Google-backed groups criticize Apple's new warnings on user tracking • Hacker News Board

Re: Google-backed groups criticize Apple's new warnings on user tracking

#121

Post by ocdtrekkie » Fri, Jul 03, 2020, 5:38 PM UTC

nojito wrote: post #21

Everyone should regularly be reminded that Google was caught paying professors to publish papers "friendly" to Google. https://www.wsj.com/articles/paying-professors-inside-google... Convincing the public that they are correct is how Google normalized the idea of sharing private information without oversight.

They have so many levers to do this too. Their public policy team has sponsored hundreds of educational institutions, lobbying organizations, and think tanks.

https://kstatic.googleusercontent.com/files/5a1907d78237ab17...

Then with journalists they use a time-honored tradition Apple has been known for: Managing exclusive access based on positive press. Blogs which promote Google's political positions get exclusive interviews with Sundar Pichai, which when factoring in the ad clicks it brings in, is a multi-million dollar payday.

TechDirt is a special bridge between the two concepts: The same guy who writes the "news" runs a lobbying organization, Copia, which is on Google's public policy team payroll.

Re: Google-backed groups criticize Apple's new warnings on user tracking

#122

Post by mlthoughts2018 » Fri, Jul 03, 2020, 5:43 PM UTC

mlthoughts2018 wrote: post #117

tareqak wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am confused. Advertising either works sufficiently well or it doesn’t. If it does work sufficiently well, then that means that it brings in more money than it costs. If targeted advertising works better than generic advertising, then targeted advertising brings in more than generic advertising. And vice versa. If advertising using privacy-protecting statistical methods works just as well, then again it should show…

You definitely don’t understand causal inference of ad attribution if this is what you think. I’ll give an example from a real experience I worked on before. A client was a large haircut chain and they gave us a data set of individuals that had received a specific ad campaign from them via a loyalty program (so it had a variety of demographic and customer history data). When we used the transactions data on this coho…

Perhaps for a simpler example: imagine you start an ad campaign on the same exact day the government issues a huge stimulus check. You see a big increase of sales. Is it because the ad did a good job of causally impacting people to choose your brand? Or is it because the world changed underneath your feet and suddenly lots of people with pre-existing demand had more money? Maybe your ad even had a negative effect because more people were willing to spend the stimulus check on your product, but they were turned off by the ad - so your revenue went way up but the ad actually lost you money.

This is about the simplest type of confounding example you’ll see - real world ad attribution is far messier, with 10 or 15 of these issues all intermixing, some of which you have measured data to possibly use as a control, some of which you don’t.

Your client might not even have done any control group at all. They might just say, “we sent this ad to absolutely everyone, how did it perform compared to a hypothetical where we didn’t send it at all?”

Re: Google-backed groups criticize Apple's new warnings on user tracking

#123

Post by calvinmorrison » Fri, Jul 03, 2020, 5:46 PM UTC

SheinhardtWigCo wrote: post #119

floatrock wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Apple will give them a choice soon enough. And hopefully one not reliant on so many dark patterns. The OneTrust opt-outs are the worst (and don't even work! which must be against the california consumer privacy act). On my iphone in safari: say I'm cooking dinner and go to epicurious.com. Greeted with the now-standard opt-out banner at the bottom. 1. Click the "Do not sell my advertising" 2. Greeted with a giant Co…

This is the case all over the web. Many of these cookie/privacy modals just don’t work or are deliberately engineered to be as obnoxious as possible. We need some legal test cases where this behavior is declared to be in violation of the spirit of GDPR and CCPA.

My favorite firefox addon after NoScript is " I don't care about cookies".

Re: Google-backed groups criticize Apple's new warnings on user tracking

#124

Post by maccard » Fri, Jul 03, 2020, 5:48 PM UTC

hellofunk wrote: post #20

maccard wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. Google search is infinitely more useful when mildly personalised rather than based on sheer popularity. If I search for drainage companies, I don't care who the most popular drainage company in the world is, ad it's highly likely to be weighted towards somewhere more populous. When I look at reviews for services, tracking can be used by Google and co to attempt to verify that the person who left a 5* review actu…

> Google search is infinitely more useful I can definitely see how it could be more useful, but I don’t agree that the actual factor of this increase in productivity is infinite. Maybe a factor of 3 to 5.

I thought it was fairly clear that I was being hyperbolic. I don't see how you would decide what that factor actually is, but to me, anonymised results across the population of gogoele search are often going to be useless, so if the addition of any metadata gives them any use whatsoever, then it's infinitely useful than a completely useless query.

That said, you're arguing semantics about the relative worth of the results, even if it is a factor of 5, that is more useful, and the answer to OPs question of is tracking useful is "yes".

Re: Google-backed groups criticize Apple's new warnings on user tracking

#125

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Jul 03, 2020, 5:50 PM UTC

koluna wrote: post #51

TheSpiceIsLife wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, your confused. The agency has just shifted closer to Apple. Which happens to align better with your interests, at least in this-five-minute-period.

User choice is always good. I’m sure Apple is doing this not out of the goodness of their heart, but it does give customers more control, which is a positive.

[deleted]

Re: Google-backed groups criticize Apple's new warnings on user tracking

#126

Post by slivanes » Fri, Jul 03, 2020, 5:50 PM UTC

valuearb wrote: post #98

dgellow wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I guess it’s the same as trying to get in the ads business by making ads less valuable? If that damage your competitors more than it damages you, might that be of some value? Not saying that’s Apple is doing, just pointing that could be a thing.

It’s easy to see what Apple is doing here it’s what they’ve always been doing increasing privacy protections for their users to add value to their platform and sell more iPhones and Macs. Apple is shown repeatedly they don’t care about the advertising market and would gladly burn their offerings to the ground if they impeded their privacy efforts one iota.

Please understand that Apple is not in love with their user's privacy, they are in love with money and selling to markets.

. Why else would Apple set Google as the default search engine on iOS? They get paid (a lot!) by Google to be the default.

. They sold out to Chinese citizens by allowing their data centers to be read by their authoritarian government.

. Apple dropped plans to let iPhone users fully encrypt backups of their devices in the company’s iCloud service after the FBI complained that the move would harm investigations.

Still think Apple loves privacy more than anything else?

Re: Google-backed groups criticize Apple's new warnings on user tracking

#127

Post by doteka » Fri, Jul 03, 2020, 5:50 PM UTC

valuearb wrote: post #98

dgellow wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I guess it’s the same as trying to get in the ads business by making ads less valuable? If that damage your competitors more than it damages you, might that be of some value? Not saying that’s Apple is doing, just pointing that could be a thing.

It’s easy to see what Apple is doing here it’s what they’ve always been doing increasing privacy protections for their users to add value to their platform and sell more iPhones and Macs. Apple is shown repeatedly they don’t care about the advertising market and would gladly burn their offerings to the ground if they impeded their privacy efforts one iota.

Which as a consumer is exactly why I will continue giving them my money. The sooner targeted online advertising burns to the ground, the better, as far as I’m concerned.

Re: Google-backed groups criticize Apple's new warnings on user tracking

#128

Post by TheSpiceIsLife » Fri, Jul 03, 2020, 5:51 PM UTC

koluna wrote: post #51

TheSpiceIsLife wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, your confused. The agency has just shifted closer to Apple. Which happens to align better with your interests, at least in this-five-minute-period.

User choice is always good. I’m sure Apple is doing this not out of the goodness of their heart, but it does give customers more control, which is a positive.

Smacks of Stockholm syndrome.

It’s interesting because, as an Apple iOS and MacOS user, I experience their locked-down / progressively more restricted / more secure / more private walled garden

And I too am happy and content to be in that environment.

The thing is, people actually don’t want fraternity, okay maybe they do, but only a little of it.

What people really want is strong leadership.

We actually want a benevolent director.

Just don’t come running to me, don’t be surprised, when we all wake up in gulag.

Re: Google-backed groups criticize Apple's new warnings on user tracking

#129

Post by maccard » Fri, Jul 03, 2020, 5:52 PM UTC

dwaite wrote: post #45

maccard wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. Google search is infinitely more useful when mildly personalised rather than based on sheer popularity. If I search for drainage companies, I don't care who the most popular drainage company in the world is, ad it's highly likely to be weighted towards somewhere more populous. When I look at reviews for services, tracking can be used by Google and co to attempt to verify that the person who left a 5* review actu…

Tracking in this context involves cross-organizational sharing of user information, usually information behavior in particular. So it isn't that Google has my location data or that Ticketmaster knows I've been to a heavy metal concert - it is that Google finds out I was at a Ticketmaster heavy metal concert.

I disagree that it's cross organisational. OPs question was "is tracking useful" and the article is talking about sharing info between apps.

Being logged into Facebook messenger because I'm logged into the Facebook app, gmail having access to info from gcal, Ticketmaster having access to livenation preferences are all examples of sharing within the same organisarion that benefit a user.

Re: Google-backed groups criticize Apple's new warnings on user tracking

#130

Post by yoaviram » Fri, Jul 03, 2020, 5:54 PM UTC

floatrock wrote: post #77

sudhirj wrote: post #3

> The group of European marketing firms said the pop-up warning and the limited ability to customize it still carries “a high risk of user refusal.” If you’re doing something and you know users are going to refuse to let you do it if they have the choice, don’t do it. Apple will give them a choice soon enough.

> Apple will give them a choice soon enough. And hopefully one not reliant on so many dark patterns. The OneTrust opt-outs are the worst (and don't even work! which must be against the california consumer privacy act). On my iphone in safari: say I'm cooking dinner and go to epicurious.com. Greeted with the now-standard opt-out banner at the bottom. 1. Click the "Do not sell my advertising" 2. Greeted with a giant Co…

Let me plug https://YourDigitalRights.org. Search for a company and send them a CCPA/GDPR deletion request. Or better yet install the browser extension and do it while visiting the company's website.