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iOS 13 app tracking alert has dramatically cut location data flow to ad industry

appleinsider.com

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Re: iOS 13 app tracking alert has dramatically cut location data flow to ad industry

#201

Post by throwaway55554 »

lilyball wrote: post #122
saagarjha wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Under normal usage, iOS will kill apps a lot earlier than 10 minutes. In the general case it's really not possible to do this, and I would argue that shipping with a flaky feature is probably worse than not shipping with it at all.

I haven't checked in a while but in the past it was fairly reliably 10 minutes. In any case, there's a property `UIApplication.backgroundTimeRemaining` that tells you how long you have, so you can use that to calculate the appropriate notification time.

One of the biggest complaints people have with ios13 right now is RAM management. It quickly kills off apps.

Re: iOS 13 app tracking alert has dramatically cut location data flow to ad industry

#202

Post by JohnTHaller »

Waterluvian wrote: post #77

I'm probably saying the complete obvious, but Apple can completely crush Google if they execute this angle properly. Google has no choice but to support ads. They're an ad company. Apple has to keep hammering how bad the ad and privacy experiences are with Android. Make iOS an absolute delight to use in contrast. I'd pay a premium for that. Android has done a great job making me want an iOS device again, these last t…

When an Android app wants my location, I get prompted to Deny, Allow while using the app, or Always Allow.

Re: iOS 13 app tracking alert has dramatically cut location data flow to ad industry

#203

Post by ViViDboarder »

ses1984 wrote: post #183
privateSFacct wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"By default, users have a unique tracking/advertising ID attached to their phone." Google has the same thing, and with apple if you care you can opt out. "When Limit Ad Tracking is enabled on iOS 10 or later, the Advertising Identifier is replaced with a non-unique value of all zeros to prevent the serving of targeted ads. It is automatically reset to a new random identifier if you disable Limit Ad Tracking." So this…

The phone id is only one way you are tracked. You are being tracked in multiple places, at the ISP level, at the geo level, cookie and account level, and I don't know where else. Being able to reset your phone ID is insufficient given all the other ways you can be tracked. With Apple, maybe they're the lesser of two evils, but there is still a lot of room they could improve if they really wanted. The aforementioned i…

Also keep in mind the more control users have to install things like that, the more differentiated each user will become.

This is one of the paradoxes that exist with certain tracking protections that exist today. Eg. Enabling Do Not Track or fingerprint blocking could make you easier to track. Though these are becoming more ubiquitous, and therefore harder to use to track you, as browsers make them the default settings.

Re: iOS 13 app tracking alert has dramatically cut location data flow to ad industry

#204

Post by scarejunba »

throwaway55554 wrote: post #163

Replace each occurrence of “location data” with, say, “cocain”. > Despite the reduced amount of cocain available, the amount that is still available to use is more valuable, while the market for cocain continues to thrive. I mean it’s disturbing.

Hey, good one, mate. Now let's try the First Amendment. I'm going to try replacing "speech" with "cocaine".

> Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of cocaine, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Good god. This is immeasurably disturbing. Forsooth, we must ban the freedom of speech!

Re: iOS 13 app tracking alert has dramatically cut location data flow to ad industry

#205

Post by _jal »

egypturnash wrote: post #166
otachack wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but Google/Android has added fine grain GPS permissions in Android 10+ so we have the option to say "just track when using app" instead of "no" or "all the time". The problem, now, is rolling it out due to fragmentation.

So we'll start seeing that on a significant percentage of Android devices around, um... 2025, then? Man I do not miss the horrible support for updates in that ecosystem one bit. https://www.statista.com/statistics/271774/share-of-android-...

I don't think Google originally planned it this way, but their release strategy gives them an interesting gradient of users that I think benefits them. (This is entirely off the cuff, I may be sticking my foot in my mouth.)

Early adapters, who are more likely to engage with the bigger questions raised by tech, are likely to use new devices with the latest revision of what Google thinks you should share with the advertising world - lately, this has been giving users slightly more control. Meanwhile, older and cheaper devices (a much larger segment) mostly run older OSes that more more data-sponge-friendly.

So the picky and wealthier customers have reason to tell others "Google is getting better" while everyone else keeps feeding the beast.

Re: iOS 13 app tracking alert has dramatically cut location data flow to ad industry

#206

Post by hombre_fatal »

emptybits wrote: post #142
surround wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s two things about iOS that bothers me, privacy wise: - Apple still makes money off of ads, creating a conflict of interest. By default, users have a unique tracking/advertising ID attached to their phone. - iOS is extremely restrictive, making certain privacy adjustments impossible.

Yes. But FWIW, a user can reset their "Advertising Identifier" anytime they want: Settings -> Privacy -> Advertising -> Reset Advertising Identifier... Now if iOS was more hacker friendly, I'd write an app to automate that action and have it run regularly or on a random schedule or something.

Well, the checkbox right above the UI option you pointed out will zero-out your identifier.

Re: iOS 13 app tracking alert has dramatically cut location data flow to ad industry

#207

Post by hombre_fatal »

JohnTHaller wrote: post #197
aabhay wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google pays very dearly for that, btw

Which is another way of saying Apple values money over users being protected from something terrible.

Then again, I don't think defaulting to an inferior product is an obvious upside for the average user. I reckon the average user is more interested in a more robust search function when they're actually trying to get things done.

Re: iOS 13 app tracking alert has dramatically cut location data flow to ad industry

#208

Post by ViViDboarder »

Polylactic_acid wrote: post #129
jzvxkxbxjx wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re seeing it as a computer. It’s a phone.

This is the typical response I expected. "Your using it wrong!!" Explain to me why the use case of using youtube without adverts or connecting my phone to my smartwartch is invalid.

Those are valid. YouTube Premium allows the first (while still paying content creators), and someone mentioned an iOS app that allows the second.

I don’t care if you switch, but figure you may want to know.

Re: iOS 13 app tracking alert has dramatically cut location data flow to ad industry

#209

Post by Nextgrid »

Waterluvian wrote: post #77

I'm probably saying the complete obvious, but Apple can completely crush Google if they execute this angle properly. Google has no choice but to support ads. They're an ad company. Apple has to keep hammering how bad the ad and privacy experiences are with Android. Make iOS an absolute delight to use in contrast. I'd pay a premium for that. Android has done a great job making me want an iOS device again, these last t…

My concern is that they could let the opportunity pass if they keep being sloppy with the quality of their software. The quality & user experience of both macOS and iOS have been going downhill for years. The music app is a complete shit-show for example and is a significant downgrade from its former self a decade ago. The same can be said for many built-in apps and parts of the OS.

Re: iOS 13 app tracking alert has dramatically cut location data flow to ad industry

#210

Post by nneonneo »

assadk wrote: post #147
nneonneo wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a little "share" button on my iPhone that invokes Youtube-DL via Pythonista, so I can open any Youtube video and get a locally saved copy pretty much instantly. I can use VLC to stream YouTube videos without ads. There's a bunch of apps that let you load pretty much arbitrary code onto the platform - Pythonista and Scriptable are two of the top ones (Python and JS interpreters respectively), and with those you…

That’s really smart! Could you share your script (as a Gist or something) I’d really like to use it.

Sure, here it is: https://gist.github.com/nneonneo/f6b2d659ba76542e7d27e13598a...

You need to install YouTube-DL via Pip, but happily the StaSh shell for Pythonista already includes Pip. If you're not using StaSh yet, give it a whirl - it includes a huge number of handy tools like SSH, Git, Pip, etc. Pythonista is awesome!

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