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Apple’s Anti-Tracking Plans for iPhone

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Re: Apple’s Anti-Tracking Plans for iPhone

#291

Post by willstrafach »

jefftk wrote: post #179
wil421 wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you explain how Apple’s anti tracking measures are going to hurt small business and make fraud easier?

Most of the time, privacy and fraud both benefit from the same changes. To prevent tracking online, you want your device to look just like everybody else's devices. To prevent fraud, you want devices to look different so you can tell when a device does not represent a real user. At the extreme, imagine if every person has a unique identifier that was automatically sent whenever they used any device: preventing ad fra…

1. You’re allowed to use IDFA. But users will now have to allow access, as a permission dialog will pop up first.

2. The IDFA is just a simple static UUID. It cannot do a very good job at preventing fraud. There is no way to validate anything about it or affirm that it ties to a genuine device.

Re: Apple’s Anti-Tracking Plans for iPhone

#292

Post by bluesign »

jefftk wrote: post #204
rndgermandude wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ad fraud... How exactly is this my problem as a consumer? This sounds pretty much like a "you" (ad networks and advertisers) problem... So why should you be allowed to spy on me - who never defrauded any advertisers - to fix your problem?

> How exactly is this my problem as a consumer? When you use a service that is funded by advertising, the service only gets that funding because the advertisers trust that they are getting their ads in front of real users. Some advertisers are able to precisely measure the quality of their traffic, for example by seeing whether the traffic they get buys things, but most are in businesses where that's not possible (no…

> Ad fraud means that advertisers are less willing to pay to be shown on the service, so the service's funding decreases.

Ok I agree that ad fraud is hurting publishers, as a secondary effect hurting consumers but the damage consumer getting in this current system is much much bigger. This is like saying you continue taking 5x damage, cause 1x damage to your publisher will effect you negative.

Re: Apple’s Anti-Tracking Plans for iPhone

#293

Post by damnyou »

airstrike wrote: post #226
jefftk wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How exactly is this my problem as a consumer? When you use a service that is funded by advertising, the service only gets that funding because the advertisers trust that they are getting their ads in front of real users. Some advertisers are able to precisely measure the quality of their traffic, for example by seeing whether the traffic they get buys things, but most are in businesses where that's not possible (no…

> Very likely, less funding for the service hurts you as a consumer Define "hurt". I'd rather make a decision to pay $5/month for a service than to be the product and get spied on

In general I'm not a fan of advertising, but one of the most important things it does is level the playing field across income levels and countries. $5/month would be outrageously expensive for a very large number of people, most of whom are not on Hacker News, and any discussion of replacing advertising with a subscription model has to start from that basic fact.

Re: Apple’s Anti-Tracking Plans for iPhone

#294

Post by bluesign »

halversonmd wrote: post #266
elefanten wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google’s inability to protect its core revenue stream is squarely in the “not my problem” category. In fact, making internet advertising less desirable for businesses sounds like a benefit to me. So, Apple’s decision is looking even better to me now.

Google's core revenue stream doesn't rely on IDFA. Many 3rd party advertising companies and apps do rely on IDFA. Apple's move helps Google.

This is not true, any ad network benefits from IDFA, bigger the better.

Removing of IDFA should close the gap between big players like Google, Facebook etc vs others.

Re: Apple’s Anti-Tracking Plans for iPhone

#295

Post by tzs »

rndgermandude wrote: post #235
fumar wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How would you pay for the services and content you consume?

It could be microtransactions/in-app purchases-as-a-microtransaction, it could be subscription based models, it could be "media flat rates" (cross publication subscriptions), or something else entirely. A lot of content, especially newspaper/magazine articles, at least here in Germany, already are paid-only, either through subscriptions or both subscriptions and alternatively microtransactions (mostly more in-depth r…

Microtransactions are difficult legally, due to taxes.

If someone in state/country X buys something from a site in state/country Y, both X and Y may levy taxes on that transaction.

Many have thresholds for small businesses, where you don't have to collect taxes if your total business volume is below some threshold. For US states, the threshold is often of the form "more than $T total sales OR more than N sales".

With microtransactions, it is easy to exceed N sales even though you are not actually collecting much money, and then the costs of preparing and filing your quarterly sales tax reports can exceed your revenue.

Advertiser supported sites don't suffer from this problem. If someone in X visits a site in Y and Y gets payed by an advertiser for showing an ad to that person, the site does not have to worry about taxes in X, and in Y the ad revenue will just be income that gets dealt with on their income taxes.

Until we can get microtransaction-friendly cross jurisdiction sales tax reform microtransactions are going to have limited viability, at least for sites that want to operate legally.

Re: Apple’s Anti-Tracking Plans for iPhone

#296

Post by fbelzile »

pwinnski wrote: post #220
fbelzile wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Their income is from selling physical devices. Not entirely true anymore: 1) About $8-12 billion paid by Google to have their search engine default. [1] 2) About $20 billion from their 15-30% cut of third party app developers. Where the App Store is protected from competition. [2] 3) Apple services (like Apple TV+), which collects usage data for itself and third parties. [3] [1] https://www.macrumors.com/2020/10/25…

Apple revenue for the last year was $275 billion. So you've listed 3.5%, 7%, and probably-rounds-to-0% of their revenue, which doesn't seem like it actually counters the original point.

As you correctly point out, those are revenue figures, not profit. $10 billion from Google out of $60 billion in profit is significant. Apple saying they 'care' about privacy while making +15% of its profits from Google alone is hypocritical.

Re: Apple’s Anti-Tracking Plans for iPhone

#297

Post by closeparen »

ogre_codes wrote: post #289
endymi0n wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having been on both sides of the table, I would slightly disagree here. Fraud prevention for example will get an order of magnitude harder, plus this move will further skew the playing field towards FAANG who have the resources to puzzle the scraps back together for decent conversion tracking with the help of logins, IPs, SDKs with First Party IDs and a massive dose of machine learning.

> Fraud prevention for example will get an order of magnitude harder, First Ad Fraud != Fraud. It is low grade hacking. Second. Trading the privacy of every iPhone user so that advertisers can prop up a sketchy/ poor industry is a terrible trade.

This completely changes the game on all kinds of fraud, not just ad fraud. Currently when you get caught, the service you’re abusing bans your device. To keep trying you need new hardware; attacks have a real monetary cost for the attacker. When your iPhone can present itself as infinitely many iPhones, this is neutered, and services will need different (probably more invasive) techniques to keep banned users away.

Re: Apple’s Anti-Tracking Plans for iPhone

#298

Post by filoleg »

giancarlostoro wrote: post #262
rahoulb wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The number of times I've had non-tech people complain about how their phone is listening to them and then showing them adverts about stuff they've been talking about has gone through the roof in the last 18 months (generally as soon as I mention that I work with computers). It's becoming a real concern for normal people - they don't understand what it is or how it works but they really don't like it.

I've seen articles that defend this by stating Facebook buys debit card data, but then I was shown an ad about something extremely niche, like way out there... Aircraft pavement, specifically for aircraft hangars. One single comment was mentioned to me 8 hours prior... Involving aircraft hangar gravel or something, I never googled it, I never have even thought about such a product in my entire life. Yet there was the…

> Involving aircraft hangar gravel or something, I never googled it, I never have even thought about such a product in my entire life. Yet there was the ad from a completely once in a lifetime conversation I had with someone. It's too damn niche to be coincidence.

You might have not googled it yourself, but I bet the person you had that conversation with did. If the conversation took place in real life, then that person's device was in physical proximity to yours (i.e., location data tracking; for example, if you enter a room full of people who googled tons of stuff about a certain subject, expect to see ads around that subject popping up on your device in the near future, even if you didn't google anything about that subject before and aren't planning to do so in the future). You also probably exchanged contacts and called (or texted) each other about other stuff in general (probable, but not necessary for the scenario I am describing). And if the conversation took place online, then it is even easier. Here you go, you just created a social link between yourself and the person who googled stuff about aircraft hangar gravel. In which case, it isn't surprising at all that you got that ad.

So in a sense, you are correct, it wasn't a coincidence. But I heavily doubt it has anything to do with smart devices listening and analyzing to what you said at all. It is much more trivial and less creepy to simply utilize your social links to figure out what kind of ads to display to you than listen in and try to analyze your conversations. More reliable too.

Re: Apple’s Anti-Tracking Plans for iPhone

#299

Post by dialtone »

bluesign wrote: post #294
halversonmd wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google's core revenue stream doesn't rely on IDFA. Many 3rd party advertising companies and apps do rely on IDFA. Apple's move helps Google.

This is not true, any ad network benefits from IDFA, bigger the better. Removing of IDFA should close the gap between big players like Google, Facebook etc vs others.

I don't do mobile advertising but this is just incorrect... Most of Google's revenue comes from Search and that has nothing to do with IDFA.

Then how would third parties with no access to first party data compete when there's no more third party data would be something I'm curious for you to explain.

Re: Apple’s Anti-Tracking Plans for iPhone

#300

Post by edmundsauto »

nvrspyx wrote: post #227
jefftk wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How exactly is this my problem as a consumer? When you use a service that is funded by advertising, the service only gets that funding because the advertisers trust that they are getting their ads in front of real users. Some advertisers are able to precisely measure the quality of their traffic, for example by seeing whether the traffic they get buys things, but most are in businesses where that's not possible (no…

Then I suppose businesses will need to adapt, as businesses have for hundreds of years, either away from relying on advertisements or going back to old-school, non-intrusive, manual ad placements that don't rely on clicks, targeting, and tracking.

Much of the adaptation will be disappearing, including a large number of sites that contribute articles that pop up here on HN. Another way would be getting more invasive, like requiring login, before the content gets displayed.
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