The adventure involved in disabling Facebook's in-app browser is genuinely funny to me. Some people worked hard to bury it like that.
Is it that hard believe after Apple & Google conspired to artificially suppress developer wages?
I just saw the post surface on Mastodon with some extra [0] context [1]. As an app developer, I need to keep such stories on the sidelines of my focus because otherwise it's practically impossible to do my job. Every single claim from Apple about privacy over the years has proven to be sales theatre.
[0] https://pluralistic.net/2024/03/12/market-failure/
[1] https://www.phonearena.com/news/apple-facebook-almost-worked...
Just so I'm clear, this article's contention is that, because Apple doesn't restrict in-app browsers in the same way they do iOS Safari, they're just pretending to be mad at Facebook?
I've long held that this is one of those areas that if Apple really cared about privacy they'd disallow in-app browsers. They'd add the rule that an app that is not a browser must list in its manifest 10 or fewer domains that its webview is allowed to access. All the rest would be denied.
This would mean many apps like the Facebook App, Messenger, Google Maps, GMail, Line, WeChat, Slack, Discord, etc would effectively not be allowed to open links to the entire internet but only domains directly related to the app and would be a privacy win.
They'd have to have some wording that would have to distinguish between a browser app and a non-browser app but i'd argue that's probably not that hard to do.