Apple has shut down Facebook’s ability to distribute internal iOS apps, from early releases of the Facebook app to basic tools like a lunch menu. Early versions of Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, and other pre-release beta apps have stopped working. Facebook is treating this as a critical problem internally, which caused a chaos within the company. Apps just refused to launch.
The shutdown comes amid news that Facebook has been using Apple’s program for internal app distribution to track teenage customers with a “research” app.
“A CLEAR BREACH OF [FACEBOOK’S] AGREEMENT WITH APPLE”
That app was distributed outside of the App Store using Apple’s enterprise program, which allows developers to use special certificates to install more powerful apps onto iPhones. Those apps are only supposed to be used by a Facebook employees. However, Facebook had been distributing its tracking app to customers. Facebook later said it would shut down the app.
This poses a huge issue for Facebook. While Apple provides other tools a company can use to install apps internally, Apple’s enterprise program is the main solution for widely distributing internal apps and services.
Apple said that Facebook was in “clear breach of their agreement with Apple.” Any developer that breaches that agreement, Apple said, has their distribution certificates revoked, “which is what we did in this case to protect our users and their data.”
Revoking a certificate not only stops apps from being distributed on iOS, but it also stops apps from working. Plus, internal apps by the same organisation or developer may be connected to a single certificate, it can lead to major issues like Facebook is currently dealing with.
Apple and Facebook have already been bickering over privacy, but this is the first instance of Apple taking an action that directly shuts down some of Facebook’s activities. Last March, Apple CEO Tim Cook criticised Facebook’s handling of the Cambridge Analytica scandal saying, “I wouldn’t be in this situation” if he were running the company. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg later said the comments were “extremely glib” and spoke of Apple as a company that “work[s] hard to charge you more.”
