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Yes you can disable it. Turn off the setting Find My Network on your device if you’re concerned.

Explain how this network is evil.

That also turns off your own ability to simply find your own lost phone though

That's frustrating - especially since phones can broadcast their locations with no use of the Apple dragnet.
 
No, this switch only disables the mesh network functionality. You can find your phone with this off as long as your phone has a signal and charge.

Disabling Find My iPhone turns off being able to find the phone, period.

Seems like the one detail is finding my phone even if it's offline

How does that even work on my old iPhone SE1?

Maybe the verbiage is talking about newer phones and iOS doesn't realize my phone has no U1 or anything?
 
The eventual problem Apple and others will have in changing their practices with advertisers is in that how long is it going to be before advertisers start making court claims against Apple and others for interefering with a legitimate business in that they are preventing them from doing legitimate business because as far as I am aware, compaines are not allowed to interfere with the way another company goes about it's legitmate business. Yes I am sure the majority of us can't stand the way advertisers go about their business but at the end of the day, like it or not it is still a legitimate business practice.
With European privacy laws - there’s no way Apple will be forced to reduce privacy just to allow companies to profit from it.
 
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Looks like Meta is one more day of bad trading away from falling below the $600 Billion threshold of Klobuchar's antitrust bill.
 
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One step closer to MySpace. I can’t wait for people to talk about Facebook in the past tense.
 
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What a shame
 
At the same time Apple generates billions for Google by making it the standard search engine, because Apple receives a lot of money in return. I wonder what happens if Facebook offers Apple five billion dollars per year to avoid losing ten billion dollars a year. Will Apple still stand firm then?
Apple doesn’t need an additional five billion a year… so why would they compromise?
 
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With European privacy laws - there’s no way Apple will be forced to reduce privacy just to allow companies to profit from it.
If an advertiser can prove that the data they collect from EU citizens falls within the scope of GPDR (The General Data Protection Regulation) then Apple cannot interfere with the advertisers business.
 
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Maybe my daughter's generation has realized what an evil POS Facebook is... It could not lose enough money or customers for me....
Don’t know the demographics in your case, but it looks to me that the younger generation sees Facebook as the online gathering corner for the out of fashion non trendy old gang.

But they flock to other ones that’s all the same thing to me: Instagram, TikTok, shallow Reddit subs, etc… they are all about exploiting the addictive, pleasurable, sociable, attention-seeking parts of the brain via dopamine rushes in the form of likes/dislikes, views, followings/unfollowing, drama, conflict, social belonging and more in the hopes of keeping the user engaged and coming back to it.

More attention time and engagement = more ads revenue.
 
Yes you can disable it. Turn off the setting Find My Network on your device if you’re concerned.

Explain how this network is evil.

There is no such setting on my iPhone XR, can you please double check that the setting is called that and advise where it is if so?
 
If an advertiser can prove that the data they collect from EU citizens falls within the scope of GPDR (The General Data Protection Regulation) then Apple cannot interfere with the advertisers business.
As alluded in a comment before, can I the individual as an owner of a personal mobile device, interfere with said advertisers business by asking them not to track?

Can Apple really be forced to not display the prompt with the privacy options to people? Can they be asked to remove the limited cross tracking toggle that has existed all these years in the settings section and force everyone to have it enabled?

I’m sure there’s a potential yes somewhere with multimillion dollar fines that goes to… somewhere (it’s not clear for me what happens with the fines, they don’t seem to go to affected users).
 
Reading the posts in here there is one thing that members need to be clear about, when they are hating on Facebook and want to see it's demise, are they talking in the past tense Facebook which is now Meta or are they talking about the social media company Facebook because both are now totally different. Facebook social media I can do without but Meta, no because Meta owns hundreds of companies totaling millions of employees and I for one do not want to see all these people out of a job.

So please, can members be clear in their posts to stop the confusion, is it Meta you want closed or Facebook social media closed
 
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What would you recommend for the tens of millions of small businesses that use Facebook to promote their products and services, generate leads, direct traffic to their website, etc.? All high usage platforms desirable for small business sales/marketing efforts have similar tracking and data usage policies.

The issue is that "free" attracts the users and creates the desired traffic volume (and FB certainly has that), but "free" requires a way for the platform owner to make money. The best way to make that money is targeted advertising and targeted advertising requires the collection of tracking and usage data.

One way to remove the need to collect and monetize usage data is to require users to pay for a subscription but that will dramatically reduce the number of users and as a result, make it much less appealing and cost effective for small business owners, etc.

This applies to all sorts of forums and social media sites. Imagine how many fewer users MacRumors would have if people HAD to pay for a subscription.
These businesses existed in other forms before social media and often took the time to set up their own websites, learning a valuable skill in the process. If your business 100% relies on Facebook interactions you need a plan B.

As for subscribing to MacRumors forums? The gaming forum I have been a member of since 1999 broke away from its corporate holder in 2006 after they folded the forums. We set up our own and it is ran ad-free based on donations from the community. It does not rely on social media or otherwise to drive traffic.

I imagine if MacRumors folded then no doubt the core community might just set up their own Apple discussion forum which is still entirely possible. Despite the empty promises and vast societal disruption web 2.0 brought to society, the much better web 1.0 is still out there if you know where to look.

The internet was ran by nerds and hobbyists before Facebook and if the company folded tomorrow then they would still be there and arguably the internet would go back to being a more peaceful place.
 
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As alluded in a comment before, can I the individual as an owner of a personal mobile device, interfere with said advertisers business by asking them not to track?

Can Apple really be forced to not display the prompt with the privacy options to people? Can they be asked to remove the limited cross tracking toggle that has existed all these years in the settings section and force everyone to have it enabled?

I’m sure there’s a potential yes somewhere with multimillion dollar fines that goes to… somewhere (it’s not clear for me what happens with the fines, they don’t seem to go to affected users).
Yes you can 'interfere' with the use of a 'yes' or 'no' choice which is what the GPDR is all about BUT what needs to be made clear to users which i believe it does not, is when the choice is given, just exactly what data is the user denying the use of because a string of ID data can contain so many different variables, the persons name, their living address, phone number, MAC address, IP address, web browser being used, webpage they visited, last webpage they visited, time, date. Now the question is, when a user clicks 'No' to the popup choice box, just how much of that ID data is prevented from being sent to Apple and others, is it all of it or just the parts that can actually identify who the person is because some of that ID data is not personal identifiable data and thus can still be used by advertisers and data analysts.

We may not like how advertisers work but as far as the law is concerned it is a legitimate business practice and must work within the confines of the law and if they do that, companies such as Apple can not interfere with this type of business. When this issue arose with Meta complaining it would have a serious impact on their business, MR did an article on it and in the article it stated that whilst Apple has implemented the Yes/No choice, there is still some data that Apple lets Facebook and others have regardless of the user chosing No. Therefore like I said, Apple cannot just say NO your not having our users data because they know if they did it would be seen as interfering in the legitimate business of others. Some data they will let others have but not all of it.
 
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What would you recommend for the tens of millions of small businesses that use Facebook to promote their products and services, generate leads, direct traffic to their website, etc.? All high usage platforms desirable for small business sales/marketing efforts have similar tracking and data usage policies.

The issue is that "free" attracts the users and creates the desired traffic volume (and FB certainly has that), but "free" requires a way for the platform owner to make money. The best way to make that money is targeted advertising and targeted advertising requires the collection of tracking and usage data.

One way to remove the need to collect and monetize usage data is to require users to pay for a subscription but that will dramatically reduce the number of users and as a result, make it much less appealing and cost effective for small business owners, etc.

This applies to all sorts of forums and social media sites. Imagine how many fewer users MacRumors would have if people HAD to pay for a subscription.

I will say - you reap what you sow. I don’t owe you anything, and while I may appreciate being shown ads that advertise products relevant to me, I do not appreciate the data collection that goes on behind the scenes to make this possible.

Advertising isn’t inherently bad, but for far too long, Facebook has been way too cavalier with our user data, and it’s clear that if legislation isn’t going to do anything about it, then Apple will.

As it stands, Apple users continue to have the choice to be tracked by a company like Facebook and nothing is stopping them from consuming as many personalized ads as they want. The onus now falls on Facebook to convince users of the value found with being tracked and receiving personalized ads, which they have categorically failed to do.

This is also why we are seeing so many companies attack Apple and their App Store model, because they see Apple as coming between them and us. And this is why I continue to argue in favour of a closed App Store model fully under Apple’s control. Because the likes of epic and Facebook clearly do not have our best interests in mind. Something like ATT is not going to work if there are alternative app stores where Apple cannot enforce the inclusion of such a feature.

So if you want to blame someone, blame Facebook, not Apple.
 
I will say - you reap what you sow. I don’t owe you anything, and while I may appreciate being shown ads that advertise products relevant to me, I do not appreciate the data collection that goes on behind the scenes to make this possible.

Advertising isn’t inherently bad, but for far too long, Facebook has been way too cavalier with our user data, and it’s clear that if legislation isn’t going to do anything about it, then Apple will.

As it stands, Apple users continue to have the choice to be tracked by a company like Facebook and nothing is stopping them from consuming as many personalized ads as they want. The onus now falls on Facebook to convince users of the value found with being tracked and receiving personalized ads, which they have categorically failed to do.

This is also why we are seeing so many companies attack Apple and their App Store model, because they see Apple as coming between them and us. And this is why I continue to argue in favour of a closed App Store model fully under Apple’s control. Because the likes of epic and Facebook clearly do not have our best interests in mind. Something like ATT is not going to work if there are alternative app stores where Apple cannot enforce the inclusion of such a feature.

So if you want to blame someone, blame Facebook, not Apple.
All tech companies are to blame because they were complicit in allowing our personal data to be collected and sold in the first place. When the internet started to take off and tech companies were developing web browsers, messaging programs, email programs and so on, it is them who put code in that allowed tracking to occur. Yes it was probably all innocent to begin with but there is always someone out there who will take what is innocent and abuse it. Someone somewhere in the world saw what was happing in the background with regards to all these internet programs and thought they could use that data for other uses, basically use it to sell advertising and nobody stopped them. More and more people saw what was happening and thought they should get in on the act and before we knew it, thousands upon thousands of internet businesses were popping up based off of our personal data. Did any of the tech companies stop them these people/businesses from abusing our data? No, they let it continue because it was them allowing our data to be taken in the first place, plus they were also abusing our personal data by using it themselves to enhance their own business.

It was only when us the public started getting fed up of spam emails and intrusive ad's that governments started to take action but by then it was too late because the abuse of our personal data had been going on for so long that it was seen as standard practice in the tech industry to use and abuse that data.

Apple is not the good guy here, no way. They allowed users data to be used and abused until governments eventually stepped in and told them they are to be more responsible with what they do with our personal data. Right from the beginning of the internet Apple could have put choices in place to allow us the users to make the decsion as to what happens with our personal data but they didn't. Apple, just like all the others thought our personal data was their for the taking and they did because no one was around to stop them.

Now people are saying 'Well done Apple' for taking on Facebook. People have a lot to learn about Apple and all the other tech companies as to why they allowed their software to take our personal data in the first place and didn't allow us the users the choice as to what happens with our personal data.
 
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Now people are saying 'Well done Apple' for taking on Facebook. People have a lot to learn about Apple and all the other tech companies as to why they allowed their software to take our personal data in the first place and didn't allow us the users the choice as to what happens with our personal data.

Better late than never, is what I can say.
 
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