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Ask HN: So what happened to Facebook "localhost" tracking?

37 points

by juliusceasar

2 hours ago

| past

| 5 comments

| HN

It was discussed a year ago. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44235467

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applfanboysbgon

2 hours ago

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> Meta must face a lawsuit alleging that it secretly tracked Android users' browsing activity on mobile websites that embedded Meta's analytics pixel, and linked that activity to users' identities, a federal judge ruled Monday.

> The decision, issued by U.S. District Court Judge Rita Lin in San Francisco, grew out of a class-action complaint initially brought last June by California resident Devin Rose (and later joined by other Android users).

> Rose alleged that between September 2024 and June 2025, Meta exploited Android's localhost -- a feature that allows software developers to test applications -- to connect users’ mobile web browsing to their Facebook and Instagram profiles.

May 12, 2026

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Retr0id

11 minutes ago

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Not at all to defend Meta but "a feature that allows software developers to test applications" is a dubious definition of localhost. I also can't come up with a better one.

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gruez

1 hour ago

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docket: https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/70448987/in-re-meta-and...

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woodrowbarlow

1 hour ago

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i would love to have a software engineer's union, not so much to get better working conditions but to be able to say stuff like "i can't implement that unethical feature, it's against union rules and i'd lose my membership".

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grayhatter

40 minutes ago

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To be fair; you don't need a union... you can just say no. Context; I told them they couldn't ship this exact feature as designed. (It worked until I left.)

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woodrowbarlow

8 minutes ago

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yes, true sometimes (not always). but if more people have access to a way to confidently say "no" (with protection behind them), then i think saying "no" would happen more often, by people who might've otherwise complied.

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Trasmatta

29 minutes ago

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Without the protection of a union, "just saying no" is a good way to get fired

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kube-system

14 minutes ago

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I'd wonder how you'd get into that arrangement to begin with when the entire job is based on unethical tracking

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volkercraig

1 hour ago

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Start one. Unions are worker owned. You could also join the IWW.

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woodrowbarlow

30 minutes ago

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are there examples of unions that have started around a focus on the ethics of the services they provide? unions traditionally start locally, around issues for which the locality is a hotspot, which is why they usually focus on pay and working conditions. it's also easier to get a large group to agree on a set of improvements to working conditions vs a set of ethical boundaries.

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actionfromafar

1 hour ago

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Unions in the US are nerfed, by law.

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greyface-

45 minutes ago

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Collective bargaining is nerfed. Other structures remain viable and legal.

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askl

39 minutes ago

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Are you not allowed to leave the US?

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absqueued

1 hour ago

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Take a lead, let me sign up :)

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SoftTalker

1 hour ago

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And this is why we don't have one. Someone else is expected to do the hard part.

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hasahmed

1 hour ago

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same

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LadyCailin

27 minutes ago

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That’s what licensing is for, not unions.

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woodrowbarlow

15 minutes ago

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i don't believe that software development should require a license. imagine having to get board-licensed to download gcc; therein lies the death of free software and owning your devices.

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hluska

21 minutes ago

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A union could absolutely get involved in something like this.

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theodorejb

1 hour ago

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You don't need to join a union to push back against unethical feature requests.

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jakubadamw

1 hour ago

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The collective leverage of a union gives you significantly more power to do something like this.

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theodorejb

57 minutes ago

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Only if the union is against the unethical request. In some cases the union may be for it, which makes it even harder to push back.

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chrncirurp

1 hour ago

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> You don't need to join a union to push back against unethical feature requests.

If you push back against unethical feature requests:

No union: you get fired

Union: you still get fired

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jeffgreco

53 minutes ago

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Still a better outcome than tossing your ethics overboard.

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garciasn

37 minutes ago

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Why bother to join a union, pay dues, potentially have your career limited, and have another layer to deal with?

Just leave or be fired without the song and dance.

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Henchman21

21 minutes ago

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Because you’re a person who cares about your fellow citizens and realize that collectively bargaining helps to lift all boats, not just yours

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josefritzishere

12 minutes ago

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union strong, bro.

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woodrowbarlow

52 minutes ago

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maybe, but the union could provide a lot of services to someone who loses their job this way (like income insurance and legal services) and could leverage collective power over companies that demonstrate a pattern of behavior.

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dylan604

45 minutes ago

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This is something that has just never sat well with me. How exactly will the union provide this insurance? That insurance isn't free, so paid for by member dues? How many members are required to be able to afford the payout for just one member? How about the other services unions are touted as being able to provide? They all come from the same dues? I know that unions will put money into investment funds to attempt to grow the coffers, but that just means the money isn't liquid.

Unions are always touted as a panacea, but logically, it doesn't compute for me. They feel more like ponzi schemes than anything else.

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woodrowbarlow

36 minutes ago

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that's definitely a big question and i don't pretend to have enough expertise to answer fully; however, i will point to the Ontario Teacher's Pension Plan which is (per Wikipedia[1]) "one of the world's largest institutional investors [...] over $266 billion in net assets, with a one-year total-fund net return of 9.4%, and a 7.4% 10-year total-fund net return". the union runs their own investment fund; it's an extension of collective power into the financial realm.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ontario_Teachers%27_Pension_Pl...

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hluska

17 minutes ago

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That is only a pension plan. It provides no insurance to teachers who are still employed.

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askl

36 minutes ago

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> That insurance isn't free, so paid for by member dues?

Yes, obviously. That's how every insurance works.

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soco

24 minutes ago

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Simple idea: look how other unions work, and in other countries as well. The wheel has already been invented.

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grayhatter

39 minutes ago

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I didn't get fired.

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ethagnawl

28 minutes ago

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> not so much to get better working conditions but

... why not both?

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mozvalentin

2 hours ago

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Chrome and Firefox have deployed / are deploying local-network-access which prompts the user when apps try this.

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crtasm

21 minutes ago

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I just discovered that MacOS was blocking Firefox from connecting to devices on my LAN - there's per-app toggle in system settings.

Access to my router's web interface was not blocked (understandably) but this left me rather confused for a while.

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pezgrande

1 hour ago

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I guess that's why I am getting so many "Allow to find devices on your network" alerts. Good feature overall.

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SoftTalker

1 hour ago

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Only a good feature if users have a clue what that question means. Most will click "Yes" because they want to get on with whatever they want to do.

Change it to something like "This website is trying to spy on your local devices, do you want to allow this?"

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dpoloncsak

27 minutes ago

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I honestly don't think the average Google Chrome user knows what a 'local' device is, and we should go something more ELI5 "This website wants to spy on every other device connected to your network" or something

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shit_game

1 hour ago

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I was just about to say that my question in regards to this was "what are web browsers doing about it?"

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Tade0

1 hour ago

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I've seen it and at least in Chrome it seems to be treating all URLs which are based on an IP address as "local", regardless of the class of the address.

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kibwen

1 hour ago

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I'd be inherently suspicious of any website in the wild attempting to contact a bare IP address. Aside from localhost, my default assumption would be that such a website is either trying to circumvent my hosts file (or circumvent my other DNS configuration, e.g. pi-hole or DNS-over-HTTPS), malware trying to reach a command-and-control server, or malware trying to circumvent my adblocker.

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KomoD

2 hours ago

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Looks like they stopped doing it

https://localmess.github.io

> UPDATE: As of June 3rd 7:45 CEST, Meta/Facebook Pixel script is no longer sending any packets or requests to localhost. The code responsible for sending the _fbp cookie has been almost completely removed. Yandex has also stopped the practice we describe below.

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throwa356262

1 hour ago

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Off topic: I wonder how hard it is to poison this type of data gathering?