coldtea
> _Being sexist doesn’t matter for the kinds of decisions a president makes?
> Excuse me? Supreme Court justice nominations, for instance?_

Yeah, it doesn't matter. Worse case you get more male justices. What do you
really expect will happen? Some justice will be unpointed which will undo
women's voting rights or equality laws?

> _In fact, the Supreme Court invalidates your entrie argument, because guess
> what: I want people I think are “good people” to be in charge of
> interpreting the constitution. I think everybody can agree with that._

Well, I don't agree with that. I would not care less if one of my
"constitutional interpreters" drinks, takes cocaine, or has extra marital
affairs for example. I only care that the direction they take the law is good.
There have been legendary lawmakers and politicians that had all kinds of
personal vices.

Then again, I'm not American, so I don't have the puritan trait. You guys
managed to have a problem with the personal life of MLK too. Nobody in Europe
would even think to ask such a BS question:

[https://www.quora.com/Why-do-we-honor-Dr-Martin-Luther-
King-...](https://www.quora.com/Why-do-we-honor-Dr-Martin-Luther-King-Jr-in-
such-a-glorious-way-when-as-a-married-man-he-had-multiple-extramarital-
affairs)

~~~
jakear
Given that’s exactly what has happened, yes I do think that’s what would
happen. I’m sure even as a non-American you’re aware of Brett Kavanaugh and
his potential effect on abortion law.

And I don’t care what they do in their personal life either. I care about how
those things will effect they laws the pass: if someone drinks and does
cocaine and has extramarital affairs, but doesn’t fuck over women/minorities,
I’m all for them. If someone does the opposite, I’m against them.

------
benologist
Google shat themselves and unpublished something similar _and_ apologized heh.

I wonder if Apple has done a tremendous favor to web applications because in
hindsight letting Apple (or any of these companies) have a company-wide on/off
switch for your own apps like that is a bad idea.

[https://www.zdnet.com/article/google-shuts-down-iphone-
data-...](https://www.zdnet.com/article/google-shuts-down-iphone-data-
gathering-app-this-was-a-mistake-and-we-apologize/)

~~~
zaroth
Wow, good find. Apple should absolutely be revoking Google’s certificate as
well in this case.

But they use the enterprise certificate for their external “research” apps,
because they are doing things on the device (using internal APIs) that an
approved app is not permitted to do, and that is certainly not possible
through the web browser.

Of course their internal-use apps could be WebView almost certainly.

------
norswap
If only life had been as simple as dropping an .apk on their phone...

I don't expect Facebook to get a whole lot of sympathy, but really, Apple's
power on device owned by customers is ridiculous.

~~~
pentae
Right. I love hating on FB as much as the next person but the stronghold Apple
has over the hardware is absolutely unreal. Imagine buying $10M worth of
iPhones every year for your workforce and then Apple pulling your critical
software because there's no alternative way to side load apps for the market
research department. Which, by the way, might be a bit scummy but as far as I
can see theres no indication they have broken any laws there either.

Makes you wonder who really owns the phone?

~~~
jonknee
> Which, by the way, might be a bit scummy but as far as I can see theres no
> indication they have broken any laws there either.

It broke the agreement they made with Apple to get the key and as such Apple
revoked the key. It seems very cut and dry to me.

~~~
pentae
My point is Apple offers no alternative.

~~~
jonknee
Why should they? Facebook went out of their way to abuse the rules, but should
get an exception because they buy a lot of iPhones?

~~~
codebook
You don't understand what parent comment is saying ... it complains Apple's
closed environment not allowing of any apps to be installed in anyone's phone
unless app is downloaded from AppStore.

~~~
jonknee
> Apple's closed environment not allowing of any apps to be installed in
> anyone's phone unless app is downloaded from AppStore

Except the enterprise distribution which is what Facebook fucked up by
breaking the rules. You have to try really hard to get that revoked, Facebook
did and now they're in a tough spot. This is fine.

------
rdtsc
It seems the article almost wants us to feel sorry for Facebook.

Facebook are really the Oracle of the "social" tech companies. They are not
even pretending to be good or follow rules. As long as cash / clicks /
impressions keep coming in nothing is off the table.

Google is struggling with its positive PR image, every time they fall short
they are judged by the "Don't be evil" motto and everything it entailed.
Facebook doesn't have to worry about such details and it's easier for them in
a way. Their shares are going up as we saw recently, CA scandal didn't do much
damage, everything is great.

> “We designed our Enterprise Developer Program solely for the internal
> distribution of apps within an organisation.

Watch them pivot to "these researchers are part of the Facebook family, so
their network device are considered part of the internal network's edge, we
did nothing wrong".

~~~
wlesieutre
This is where regulation eventually has to come in, IMO. People like to talk
about how the market will solve problems, but per today's posts about Facebook
racking up thousands of dollars of credit card charges from 5 year olds and
their positive earnings results, the market looks at these kind of things and
says "Yep, this is great for our bottom line." Facebook isn't going to fix
itself.

~~~
archagon
Yeah, corporate titans punishing each other when the government won’t do
anything is a clear path to dystopia.

------
remote_phone
I would characterize it as more annoying than anything else. It’s not like we
couldn’t work or we had productions issues because of it.

~~~
naikrovek
Sounds like you might work at Facebook. If so, mild inconvenience or not, I am
glad it happened. Going around the terms stated in an agreement to accomplish
something forbidden by the agreement is a type of fraud. Fraud is illegal.

People are really starting to hate Facebook these days, and your guys'
attitude doesn't seem to be changing much because of it. I, for one, LOVE
this, because it means by the time you do recognize your sliding favor among
customers, it will be too late for you to do anything about it. You will
become the new Myspace, which is exactly what you deserve to be.

If you don't work for Facebook, then none of the above applies to you.

[EDIT:] the parent comment was deleted. The comment stated something to the
effect of "It wasn't a big deal, it didn't affect our workflows or production
applications."

~~~
remote_phone
I didn’t delete or edit my comment.

I completely understand now what my friends at Uber were saying about the
Internet hivemind and especially the HN hivemind.

Journalists routinely manipulate their stories to tell the story they want to
tell, and right now it’s “Facebook is evil.” You are entitled to your opinion
but nothing I or my coworkers do is evil and we would never engage in anything
unethical. In a large company there will always be bad apples but to paint an
entire company as somehow being a conspiracy is frankly mind boggling.

I would love to turn the mirror on all the haters and see how their lives
would be if journalists reported manipulated facts on the worst moments of
their lives.

~~~
driverdan
Facebook has had countless incidents of violating user privacy and trust. This
is just the latest. When a company has the same problems happening over and
over across different departments it's clear there's a company-wide problem.

~~~
asark
Even without the definitely-evil incidents that have occurred, simply greedily
collecting and then hoarding that much information about people is so grossly
and willfully negligent as to qualify. The very basis of everything they do is
hopelessly tainted.

Yes, that makes an awful lot of other companies—not just tech-first
companies—pretty damn evil, too. "Everyone's doing it" and "it's not illegal
and is making us money" aren't defenses I accept for this disgusting behavior.

[EDIT] that said, piling on people for working at evil companies is probably
unproductive and unfair for many of the same reasons that _e.g._ boycotts are
wildly ineffective, plus such a large percentage of the economy's kinda-evil
that the whole thing would get confusing and nasty and kinda pointless. Piling
on someone for being delusional about whether their employer is evil,
though... well, that's an awful lot less unfair.

------
ezoe
> Apple has left Facebook’s campus in disarray after the company revoked the
> social network’s permission to build or run employee-only applications,
> according to reports. Employees were reportedly left unable to read
> cafeteria menus, call for inter-office transport or use versions of the
> social network’s own apps.

If you just ignore all the evil things Facebook did. The moral of the story is
don't relies on a non-free computer and OS.

~~~
erinnh
Kind of? But this is so far off from being anywhere Apple's fault, that I can
only theoretically agree.

Facebook really shot themselves in the foot.

------
ineedasername
Two things: first, this seems like a reasonable response to the breach
Facebook committed.

Second, it illustrates the folly behind relying on the continued good will of
a 3rd party offering an essentially (or very nearly) free service. If Facebook
was licensing EDCs for millions a year, this ban might not have been the first
reaction Apple took.

~~~
saagarjha
> If Facebook was licensing EDCs for millions a year, this ban might not have
> been the first reaction Apple took.

Why would Facebook do this, and how?

~~~
ineedasername
They can't do it, that's not how Apple's EDC licensing works. I wasn't
proposing they should have paid more-- My point was that customers paying for
a product have more leverage than those receiving one for free, and so relying
on a free product for pieces of your business operations can put you in a
tenuous position.

------
brettnak
It seems like there's something getting lost here. A lot of comments and even
articles make it sound like Apple is retaliating against fb at random, which
is not true. FB had an internal app agreement with apple to distribute apps to
it's employees. Probably this one:
[https://developer.apple.com/programs/enterprise/](https://developer.apple.com/programs/enterprise/)

They violated the terms of the agreement, and therefore the have lost access.
They also probably violated the terms of the app store as a whole, but who
knows.

Whether or not one should have to be part of that program to install
Enterprise apps is a different issue.

------
olliej
Wrong title, should be “FB left their offices in disarray by using their
enterprise cert to spy on kids”. What utter muppets.

------
neonate
The original report was [https://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-employees-
angry-aft...](https://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-employees-angry-after-
apple-blocks-its-internal-ios-apps-2019-1?r=US&IR=T), which is also here:
[http://archive.is/tRiAp](http://archive.is/tRiAp)

------
oarabbus_
And... their stock is up.

~~~
sutterbomb
Stock price is trailing indicator

------
aqibgatoo
Facebook has become a privacy nightmare

~~~
thg
It's never been anything else.

------
uzero
This brings a smile to my face. I don't care anymore what excuses people come
up for Facebook's behavior. Enough is enough and Facebook has crossed the line
years ago. No remorse, no forgiveness.

~~~
warp_factor
fully agree. Even though I'm not fully onboard with Apple's huge power over
their phones, in this specific case the enemy of my enemy is my friend.

~~~
wyldfire
I just hope they haven't awoken a sleeping giant. Facebook has enormous
capital and engineering capacity. If they decided to have their own app store
and/or phone ecosystem, their brand might position them as a viable competitor
to Google or Apple. But would we be better off for it?

~~~
barkingcat
They already tried their own phone ecosystem. I'm not saying that they
shouldn't/can't try again, but it seems like Facebook's hubris is their worst
enemy.

~~~
blattimwind
"We have invented something no one else has thought of. A small personal
computerised device. Now you're able to stay docked twenty-four seven. On the
bus. You can dock. On the subway. Stay docked. You can be docked in at home,
and at the same time, you're docking with some kids at the public pool. We
went to the guys at Fruit Computers and we told them we wanted to make our
hardware as compatible as possible... Now you can dock your Lifeinvader to an
iFruit or any other device, and it'll take all the data off and reformat it
into Lifeinvader-friendly information.

(2013)

------
who-knows95
good.

------
mcgwiz
I wonder how pervasive the abuse of the EDC for customer-facing apps actually
is. If this got through FB / Google's legal teams, they might know of others
who have done this without consequence.

------
nerdb4itwascool
My co-worker put it best: "This is Uber-level scumminess"

------
bcheung
1) WTF, FB? Don't go around violating license terms.

2) Why do developers tolerate a platform that doesn't allow developers to
deploy apps wherever they want?

~~~
myguysi
2) probably because a lot of consumers buy iPhones? Can’t speak for Facebooks
internal use though...

------
mshaler
Title is inaccurate: _Facebook_ leaves Facebook offices in disarray after
Apple revoked app permissions.

------
_Microft
Facebook made their enterprise development certificate a single point of
failure and then messed up by abusing it?

That's so dumb that it's actually funny.

~~~
myrandomcomment
Found the engineer :)

Let’s make our internal systems depend on the good will of an outside company
that is marginaly a competitor.

The worse part is there has to be someone that KNEW they where in violation.

FB seems to have a culture of is okay to be scum if we get what we need since
we can always just say sorry.

~~~
ASinclair
> Let’s make our internal systems depend on the good will of an outside
> company that is marginaly a competitor.

What's the alternative for internal-only apps?

~~~
jboles
They could develop their own phone.

Apple, the maker of the hardware, is also a stakeholder in users’ privacy.
They are not obligated to assist Facebook in the undermining of users’
privacy. If their stance on privacy does not meet Facebook’s requirements,
Facebook is free to develop their own phone to run their own apps.

------
kevintb
FB should have seen this coming, honestly. What did they expect?

------
TheoTorvalds
Turns out Facebook can just Facetime Apple users to get all the data they need
anyway.

Also, why even offer accounts if you just shadowban everybody? It's gay.
Ycombinator is gay.

~~~
dang
There's software that filters comments based on past abuses by trolls. New
accounts are subject to more of these filters.

We review the comments that get killed that way, unkill the good ones, and
mark accounts legit when it's clear they're posting in good faith.

------
chj
FB, forget vr, time to make your own phone.

~~~
javagram
Presumably FB has similar versions of internal apps for Android which has no
remote kill switch since side loading is allowed.

Employees could just switch to Android if they are worried about Apple killing
their apps.

~~~
goldmouth
I’m not sure about an Android internal app, all employees are given brand new
iPhone x’s.

When I worked there we all had to use the internal fb and IG apps and do all
communication through them.

Switching to android would mean a huge IT change and mean replacing every
employees phone.

~~~
Shish2k
> all employees are given brand new iPhone x’s. > [...] > replacing every
> employees phone

Huh? Employees are given a choice of iPhone or Android; the full
infrastructure stack already exists for both, internal apps are built and
deployed for both. I'm pretty sure that IT could switch the whole company to
Android overnight if they had the hardware in stock...

~~~
goldmouth
Guess I was misktaken. I had the choice between a thinkpad and MacBook and
given an iPhone, didn’t realize we could get an android or just didn’t pay
attention...

------
gerardnll
Oh yeah, I'm loving this.

------
techslave
ouch! it’s an appropriate response.

------
onepremise
Apple would be a great company if it didn't botch 'right to repair', overprice
their products, and restrict their OS and APIs. Regardless, there's not much
'American' left in American tech products, let alone all US products. Apple
and Essential are the only two cell phone manufacturers left, if that, and
Essential just dropped theirs :( Somebody needs to make it cost effective to
print circuit boards and encasing frameworks so we can move our tech back to
the US. At least Apple is pushing back against Facebook and the NSA/gov.
Everybody else is selling our privacy.

