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Facebook isn’t happy about Apple’s upcoming ad tracking restrictions

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Re: Facebook isn’t happy about Apple’s upcoming ad tracking restrictions

#91

Post by jariel »

FridgeSeal wrote: post #78
jariel wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"... And nothing of value was lost." This is definitely not true. There is considerable value in advertising, it's just not apparent to you. In fact - advertising that is 'well targeted' is considerably less annoying than ads that are poorly targetted. The economic value of a well targeted ad is probably 10x otherwise. Ergo - unless you are willing to pay for apps - you might now see 10x more ads appearing on pages t…

> In fact - advertising that is 'well targeted' is considerably less annoying than ads that are poorly targetted. And better than targeted ads are ads that only need contextual information to work. If I'm on a page for a bit of sports equipment, I'm probably interested in sports equipment, or at the very least sports. Didn't need a complex data collection and analysis pipeline there. > unless you are willing to pay f…

"If I'm on a page for a bit of sports equipment, I'm probably interested in sports equipment, or at the very least sports. Didn't need a complex data collection and analysis pipeline there."

Unfortunately, this simply isn't true.

The value of a vistor to a 'sports site' may be considerably more for some other product or service.

The fact is - most content is placed on sites for which there is no obvious context: Facebook, Twitter, news - none of it provides much information.

"I do in fact pay for apps" - it doesn't matter what you or I do - it matters what people do. The fact is, people are considerably more likely to opt for ad-based products than pay-based products, and for some kinds of products, it has a strategic consideration (i.e. those with network effects).

Ads are not going away.

"I'd suggest that the more efficiently we are able to let people find what they need, the better."

People never knew they needed a smartphone, did they? Nobody was thinking 'hey I really want a 'big screen phone'.

So I agree 'search for stuff' should be better, but advertising is not going away.

The 'ill effects' of privacy are negligible.

Nobody is harmed because of what FB is able to discern 'out of network' vs. what it already knows from what you do 'on network'.

There are definitely considerations, but in reality, no harm.

Can you think of examples where you, or someone you know has been harmed by FB out of network data collection?

Ads are not going away, better ads are better for everyone, we need to figure out how to deal with privacy.

Re: Facebook isn’t happy about Apple’s upcoming ad tracking restrictions

#92

Post by mark_l_watson »

Well, Facebook can go to h*ll with their complaints. There is a little something called freedom: corporations like Apple have the right to make their own business decisions as long as they don’t break laws. People have the right to buy and use products that make it more difficult for Facebook to harvest their digital data.

Facebook also has the right to run their business as they see fit, again, as long as they don’t break any laws.

An entirely different conversation: as much as I like free markets and capitalism, without governments enforcing laws that put some restraints on capitalism, that take into account externalities/costs to society, then capitalism and free markets will die.

Re: Facebook isn’t happy about Apple’s upcoming ad tracking restrictions

#93

Post by thoughtstheseus »

switch11 wrote: post #25
reaperducer wrote: post #14

I think we have to get away from calling these things "ad tracking." They're not tracking ads, they're tracking people, and their response to the ads. If Facebook was a guy with a notepad and a trench coat doing what it does in meatspace, you could get a restraining order against him.

yeah, and almost everyone would You take a normal parent and tell them - This guy from Facebook is going to follow your teenage daughter around high school, the mall, her room, everywhere she goes, and keep a record of every single thing she does on the computer and they would be running for their guns or their lawyers Online, Facebook does all that and most people don't even have a clue

Curious if there is case law here?

Re: Facebook isn’t happy about Apple’s upcoming ad tracking restrictions

#94

Post by austhrow743 »

jokoon wrote: post #30
cheeze wrote: post #2

... And nothing of value was lost. If it's detremental to your business to not be able to track users on such a granular level, it's a bad business. I'm sure Facebook will survive here. 100% biased, can't stand that company.

Why do you think it will survive? If one is optimistic, this could be the the downfall of facebook. If FB is scummy it doesn't increase its chances of survival. To be honest I'm sure there will be millions of other opportunities to gather data, by other companies. Facebook does it the easy way. Data gathering is a business now, I'm sure there are people who specialize in data gathering operations, a little like oil p…

Facebook isn't running on tight margins. It can eat a huge blow to revenue and just keep trucking.

Re: Facebook isn’t happy about Apple’s upcoming ad tracking restrictions

#95

Post by austhrow743 »

jariel wrote: post #44
cheeze wrote: post #2

... And nothing of value was lost. If it's detremental to your business to not be able to track users on such a granular level, it's a bad business. I'm sure Facebook will survive here. 100% biased, can't stand that company.

"... And nothing of value was lost." This is definitely not true. There is considerable value in advertising, it's just not apparent to you. In fact - advertising that is 'well targeted' is considerably less annoying than ads that are poorly targetted. The economic value of a well targeted ad is probably 10x otherwise. Ergo - unless you are willing to pay for apps - you might now see 10x more ads appearing on pages t…

It seems obvious to me that they didn't mean economic value. Clearly ads make money. People don't pay for them recreationally.

As for 10x more ads if they get less effective, that doesn't make any sense. Advertising supported media isn't showing the minimum amount of ads needed to cover their costs out of some sort of altruism. They show the profit maximising amount. Any more ads will cost them more eyeballs/clicks than they currently get.

Re: Facebook isn’t happy about Apple’s upcoming ad tracking restrictions

#96

Post by dreamcompiler »

amelius wrote: post #86
ghj wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair if you add an opt-in step to anything, it will kill that thing. No moral judgement, just human laziness. If it doesn't kill it, it still becomes something everyone loathes (e.g., how you need an extra click to accept cookies on every site you use).

> To be fair if you add an opt-in step to anything, it will kill that thing. That's like saying if you put a price on something, it will kill that thing. No, it doesn't.

It will certainly kill anything users wouldn't normally want. If my business model depends on stuffing a shit sandwich into my user's pocket without them knowing, and then something changes so I now have to ask them "Would you like a shit sandwich?" my business model will be in big trouble.

Re: Facebook isn’t happy about Apple’s upcoming ad tracking restrictions

#97

Post by FridgeSeal »

jariel wrote: post #91
FridgeSeal wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In fact - advertising that is 'well targeted' is considerably less annoying than ads that are poorly targetted. And better than targeted ads are ads that only need contextual information to work. If I'm on a page for a bit of sports equipment, I'm probably interested in sports equipment, or at the very least sports. Didn't need a complex data collection and analysis pipeline there. > unless you are willing to pay f…

"If I'm on a page for a bit of sports equipment, I'm probably interested in sports equipment, or at the very least sports. Didn't need a complex data collection and analysis pipeline there." Unfortunately, this simply isn't true. The value of a vistor to a 'sports site' may be considerably more for some other product or service. The fact is - most content is placed on sites for which there is no obvious context: Face…

> Unfortunately, this simply isn't true.

It quite literally is. I like mountain biking, if I go to Pinkbike (largest MTB news site), all the ads are for mountain biking products. If I'm there, I don't want to see ads for cloud services, or toasters, because that's literally not what I'm interested in at this point.

> The value of a vistor to a 'sports site' may be considerably more for some other product or service.

Like what? Probably less utility to the user though.

> The fact is, people are considerably more likely to opt for ad-based products than pay-based products

Many products are advertising only, and there's a strong culture (pushed by the advertising industry I might ad) of ad-supported above all else.

> The 'ill effects' of privacy are negligible...Nobody is harmed because of what FB is able to discern 'out of network' vs. what it already knows from what you do 'on network'.

In your opinion, sure. So what, we should all just have to put up with it, just because Facebook thinks it "deserves" to make money. Phillip Morris and friends argued that cigarettes didn't harm anybody as well.

> There are definitely considerations, but in reality, no harm.

The previous American election and the well documented effect of troll farms would indicate otherwise. Targeted advertising, enabled by invasion of privacy and amplified by the ill-effects of social-networks literally enabled that directly. The "chilling effect" of constant monitoring on culture is a well documented effect.

> Ads are not going away, better ads are better for everyone, we need to figure out how to deal with privacy.

"Ads are here, who cares about privacy, we want to make money". We have a right to privacy, advertisers not have right to make money, and when rights and advertising collide, I don't see any reason beyond "let's just endlessly feed people to the machine of capitalism" why the latter should be allowed to win.

Re: Facebook isn’t happy about Apple’s upcoming ad tracking restrictions

#98

Post by willstrafach »

clement_b wrote: post #34

This is a tsunami for ad tech. Facebook just being the tip of the iceberg here. Tracking or not tracking is not really the topic here. Rather, this is yet another proof of how abusive Apple is. They claim killing IDFA is for the sake of users' privacy, while they do track users and their behavior and feed them sponsored search results on the App Store (via Apple Search Ads). This ability is just too good to share! Ap…

Do you have a source on Apple “killing IDFA”?

My understanding is that they are going to simply show a consent dialog before allowing an app to access the IDFA, similar to what they have done for years to access other sensitive data like Contacts, Location, etc.

Re: Facebook isn’t happy about Apple’s upcoming ad tracking restrictions

#100

Post by giantrobot »

shajznnckfke wrote: post #83
giantrobot wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not even just the amount of tracking that Facebook et al do but the pervasive scope of it all. It's also a serious abuse of language. Facebook and others use the word "ad" hoping people assume the definition is the old school television or print ad; "here's our thing buy it and it'll make you happier". Beyond whatever massage it had that advertisement only affected you if you turned to that page or watched it du…

Isn’t it common knowledge at this point that our browsing history is used to target ads? Who hasn’t had the experience of searching for a product and then seeing ads for it?

For starters, it's not just browsing history but all of your activity on pages or in apps that use Facebook's spywa..."ads". This includes activity times, connections to other users, and even proximity to places or other people (Bluetooth beacons etc). This is all on top of the voluntary PII you might have fed directly into a Facebook profile or the shadow profile they helpfully created for you when your friend uploaded their contacts into Facebook.

There's zero oversight of how that data is used or who it's sold to and what those buyers do with it. We've already seen a number of cases where this harvested data was sold to unscrupulous or outright criminal concerns.

So it's not just Facebook using browsing history to sell you boxes of Tide. They're selling dossiers on you to groups literally trying to gaslight and manipulate you, to subconsciously influence you to do things, or to just make you generally feel like shit. Facebook exacerbates this behavior by "advertisers" by using your dossier to stick you in a filter bubble while at the same time showing you content that maximizes "engagement" and nothing else.

The dog wagging and gaslighting are not common knowledge or well understood by most people. Neither are the shadow profiles or the access of data by any organization that drove a dump truck full of money to Menlo Park. They're worse than the old school information brokers and credit reporting agencies because they feed all of your behavior into their graphs rather than just transaction history or public data.

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