iPhone contact privacy change is good for developers, not bad

Some developers yesterday argued that a change to iPhone contact privacy in iOS 18 made it harder for new social media apps to compete.

But I think they’re wrong, and that the more granular privacy control offered in iOS 18 actually makes it more likely that we’ll be willing to grant contacts access to apps …

Before iOS 18, apps could request access to your contacts. This was particularly relevant to social media apps, where they could search your contacts for the email addresses of existing members, and make it easy for you to friend them in the app.

However, this has always previously been an all-or-nothing option: Either you granted access to all your contacts, or none of them.

That changed in iOS 18. We now have the option to grant access to selected contacts.

Some developers think that’s bad news

The New York Times said it had spoken to a number of small developers, who thought that would hurt them.

Mr. Bier told me that data he had seen from start-ups he advised suggested that contact sharing had dropped dramatically since the iOS 18 changes went into effect, and that for some apps, the number of users sharing 10 or fewer contacts had increased as much as 25 percent. (Other developers said their own apps had experienced similar declines, though nobody except Mr. Bier would agree to speak on the record, out of fear of angering the Cupertino colossus.)

But I think that’s misleading

If you give people the choice to restrict shared contacts, then it’s no surprise that the average number of contacts would drop. But what I think they’re missing is that there were plenty of us who almost never permitted access to contacts, who will now be willing to do so on a selective basis.

For example, I kind of have to be on Facebook as that’s the social media app used by the biggest number of my friends, and it’s also the primary place to find out about Argentine tango events. But even though that’s my primary social media app, I have never allowed it access to my contacts.

That’s in part because Meta doesn’t exactly have the best privacy record, but also because my contacts span all aspects of my life, from close friends to occasional business contacts. It makes no sense whatsoever to let a social media app trawl all of them, when I would only want to friend a small proportion.

Now that I have the choice to choose which contacts I share, then if I ever do join a new social media app (and I live in hope that one will take over from Facebook), then I will absolutely allow it selective access to friends so that they are invited.

What’s your view? Now that you can choose which contacts to share, are you more or less likely to grant access? Please share your thoughts in the comments.

Image: 9to5Mac collages of images from Apple P Anosh on Unsplash