Why We Can't Have Nice Things

TikTok App to Stop Accessing User Clipboards After Being Caught in the Act by iOS 14 by Juli Clover, MacRumors:

TikTok users who upgraded to ‌iOS 14‌, for example, quickly noticed constant alerts warning them that TikTok was accessing the clipboard every few seconds. After being caught, TikTok now says that it's removing the feature.

This is exactly the kind of behaviour that requires platforms to lock down their systems. There are so many examples of this in the past, Twitter tracking which apps a user has installed on their pone, Path uploading the users full address book and so on. Many of the features that these companies have exploited also have legitimate use cases and locking them down makes them require additional confirmation dialogs or renders them completely unusable.

While it is better for users to have their privacy protected, it also makes me sad that many power users can't use their system to the full extent possible because of a few bad actors abusing the system.

Side note: Apple's decision to show a notification that an app accessed the clipboard instead of requiring a confirmation is a good balance between privacy and usability.