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.
ceejayoz · 4h ago
Same for Uber, which sends both important order updates and marketing as push notifications.
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.
4.5.4 is more important, and agrees with the "you must" bit in the HIG.
"Push Notifications should not be used for promotions or direct marketing purposes unless customers have explicitly opted in to receive them via consent language displayed in your app’s UI, and you provide a method in your app for a user to opt out from receiving such messages. Abuse of these services may result in revocation of your privileges."
> Apple themselves have started doing that
Well, it's their platform. They've their own internal rules and app review processes, one would presume. Like how the cops can shoot people, but I can't.
latexr · 3h ago
> 4.5.4 is more important
That’s the one I wanted to link to. Fixed. Thank you.
> and agrees with the "you must" bit in the HIG.
I know. The point is that the HIG is not used to enforce app policy, the App Review Guidelines are.
> They've their own internal rules and app review processes, one would presume.
Which is exactly why they are in trouble with governments around the world.
> Like how the cops can shoot people, but I can't.
Cops can’t just shoot people (well, maybe in the US?), they have to have a reason. In any civilised nation, a cop who shoots a random person doesn’t just get a pat on the back and a thumbs up. They are meant to be public servants who help enforce the law, not vigilantes who stand above it.
kmlx · 2h ago
> Same for Uber, which sends both important order updates and marketing as push notifications.
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.
reaperducer · 1h ago
Same for Uber, which sends both important order updates and marketing as push notifications.
Ditto New York Times "Breaking News" alerts pushing features that were published a week ago, but didn't get enough traction for some editor.
Isamu · 3h ago
>Surely Apple also knows this
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.
ceejayoz · 3h ago
> 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.
SoftTalker · 2h ago
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.
stronglikedan · 2h ago
Apple knows that they are being accused. Apple doesn't know whether the accusations are true. When they boot someone, they know it's true.
andy_ppp · 4h ago
They probably have an agreement that involves money and anticompetitive behaviour.
netdur · 3h ago
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
latexr · 2h ago
> 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.
liquid_thyme · 2h ago
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.
b_e_n_t_o_n · 2h ago
Apple > Google == Meta imo
liquid_thyme · 1h ago
There are people who care about keeping phones out of landfills and Apple (and others) designing products withe low repairability, and also trying their best to block access to parts under the guise of "protecting" the users.
ujkhsjkdhf234 · 2h ago
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.
SoftTalker · 2h ago
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.
Manuel_D · 1m ago
Is it inconceivable that people actually see lower savings in exchange for tracking shopping habits is a beneficial transaction? Safeway can more effectively distribute products. I get to save money. Safeway has an incentive to keep this data secure - if it leaked then their competitors gain an advantage. And even if it does leak, how are my grocery shopping habits being published really going to negatively impact me? I mean, I guess I can see how a dieting influencer secretly buying donuts might be scandalous... but 99.9% probably DGAF if their grocery lists were leaked.
I often find that people just reflexively assume that data collection about their habits is inherently a net negative, rather than laying out the cost benefit analysis.
nozzlegear · 2h ago
I think people do care, but cynical tech types aren't very good at explaining why using a loyalty card or installing an app to save money on gas is ultimately about trade-offs and could be bad for them in the long run. We can't just shake a stick at them and say "abandon your grocery and gas discounts, fools, big tech is always watching!"
ujkhsjkdhf234 · 2h ago
People not knowing how to communicate to other people is the core of all problems.
I feel like everyone paying attention deep down knew that they were doing this. This is just the article that confirms it.
righthand · 4h ago
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.
antiframe · 3h ago
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.
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.
>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.
caycep · 3h ago
is this the incident where Apple pulled Meta's developer licenses or is this a new breach?
toast0 · 2h ago
IIRC, Apple pulled Facebook's enterprise developer cert over Onavo stuff; again IIRC, Apple had pulled Onavo from the app store, and Facebook continued to offer it to users by enrolling them in the enterprise developer system; on January 30, 2019 Apple revoked that cert: Onavo distribution was stopped in addition to Facebook's internal apps.
This article says it's about Apple’s App Tracking Transparency (ATT), introduced in 2021. Facebook changed their name to Meta in 2021 as well.
rchaud · 3h ago
> Meta relied heavily on selling personalized advertising, which required it to be able to target particular demographics and interest groups. This was achieved by tracking individual users across different apps.
Yet another reason to dump native apps (many of which are built using the Facebook SDK despite having nothing to do with FB) in favour of web apps.
ujkhsjkdhf234 · 2h ago
I like my native apps and I'm not a fan of PWAs because they cannot be made to easily run offline.
rchaud · 2h ago
What third party app are you running offline? By third party I mean something not built into the OS like a notes app, file manager or camera app.
ujkhsjkdhf234 · 1h ago
Fitness and calorie tracker, ebook reader, notes app (Android doesn't have a good notes app built into the OS), music player app for music I have locally on my phone, and an app that configures my bluetooth headphones.
NoiseBert69 · 38m ago
Gadgetbridge is running great locally without dumping your most intimate data into a vendor cloud.
nickthegreek · 2h ago
running meta's social media apps offline doesn't seem particular compelling.
ujkhsjkdhf234 · 2h ago
I can't tell if you are deliberately being obtuse but they are talking about apps overall and not Meta's apps. Many apps use Facebooks SDK because of the Facebook Pixel for tracking and advertisement. Web apps don't prevent that and again, cannot be easily run offline so I'll stick with my native apps.
electric_muse · 4h ago
When the incentives are this large, it’s just too profitable to not “be evil.” We can decry this, but it’s just human nature.
I also think this is a sign of late stage capitalism where the opportunities to profit “ethically” are becoming much harder to find and exploit. That leads to more pressure to find gray areas that others’ ethical or moral convictions prevented them from exploiting.
I just installed graphene os on a brand new cash-bought pixel for the express purpose of not being left out of some important WhatsApp groups or missing out on some other experiences that require installing apps that I know won’t respect my privacy. I assume anything from Meta is hazardous at this point.
gruez · 2h ago
>I just installed graphene os on a brand new cash-bought pixel for the express purpose of not being left out of some important WhatsApp groups or missing out on some other experiences that require installing apps that I know won’t respect my privacy. I assume anything from Meta is hazardous at this point.
There isn't much point in the "cash-bought" part when android has blocked non-system apps from reading hardware identifiers years ago. Not to mention that facebook can easily deanonmyize you through your social graph.
thepryz · 4h ago
I assume this is a secondary phone? Curious as I’ve been contemplating the same thing
KerrAvon · 4h ago
> it’s just human nature
It's not, though. The universal avarice of the current era may not be unprecedented in history, but it wasn't the norm through most of the 20th century. There was a time when layoffs were considered painful failures at some corporations, instead of routine business strategy -- probably because the Great Depression was still in living memory.
Apocryphon · 2h ago
Enshittification really hits hard when the luster has fallen but the money printing must continue. The general perception that Facebook is somewhat of a utility app now, the young people have departed for more hip and current platforms, and it's just most used by grandparents and content-generating bots. (Though it's still useful for Marketplace and Events and so forth.) Also long before this, FB weakened a lot of its other features such as Groups, or Facebook Apps.
So it makes sense that they're looking for more nefarious, scraping the bottom of the barrel, desparate behavior to keep the money printer churning despite increasing consumer apathy.
comfysocks · 2h ago
In all fairness to Meta, “don’t be evil” was a different company. Meta is the “they trust me, [the] dumb fucks” company. So they’re being somewhat true to their words. /s
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...
"Push Notifications should not be used for promotions or direct marketing purposes unless customers have explicitly opted in to receive them via consent language displayed in your app’s UI, and you provide a method in your app for a user to opt out from receiving such messages. Abuse of these services may result in revocation of your privileges."
> Apple themselves have started doing that
Well, it's their platform. They've their own internal rules and app review processes, one would presume. Like how the cops can shoot people, but I can't.
That’s the one I wanted to link to. Fixed. Thank you.
> and agrees with the "you must" bit in the HIG.
I know. The point is that the HIG is not used to enforce app policy, the App Review Guidelines are.
> They've their own internal rules and app review processes, one would presume.
Which is exactly why they are in trouble with governments around the world.
> Like how the cops can shoot people, but I can't.
Cops can’t just shoot people (well, maybe in the US?), they have to have a reason. In any civilised nation, a cop who shoots a random person doesn’t just get a pat on the back and a thumbs up. They are meant to be public servants who help enforce the law, not vigilantes who stand above it.
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.
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.
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.
I often find that people just reflexively assume that data collection about their habits is inherently a net negative, rather than laying out the cost benefit analysis.
https://www.sfgate.com/sf-culture/article/facebook-movie-soc...
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-...
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.
This article says it's about Apple’s App Tracking Transparency (ATT), introduced in 2021. Facebook changed their name to Meta in 2021 as well.
Yet another reason to dump native apps (many of which are built using the Facebook SDK despite having nothing to do with FB) in favour of web apps.
I also think this is a sign of late stage capitalism where the opportunities to profit “ethically” are becoming much harder to find and exploit. That leads to more pressure to find gray areas that others’ ethical or moral convictions prevented them from exploiting.
I just installed graphene os on a brand new cash-bought pixel for the express purpose of not being left out of some important WhatsApp groups or missing out on some other experiences that require installing apps that I know won’t respect my privacy. I assume anything from Meta is hazardous at this point.
There isn't much point in the "cash-bought" part when android has blocked non-system apps from reading hardware identifiers years ago. Not to mention that facebook can easily deanonmyize you through your social graph.
It's not, though. The universal avarice of the current era may not be unprecedented in history, but it wasn't the norm through most of the 20th century. There was a time when layoffs were considered painful failures at some corporations, instead of routine business strategy -- probably because the Great Depression was still in living memory.
So it makes sense that they're looking for more nefarious, scraping the bottom of the barrel, desparate behavior to keep the money printer churning despite increasing consumer apathy.