Over the last several months, there's been much ado about Apple's new ATT feature in iOS 14.
ATT is what the cool kids call the defensive capability built into the iPhone's operating system
that prevents apps from tracking your identity outside of Apple's "walled garden" without your
expressed permission. Many postulated
the new privacy move by Apple would kill especially Facebook's data collection efforts, which
constitute a very large revenue stream for the social media platform. I've read several articles
which exposed the breadth of data Facebook collects through its iPhone app — it's monstrous and
unreasonable. Data collection of this magnitude, combined with weak protections, is what allowed
a small company called Cambridge Analytica to weaponize Facebook for political purposes. With
ATT now requiring each unit's owner to specifically authorize Facebook to collect their data,
Apple, combined with user preference, have all but closed the data floodgates to Facebook entirely;
the last reporting I saw suggested between 5% and 10% of Facebook users have given the permission
now required for Facebook to collect data from their iPhones.
I have been using Facebook less and less of late, mostly as a function of the divisiveness
and rancor that didn't entirely cease at the close of the most recent federal election cycle.
But today, things in my native Facebook app were different: ads. About every third item in my feed
was a fucking advertisement. This was pollution of a sort I'd never seen before, because they
didn't seem to be driven by my preferences or history. It's just ad after ad after ad of random
shit.
As I'd been reading about what a data Hoover the Facebook app is, I've weighed the price of
using the app with the experience using a browser. I chose Firefox for an experiment, making
Facebook the only page I used that browser for, so every time I'd open it, it'd open to Facebook.
I found the browser-based experience not entirely distasteful. There was a lot about it that
very closely approximated the experience through Facebook's app.
So today when I found all those ads cluttering my feed, I switched to Firefox and found...
no ads. Anywhere. My feed was all content, no ads. I checked the app again — the SECOND item
on my feed was an ad.
I looked closer at the settings on Firefox Mobile. What? A night mode? YES PLEASE! Once I
found that setting, there was no reason for me to use the Facebook app any longer. It's outta
here!
I'm not a hard-core privacy guy, but I do consider my information as currency where "free"
apps like Google and Facebook are concerned. Put simply, if you're going to use their apps,
you have to be okay with them monetizing your metadata. So be a smart shopper, and vote with
your data. Personally, I'm not okay with the quantities of data Facebook and Google collect
from my phone, so I choose not to use their applications.
So my preferred substitution for the Facebook App is accessing their site via browser.
Firefox Mobile, built by Mozilla, is known for being pro-privacy, and it's new "night mode"
sealed the deal for me.