New iOS privacy feature may end an era of personalized ads • Hacker News Board

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

#371

Post by PossiblyKyle » Sat, Jul 18, 2020, 9:27 PM UTC

raxxorrax wrote: post #9

Maybe the open source promise of Android was indeed a lie. To me this industry has no value to society at all. Not a fan of Apple, but they seem to be serious about privacy showing other companies how it is done. Microsoft could have really established itself as an alternative to Google on the same front, but they utterly failed by mirroring the worst aspects of the disastrous landscape we see on mobile devices. I ho…

To be fair, Apple is an advocate of privacy because it fits their business model very well.

You have to remember most of their money comes from selling devices and subscriptions, meaning they had a chance to take a stance against Android’s largest problem with no impact on their home turf, so they’ve wisely picked an achievable narrative.

Needless to say I’m grateful for it, but it’s by no means out of benevolence...

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

#372

Post by shostack » Sat, Jul 18, 2020, 10:38 PM UTC

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…

Promises to whom? Advertisers use it because it has shown improvements in results.

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

#373

Post by esrauch » Sun, Jul 19, 2020, 12:25 AM UTC

elliekelly wrote: post #196

esrauch wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How would you imagine "tell them what you're in the market for" would work? I don't think it would work at scale; almost no user would take time to make a manually personalized ad profile instead of ... not doing that.

Why would it be any different from the way advertising worked before Facebook and Google? Vogue subscribers are probably in the market for new designer clothes. People who watch Cesar Milan are probably in the market for pet supplies. Someone driving down a highway is probably in the market for gas and a snack. Someone who searches for “affordable laptop” is probably in the market to buy a new computer. You don’t nee…

I was calling out "user manually provide targeting information to ads companies" as unrealistic, the alternative of "don't have persistent user profiles for ads" is obviously possible.

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

#374

Post by schoolornot » Sun, Jul 19, 2020, 12:34 AM UTC

PossiblyKyle wrote: post #371

raxxorrax wrote: post #9

Maybe the open source promise of Android was indeed a lie. To me this industry has no value to society at all. Not a fan of Apple, but they seem to be serious about privacy showing other companies how it is done. Microsoft could have really established itself as an alternative to Google on the same front, but they utterly failed by mirroring the worst aspects of the disastrous landscape we see on mobile devices. I ho…

To be fair, Apple is an advocate of privacy because it fits their business model very well. You have to remember most of their money comes from selling devices and subscriptions, meaning they had a chance to take a stance against Android’s largest problem with no impact on their home turf, so they’ve wisely picked an achievable narrative. Needless to say I’m grateful for it, but it’s by no means out of benevolence...

You're making it sound like there is no business opportunity on Apple's side to mine and sell customer data the way Google does. Why can't we assume they are doing it with the best of intentions?

Watch this 10 year old clip of Steve Jobs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=39iKLwlUqBo The position is genuine.

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

#375

Post by b112 » Sun, Jul 19, 2020, 1:18 AM UTC

Yetanfou wrote: post #166

b112 wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about the elephant in the room? Radio firmwares. It is meaningless if you install firewalls, if you compile android on your own, only to have to turn around and use proprietary, closed source libs to access proprotary, closed source radio firmwares. Radio firmwares which often have full RAM access, parallel CPU control, GPS and full hardware access, and make intel's management engine, and closed source bioses loo…

Get a device with a separate baseband processor which connects to the main SoC through a serial connection. Both the PinePhone [1] and the Librem 5 [2] come so equipped, both also feature hardware kill switches with which the baseband can be disabled. Both devices are aimed at the hacker and enthusiast markets but once you're at the level of 'paranoia' which makes you suspect the radio baseband processor is being (ab…

If I was paranoid, I'd say those devices are developed just to get the most paranoid to use them. :P

But in truth, I'm not paranoid.. merely a realist. Regardless, I was thinking of buying a Librem, but can you even get one yet? It always says "6 months to delivery".

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

#376

Post by perryizgr8 » Sun, Jul 19, 2020, 3:16 AM UTC

Yetanfou wrote: post #53

raxxorrax wrote: post #9

Maybe the open source promise of Android was indeed a lie. To me this industry has no value to society at all. Not a fan of Apple, but they seem to be serious about privacy showing other companies how it is done. Microsoft could have really established itself as an alternative to Google on the same front, but they utterly failed by mirroring the worst aspects of the disastrous landscape we see on mobile devices. I ho…

In what way is open source Android a lie? I never used any other version, I do not have a Google account, nor do I have any Google-proprietary software on my devices yet they still run all software - including the Swedish "BankID" electronic ID app which is needed for just about any interaction with anything official nowadays. That "BankID" is, together with Firefox Preview, the only software which I got from the pla…

For most people, aosp without gapps is useless. Given an option, they will choose android over aosp every time. You don't use your phone for any popular apps so of course it's fine for you. I'd like to actually use my $1000 phone instead.

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

#377

Post by Akronymus » Sun, Jul 19, 2020, 3:20 AM UTC

Yetanfou wrote: post #363

Akronymus wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you could be interested in ~~riot~~ element. https://element.io/ Specifically works well as a discord replacement IMO. (Also has integration for stuff like jitsi)

I looked at Matrix (which is what riot.im/element is based on) but have thus far not seen its advantage over XMPP+OMEMO. When you install Jitsi Meet you already have an XMPP server (Prosody, used for signalling and interprocess communication) so it is trivial to add a configuration for 'regular' use. XMPP is more open than Matrix and there are far more clients (albeit not all of them useable with OMEMO, alas). On an…

I wanted to refute your points, but actually looking into it, it seems that xmpp is actually superior in many ways.

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

#378

Post by jariel » Sun, Jul 19, 2020, 4:45 AM UTC

AdrianB1 wrote: post #253

jariel wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I never buy something suggested by an ad " Many people think this, it's rarely actually true. Have a look at the things you buy, you'll remember you've seen ads for them at some point. Now the question is - how much self awareness does it take to make the material connection between those things?

I am extremely strict with my purchases, I rarely buy anything not groceries or fuel and I ignore ads.

You can't ignore ads, they are all around you, moreover, many ads are effective even if you're not consciously paying attention. Look around your home and life at the products that surround you. You've seen ads for many of them. You've seen famous/important people talk about them.

For example, by the time you buy an automobile of a certain brand, you've probably witnessed a lifetime of ads for that brand.

Ads work on everyone. Some people more than others, some ads more than others, but none of us are immune.

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

#379

Post by danielscrubs » Sun, Jul 19, 2020, 5:04 AM UTC

encom wrote: post #362

ogre_codes wrote: post #354

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think people who talk up Microsoft's phone efforts must have been wearing blinders. I won't argue that Microsoft's phone was decent at one point, maybe even "Great" for a short while. But by the time they had a decent phone, they'd already burned out all the good will people had towards them on Mobile. Microsoft had... 4? Different mobile operating systems over the 15 years or so they were selling mobile OSs. I hon…

They fucked people over further than that. A whole bunch of Win8 devices were promised an upgrade to Win10, and then weeks before release, Microsoft were like "nevermind LOL" and people were furious. Also, for quite some time before they officially pulled the plug on mobile, core MS apps would come out for Android first. Microsoft really despised their customers.

The iPhone Outlook app had more functionality and was more stable than WinPho 7 Outlook, I just couldn’t believe it.

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

#380

Post by Yetanfou » Mon, Jul 20, 2020, 3:03 PM UTC

b112 wrote: post #375

Yetanfou wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Get a device with a separate baseband processor which connects to the main SoC through a serial connection. Both the PinePhone [1] and the Librem 5 [2] come so equipped, both also feature hardware kill switches with which the baseband can be disabled. Both devices are aimed at the hacker and enthusiast markets but once you're at the level of 'paranoia' which makes you suspect the radio baseband processor is being (ab…

If I was paranoid, I'd say those devices are developed just to get the most paranoid to use them. :P But in truth, I'm not paranoid.. merely a realist. Regardless, I was thinking of buying a Librem, but can you even get one yet? It always says "6 months to delivery".

The design seems to work in favour of the paranoid, it takes an extra-double-ultra-plus paranoid who takes the board through an X-ray machine to find those hidden traces or sandwiched secret baseband processors to uncover this nefarious plot.

Alternatively these devices deliver on this front, i.e. the user gets to control whether the baseband is active or not. I'm not paranoid enough for the former scenario so I'll keep it at the latter and am considering to get a Pinephone for fun and, well, fun I guess - I already have plenty of devices running different iterations of AOSP, some of them running headless Linux without zygote (i.e. without the Android user space). A truly modular multi-vendor architecture with pluggable SoC, baseband, storage, audio, camera, sensor package, power supply and display would be the preferred solution - something like the original PC clone market with vendors competing on price and features - but I'm not going to hold my breath waiting for it. Not that long, anyway.