Facebook And Location Tracking In iOS 13

September 19, 2019
2 min read

As we’ve seen last week with Spotify, the use of location tracking can be explained with business interest – they want users to stop abusing the Family Premium plan. What Facebook is doing after all the scandals it had with our data, is unexplainable.

In the recent Newsroom article titled “Understanding Updates to Your Device’s Location Settings”, the social network company explains how updates to Android and iOS will prevent them from abusing the constant location tracking.

Facebook is better with location. It powers features like check-ins and makes planning events easier. It helps improve ads and keep you and the Facebook community safe. Features like Find Wi-Fi and Nearby Friends use precise location even when you’re not using the app to make sure that alerts and tools are accurate and personalized for you.

Just read the fucking quote. Facebook tracking your location to keep you safe. How delirious are they? Article further explains, that now there will be the ability in OS to allow location sharing with the app only once and if the app is tracking your location in the background with the app closed, iOS will prompt you with notification, showing map of the location data and explanation why the app uses it (to keep you safe, of course).

This article shows how bad these changes are for Facebook. Right now location tracking is the best data they can get on users. Knowing where you’ve been can give a lot of insights. Which neighborhood do you live in, where do you work, which type of restaurants you go to, if you are sick, how often do you travel. All of this information can be gathered using the background location tracking, without users even noticing.

I’m glad both Google and Apple are making changes to the location tracking in theirs OS’s. I’m sure Facebook will find a way to track it anyway, they say so in the article:

We may still understand your location using things like check-ins, events and information about your internet connection.

This article shows how out of touch Facebook is, but the more scary thing is – people believe them. I hope those changes will educate people more on the type of data they are sending to those companies.

Even Apple Is Not Perfect

June 17, 2019
2 min read

Considering some recent Apple struggles with antitrust cases around App Store I want to focus today on the search. I don’t think about it much or often because we are lucky enough to live in the 3rd world country, where there are no App Store search ads, but I have US account also, for the apps that are not available in Latvia, so I’ve seen some amount. 

Of course, I want to preface the story – that it is anecdotal, something I’ve noticed and I’ve heard or read that others noticed this too.

It feels like App Store search adds for no other reason, only to get money from developers. Even on Instagram, there were adds after seeing which I’ve bought something and even was happy. With App Store it feels like there is completely different stories. 

There are in big part two types of ads – first, completely useless apps, rip-offs or apps the whole purpose of which is to extract more money and not providing any service. Those are the apps that are never the right answer for your search query.

Second type, is mostly big developers, who want to get the spot, so the apps from the first category won’t be at the top. 

Considering this, it’s hard to see any good for the users and developers from those kind of ads. I really hope that I am wrong on this and there are small developers who were able to grow sustainable business using App Store search ads, but I’m very doubtful.