News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:Tim Cook’s Fortnite trial testimony was unexpectedly reve... by kitsunesoba on Sunday May 23, 2021 @01:13PM (#27256673)
What I fear is that as a reaction to Apple's recent moves on privacy (tracking transparency, requiring user consent prior to tracking, etc), Facebook is going to spin up its own App Store without such rules where user data is a free for all.

This wouldn't be a threat in itself, but having control of heavy hitters like the Facebook app, Instagram, and WhatsApp among others, they could drive traffic levels that no third-party App Store has ever seen overnight. They can also afford to buy other heavy-hitting exclusives, and some data hungry devs would likely come on board with no incentive at all.

This would be a terrible outcome. If iOS is to support third party app stores, I'd rather it be after legislation is passed that effectively enforces Apple's App Store privacy policies at a federal level.

Re:Tim Cook’s Fortnite trial testimony was unexpectedly reve... by hamandcheese on Sunday May 23, 2021 @08:20PM (#27259882)
Aren’t Apples policies enforced via app sandboxing though? Why would that be any different for third party apps?
Re:Tim Cook’s Fortnite trial testimony was unexpectedly reve... by ratww on Sunday May 23, 2021 @08:36PM (#27259972)
Not really taking sides here, but sandboxing is not a panacea, unfortunately. There's also fingerprinting, abusing bugs in the system, faking system password fields, forcing the user to disable restrictions to the app so it works. There isn't much of a purely technological solution.