Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

New iOS privacy feature may end an era of personalized ads

medium.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

291–300 of 385 posts

Re: New iOS privacy feature may end an era of personalized ads

#291

Post by scarface74 »

kin wrote: post #141

I have a serious question. Obviously if one were to choose between an ad-free experience and an ad-full experience, one would choose ad-free. But, if ads were needed for monetization, wouldn't you choose personalized vs non-personalized? Personally, I would go with personalized because a non-personalized experienced usually has no relevancy and frankly it is inefficient use of money in this world. From there, it real…

No take the Overcast podcast player for instance. Marco, the author, didn’t want any third party mystery meat SDK in his application and he wanted to control advertising. He created his own ad platform. Ads are based on the category of the podcast you are listening to. Nothing creepy about it and I’ve found quite a few relevant podcasts.

The entire podcast until recently has been supported by no more targeting than guessing about the demographics.

Re: New iOS privacy feature may end an era of personalized ads

#292

Post by Silhouette »

lh7777 wrote: post #285
Silhouette wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But they build very good privacy and security into their products. And they structure their UI and defaults in such a way that the average user benefits with no effort or specialized knowledge. Sometimes they do, and I agree that they're much better than a lot of big tech companies. Still, their insistence on tying almost everything to iCloud and then not encrypting iCloud properly is a major black mark against them,…

This is frustrating, but it doesn't bother me too much on the iPhone -- I can just not use iCloud and periodically back up my phone locally. I don't really need to sync anything but photos because I don't create or edit documents on my phone. On the other hand, the iPad is a very capable device for content creation, but I couldn't find a reliable way to sync files that doesn't leave them readable to Apple or another…

I don't really need to sync anything but photos because I don't create or edit documents on my phone.

This is one of the key points. You can plug an iPhone into almost any modern PC, Apple or otherwise, and download the photos and videos. But you can't do the same for other types of data without using one or more of an Apple computer, specialist software or iCloud. The middle option, which is the only one not entirely controlled by Apple itself, has a long history of attempts that proved not to work entirely reliably or last for long. And as you say, for an iPad, where perhaps more users want to do substantial creative work, the same issues apply.

I understand that Apple's current business model is heavily tied to locking customers into its ecosystem, but that does become a significant problem for people who just want a nice phone but also respect for their privacy, and I do think Apple should be called out for this just as I think it's fair to praise them for being much better on broader privacy issues than most of their competitors.

Re: New iOS privacy feature may end an era of personalized ads

#293

Post by ReverseCold »

lh7777 wrote: post #285
Silhouette wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But they build very good privacy and security into their products. And they structure their UI and defaults in such a way that the average user benefits with no effort or specialized knowledge. Sometimes they do, and I agree that they're much better than a lot of big tech companies. Still, their insistence on tying almost everything to iCloud and then not encrypting iCloud properly is a major black mark against them,…

This is frustrating, but it doesn't bother me too much on the iPhone -- I can just not use iCloud and periodically back up my phone locally. I don't really need to sync anything but photos because I don't create or edit documents on my phone. On the other hand, the iPad is a very capable device for content creation, but I couldn't find a reliable way to sync files that doesn't leave them readable to Apple or another…

> I can just not use iCloud

Many third party apps that have a sync feature only work with iCloud, so a lot of people are forced to use it.

Re: New iOS privacy feature may end an era of personalized ads

#294

Post by Silhouette »

lilyball wrote: post #280
Silhouette wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But they build very good privacy and security into their products. And they structure their UI and defaults in such a way that the average user benefits with no effort or specialized knowledge. Sometimes they do, and I agree that they're much better than a lot of big tech companies. Still, their insistence on tying almost everything to iCloud and then not encrypting iCloud properly is a major black mark against them,…

On the other hand, tying everything to iCloud and then losing all your data because you replaced your sole device and forgot your password would be disastrous. This is the scenario that requires Apple to retain the keys to your iCloud, and as long as they have those keys, they can be compelled to decrypt it under lawful government order.

The thing is, once data is in iCloud, there are other ways you can retrieve it and back it up yourself as long as you do have working authentication, and I can see no good argument for not offering E2E encryption across the board that is tied to such identification.

Worst case, you generate a suitably robust key that is used for authentication and encryption, and you provide a means to export it and back it up however you want without sending it to any third party. You can still use all the snazzy secure enclaves and facial recognition and so on to protect a copy of that key that is held on each of your personal devices to enable easy but reasonably secure access, but the underlying technology is tried and tested, it does not have the lock-in problem, and it does not require data in iCloud to be accessible to anyone but the keyholder.

Also note that this needn't necessarily be mandatory. If users are OK with trusting Apple, they could still use the current approach. But if you're going to claim to be a strong supporter of privacy and security, you should really have at least the option for proper encryption of everything for those people and businesses that want it.

Re: New iOS privacy feature may end an era of personalized ads

#295

Post by jchook »

deeblering4 wrote: post #266

This is a big reason why I continue to use apple devices. They seem to be one of the few large tech companies that aligns themselves with users rights to privacy. Apple isn’t perfect. But they build very good privacy and security into their products. And they structure their UI and defaults in such a way that the average user benefits with no effort or specialized knowledge.

I definitely see some questionable privacy practices by Apple...

- While "10x less", iPhone still sends your private information (such as location) to Apple on a regular basis[1].

- Apple encrypts iCloud backups with a key they control, not end-to-end[2]. This means that Apple can decrypt and inspect your phone and computer backups.

- According to the article, iOS developers can use their "new privacy-focused ad framework" to "allow anonymously retrieving data without getting a hold of the user or specific information". I don't fully understand that sentence but it sounds a lot like Apple trying to compete directly with Goog + FB in the advertising industry.

- Hardware made in China[3].

1. https://digitalcontentnext.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/DC...

2. https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202303

3. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-10-04/the-big-h...

Re: New iOS privacy feature may end an era of personalized ads

#297

Post by deeblering4 »

lilyball wrote: post #280
Silhouette wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But they build very good privacy and security into their products. And they structure their UI and defaults in such a way that the average user benefits with no effort or specialized knowledge. Sometimes they do, and I agree that they're much better than a lot of big tech companies. Still, their insistence on tying almost everything to iCloud and then not encrypting iCloud properly is a major black mark against them,…

On the other hand, tying everything to iCloud and then losing all your data because you replaced your sole device and forgot your password would be disastrous. This is the scenario that requires Apple to retain the keys to your iCloud, and as long as they have those keys, they can be compelled to decrypt it under lawful government order.

Yes, although this is hardly unique to Apple. Play mad-libs with this statement and it applies to the vast majority of cloud solutions.

___ have your ____, and as long as they have those ____, they can be compelled to ____ it under lawful government order.

Re: New iOS privacy feature may end an era of personalized ads

#298

Post by soared »

ogre_codes wrote: post #179
Joe8Bit wrote: post #73

In a previous life I worked in ad-tech, and I don't think it's as black and white as the OP makes it out to be. I think that's actually a Bad Thing™️ as this industry needs to profoundly change or die. This isn't a new, unexpected thing for sell or demand side ad-tech platforms, they've seen the death of IDFA coming for a few years. The reality is that this will likely stop more 'above board' players (a good thing) b…

Tracking based advertising hasn't delivered on its promises. As a user, we're seeing more advertising than ever, and it turns out that seeing advertising for a thing which you shopped for and bought last week just isn't any better than seeing advertising that relates to the article I'm reading at the time. I'm also very skeptical that tracking based advertising actually works better for publishes either. Since the nu…

>it turns out that seeing advertising for a thing which you shopped for and bought last week just isn't any better than seeing advertising that relates to the article I'm reading at the time.

This is due to (1) not having enough data to build good algorithms and (2) advertising campaigns being set up poorly (its not only technically challenging but also expensive). This issue can actually be fixed and likely will in the future.

>I'm also very skeptical that tracking based advertising actually works better for publishes either.

The majority of publishers make more money from personalized ads. NYT and premium publishers don't necessarily since ads on NYT are valuable by itself, but ads on my blog are worthless by themselves. Add some user data, and ads on my blog are worth much more.

Re: New iOS privacy feature may end an era of personalized ads

#300

Post by alkonaut »

soared wrote: post #299

Always interesting to see the "advertising industry needs to die" comments here. 40% of FAANG is built purely on advertising (7% of the S&P500). Some non-zero percent of commenters are employed by adtech funded companies.

”My employer should switch to a different business model or go under” isn’t a weird opinion.
Post reply on HN