This iOS 18 privacy change could spell doom for new social apps

iOS 18 is full of big, headline changes like new customization tools, upgrades to Photos, Notes, and Messages, and the forthcoming Apple Intelligence features. But one smaller update is causing a lot of concern for social apps, and it’s a change designed to protect user privacy.

Apple has implemented a key shift in how apps can gain access to a user’s contacts in iOS 18.

Previously, an app like Instagram or WhatsApp would request access to your contacts, and you could either grant access or deny it. There was no other option.

But iOS 18 makes matters a lot more granular. If an app requests access to your contacts post-update, you can select exactly which contacts you’re okay sharing.

Sounds like a good change, right?

According to a New York Times report, however, this permissions tweak could pose major problems to social apps that rely on contact sharing. Especially new social apps trying to break into a crowded market.

Kevin Roose writes about his conversation with Nikita Bier, “a start-up founder and advisor who has created and sold several viral apps aimed at young people.”

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.)

A 25 percent decline in contact sharing might not sound like a huge change. But for social apps, the ability to quickly connect new users with their friends can mean the difference between success and failure. Facebook, for example, discovered during its early days that if users added seven friends within 10 days of signing up for an account, they were more likely to stick around than users who didn’t.

An all-or-nothing approach to contact sharing has never made sense. But it’s also understandable that this change would create undue obstacles to new social apps finding success.

9to5Mac’s Take

It’s hard enough to compete in a market dominated by giants like Meta and TikTok. If onboarding for a new social app feels overly cumbersome because of this change, Apple is ultimately helping ‘make the rich richer,’ in a sense.

At the same time, though, I’m not convinced Apple should do anything different here. Maybe there are tweaks to the permission process that could make things more user-friendly. But overall, the move toward greater transparency and granularity with contact sharing seems like a very good thing.

What do you think of these privacy changes? Do you prefer the old or new approach to contact sharing? Let us know in the comments.