Comment by fastball
5 years ago
Except "privacy" as a justification is BS.
You can implement these APIs while at the same time requiring explicit permission from the user before a web application can use them. This preserves privacy while also giving users the option to have much more powerful web applications.
Apple doesn't want to implement these APIs because currently if you want access to these things on iOS, you need to go through their walled garden App Store, where they get a big chunk of any revenue you might make on such a service and can nerf competitors and all the other anti-competitive stuff they're doing.
> requiring explicit permission
Except on the long term that would have no effect in empowering users. We all know that when faced with a deluge of permission requests, or pressured by the fact that enough people have already accepted and it's the entry price to collaborate, people will just hit accept and be done with it.
They only need to get the foot in the door and then you'll find that plenty of stuff ends up conditioned on you giving them access. Every one of these APIs is a Trojan horse. Past experience just proves that they will be hijacked for purposes that don't do the user any favors.
Look no further than JS which is there to enrich the web to benefit users but 99% of it is garbage slid under the door to benefit site owners. That's because plenty of things that should work just fine without it are now tied into it, disable JS and the site experience breaks.
> Except on the long term that would have no effect in empowering users. We all know that when faced with a deluge of permission requests, or pressured by the fact that enough people have already accepted and it's the entry price to collaborate, people will just hit accept and be done with it.
How is that any different from apps on the App Store?
The App Store can enforce things like "users can deny permissions and the app still works for anything else" or you get booted out of 50% of the US market. A web site can say "oh, you denied access to location? Well, I won't let you continue at all until you do". We saw this on Android - on install apps would require a raft of permissions, but if all your friends were on Facebook you'd be compelled to accept them all anyway.
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My opinion is informed by my experience with JS.
I love the web that actual dynamic logic on the frontend has allowed. I want more of that, not less.
The alternative to web apps that can do these things is native apps that can do these things. If you don't think native apps are tracking your behavior, you are sorely mistaken.
> I love the web that actual dynamic logic on the frontend has allowed.
I think you missed my point, I also truly love that 1% of useful stuff that JS brings and wouldn't want to lose the functionality. But I absolutely hate the other 99% which I have no control over or I have to jump through uMatrix hoops to control.
Let's put it another way. You probably love that electricians and plumbers exist to fix your stuff. But if once you let them in they could invisibly camp in any room of your house without you even knowing where they are and what they're doing, would you still open the door for them?
These APIs can either give you a relatively broad "Allow on this site" option, or they can flood you with granular choices. The first opens the door for them camping in bed with you. The second is like someone triggering your alarm every 5 seconds until you disable it. Accept all. Then they can camp in bed with you.
Doesn't your experience tell you the same?
> If you don't think native apps are tracking your behavior, you are sorely mistaken
You see, this is exactly what I meant. "Those guys are screwing you over so it's OK if these ones do too". This is how the "screw the user over" arms race happens where everybody tries to outdo the others with even more invasive techniques, and users take it because each is just a slight escalation from before. When native apps were adding these "features" someone loved them for one reason or another. Frog in hot water.
P.S. Example of how the innocent battery API access can be sold as "to save battery" and then repurposed to screw you over:
https://metro.co.uk/2019/09/27/uber-charge-battery-lower-107...
Unequal progress of privacy improvements on the web and app fronts does not make it okay to walk back progress on the web front just to provide API parity.
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Those EU "accepts cookies" boxes have done an amazing job at making people ignore every popup on the internet.
By this logic, permission prompts shouldn't exist at all. I think you're gonna have to provide proof for your "we all know" assertion, because I do not know that users will individually grant dozens of permissions on each site they visit.
I don't want random web sites I open (and their ads) to ask permission to scan bluetooth in my area and use usb devices connected to my computer. A website has no business doing any of that. There is no justification for these API to exist.
I don't want _most_ websites doing this. There are some websites (especially PWA) where they are definitely useful and can replace a heavy client.
Maybe it shouldn't "asking for permission" but "giving your permission" explicitly. If you don't need such an API, you would never be bothered by it if the model is opt-in without notification/popups.
I understand the problem you have with websites asking for permissions, especially push notifications permissions, as they keep showing up. And I do definitely agree that having a website that does not need any of these permissions ask for it would be even more annoying but there are definitely cases where I'm glad a website can help me out (and I don't have to download a heavy client that might or might not have tracking and analytics in it)
>There are some websites (especially PWA) where they are definitely useful and can replace a heavy client.
How can this be so when the web browser itself is a heavy client?
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Why would you ever want a PWA when a native version exists?
And "heavy client" is a fallacy. Operating systems come with runtimes too. Very complex native app can be very small in size if it uses the native controls and APIs. They can be KB in size. Any asset is going to be bigger than the binary itself.
The web-as-native apps are the ones that are huge, because they embed a behemoth (a browser) which is akin to an entire operating system.
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> I don't want random web sites I open (and their ads) to ask permission to scan bluetooth in my area and use usb devices connected to my computer.
Why not? It makes complete sense for something like a website that backs up the photos stored on your camera. What's even the counter argument, that if people want to back up their data they should have to pay Apple?
If you've granted a website access to a restricted API, the browser can just paint a flashing red border around the website or whatever, similar to how people configure their terminals when they're SSH'd into prod.
I don't want random sites to ask to use anything on my computer. It's like a popup ad - it's annoying and blocks the site. Sure, there are legitimate use cases, but if it's anything like push notifications it will be heavily abused and far too many sites will ask for permissions.
Because every other site will start asking you to scan Bluetooth when some ad network starts using it to fingerprint you
I’m tired of websites asking if I want to enable push notifications from them. The answer is, and will always be, GTFO.
In most browsers, you can go into settings and default it to block without asking.
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I disagree. I want that. Therefore a website does have business asking for those things.
You (or a small minority of users) actively wanting it is not sufficient justification for creating APIs that will, with near-certainty, enable additional widespread surveillance and data gathering of the public by entities whose only interest is in profiting from that data, not better serving the public.
You're wrong. Therefore the developers' effort should not be wasted, and certainly not while exposing their users to privacy risks, exploits, and such other dangers as will inevitably arise when placing the capabilities to perform sensitive operations in software which also deals with untrusted input from the Internet.
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Same argument could be made for JS in general. The justification for those APIs to exist is because developers want to implement features using them, same as with JS in general too.
I've seen Apple get away with this bad monopolistic behavior through hypocrisy more and more.
Apple is denying people their real rights to install whatever they want in their own machines, forcing everything to go through their app store, where they have the last word of who can or cannot distribute software to the platforms they have created.
They know that if they use the common "we are thinking of your well being" their customers and fans will just believe they are a good-willing company with no other interests than their users safety and well being.
I don't know why the majority of the crowd here in HN, who use to be so harsh in pointing out this kind of behavior in companies like Google and Microsoft, have this blindness with everything that has to do with Apple.
It will worth nothing, if after have defeated this beast with GNU, Linux, the Web, open software revolution, etc.. we end up not protecting what we have achieved so far, because somehow one company trying to secure their profits and its position in the market, get away with behaviors that can ultimately destroy the culture of freedom, open-source software and ultimately, digital rights, which our legislators are not prepared to defend, really understanding the threats and the dire future they represent if we dont uncover the true intentions behind this BS.
Recently I’ve seen a jump in the number of random sites popping up a “this site wants to access VR hardware” dialogs in FireFox; news articles nothing to do with VR or visualisation. I don’t have any VR devices.
How do you do this bit “requiring explicit permission from the user before a web application can use them” without the fallout of “its just a hundred thousand popups and you’re done!” on every page?
Easy. You don't have them in popups, you have them in a dropdown that the user selects themselves. Websites then need to learn to fail gracefully if not given certain permissions, otherwise consumers need to stop using those websites.
The solution to privacy concerns is not "nuke functionality", it's "don't let websites abuse functionality for tracking purposes".
Just like how with native apps on iOS, the solution is not "don't let apps ever access GPS data", it's provide a UX that makes it fairly easy to choose and don't provide permissions to apps that don't need them.
"Just like iOS"? The iOS solution to GPS data permissions is a modal popup: https://support.apple.com/library/content/dam/edam/applecare...
from the page https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT203033
I'd argue that what Firefox do with the tilting icon for Push Notification is not that bad. I'm surprised they do not do the same for other type of permission as they are these request popups are equally annoying.
However, I have to admit that displaying one icon per permission would not scale great when having a dozen of them.
Just the constant "this website would like to send you push notifications" on every last damn site.
Part of me wishes that browsers dropped support for web push notifications entirely. Or at least bury it in the browser settings somewhere. At best, they provide marginal value to me, and at worse, they're just spammy.
My parents aren't techsavy at all, so when they get those push notification requests, they just hit "accept". They now get dozens of spammy ads sent to them via push notifications (eg, "30% off sale, buy now!")
I've disabled web push notifications entirely, but I still get JavaScript-based prompts asking me for permission to turn on notifications. I already explicitly said no, yet web developers still feel compelled to find workarounds to interrupt my work and ask me for permissions (why?).
I get that in theory, web notifications are supposed to be valuable, but in practice its been nothing more than a constant annoyance for me.
next headline: "Apple devices won't display any video other than those from tv+"
Apple bros on HN: "Good! finally someone standing up to the BigTech abuse of privacy"
I sympathise with the walled garden App Store argument. I hate it that Apple keep such a tight grip on the application distribution channel. At the same time, I really hate the trend where browsers are operating systems and I use native apps whenever possible.
Apple has the ability to put every submitted app through rigorous analysis before publication on the App Store to look for forbidden behavior, in order to protect their customers. They don't have that ability with arbitrary websites.
So you trust a third-party, a company, to define what is 'forbidden' for you to install, if they say they do this "to protect our customers"?
At least in democracy we can elect the people who define whats allowed or forbidden to us, and they can only do it, in the constraints of a constitution.
If we let companies get away with it, we are allowing them to create shadow states, a sort of new digital feudalism, where our digital overlords can control a big part of our lives. (Remember that we are going to a process of digitalization of our lives and experience, with IOT, AI, smart gadgets, to take into account how powerful a entity who can control all of this can be)
Today, its just Apple. But with people normalizing this kind of behavior, it will be more and more over time, til its too late for all of us.
By enforcing other browsers to use their implementation of Web platform, for instance, they knew they could control the Web from being a good contender to their exclusive application platform.
This kind of action alone, should be outlawed, because is pure uncompetitive behavior, not to say its hurting their customers freedom to choose whats best for them, and that actually have nothing to do with the privacy or safety of their users.
You vote with your wallet. If you don't want to patronize Apple, go with Android, or find some other phone and browser vendor.
Also, you mention without evidence that Apple's actions have no relation to the safety or privacy of users. Are you claiming that their actions are merely a pretext, and that Apple provides no such value, or that they have no such intent? If so, how do you know?
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You made the same point before but again, how did tiktok, facebook and all the other crap gets past it? What about all the other chinese spyware?
> Apple has the ability to put every submitted app through rigorous analysis before publication on the App Store to look for forbidden behavior, in order to protect their customers.
Note that Apple does not regularly exercise that ability…