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A Day in the Life of Your Data [pdf]

apple.com

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Re: A Day in the Life of Your Data [pdf]

#4

Post by sneak »

Apple products do a lot of things with your data without asking; this seems like farce to me.

I'm all for marketing to one's strengths, but Apple products leak so much data (hardware serial numbers, for example) that this sort of marketing strikes me now as actively dishonest.

Apple collects just as much data (sometimes more!) as all of these shady data broker types they vilify in the document.

Re: A Day in the Life of Your Data [pdf]

#5

Post by actuator »

If ads are just restricted to intent based on page/video/query, small advertisers lose out on effectiveness but is this is a big issue for big advertisers?

I have read FB engineers comment on HN that FB has a long tail of advertisers. Is that why they are being more vocal out of all companies?

In any case, I personally don't have a problem with ads as a revenue medium for companies, just the expansive data mining, especially when it is not communicated to the user clearly. Ads do provide a very good avenue for revenue generation for products where most users won't pay for the service because of competing products or just the frequency in which they use them. On the advertiser side, they do help push information about new products which we might not have known earlier.

Re: A Day in the Life of Your Data [pdf]

#7

Post by msoad »

The regular user just clicks "accept" on every prompt they see. Yes there might be days that privacy is the top news. But most people ignore it. $FB is down because of this new cycle but mark my words. Facebook will make even more billions using data people "clicked accept to share".

Re: A Day in the Life of Your Data [pdf]

#8

Post by djrogers »

sneak wrote: post #4

Apple products do a lot of things with your data without asking; this seems like farce to me. I'm all for marketing to one's strengths, but Apple products leak so much data (hardware serial numbers, for example) that this sort of marketing strikes me now as actively dishonest. Apple collects just as much data (sometimes more!) as all of these shady data broker types they vilify in the document.

Care to share any examples or references of where Apple is being dishonest here?

Re: A Day in the Life of Your Data [pdf]

#9

Post by _qulr »

pwinnski wrote: post #2

Apple knows they're going toe-to-toe with Facebook, and they don't seem to plan to lose.

This feels to me like Apple creating a convenient Orwellian enemy. They're not even competitors, because Apple doesn't have a social network, Facebook doesn't sell computers, and indeed Facebook is currently among the grossing apps in the iOS App Store, 30% of which Apple gets.

If Facebook was as terrible as Apple makes them out to be, why would Apple allow Facebook in their App Store and take 30% of the generated revenue? It's hypocritical for Apple to criticize Facebook. If anything, the App Store made Facebook more popular than ever, so it's a "monster" that Apple helped create.

EDIT: My perspective is that the App Store and iOS lockdown have been harmful to user privacy, and Facebook is merely a convenient enemy to distract from the harmfulness of Apple's own current business model. On the Mac, I can install Little Snitch and prevent software from phoning home to both facebook.com and apple.com. I can't do any of this on iPhone. (And indeed, Little Snitch is not even compatible with the restrictive Mac App Store rules, so it has to be distributed outside the MAS.) The iPhone platform is designed such that software like Facebook thrives, and software like Little Snitch cannot exist.

Re: A Day in the Life of Your Data [pdf]

#10

Post by gonehome »

I think Apple will win this war and FB will lose.

Nobody cares that small businesses benefit from targeted FB ads except FB and small businesses, customers certainly don’t, users don’t.

The small group of users that would care about that is the same group that hates Facebook and Amazon already and won’t be persuaded by FB on this or really even listen.

Apple’s argument is clearer and more directly benefits their users.

FB and small businesses don’t have the political power to force a win here and their argument isn’t as persuasive as Apple’s.

It doesn’t look great for them.

I think they’re probably correct about the long tail ads and the benefit to small businesses, but I also don’t care. I’d rather the targeted ad model fail.

Ben Thompson argues that if Apple wins this then only FB, Google and other ad monopoly mega corps will be competitive in the ad space because they’re the only ones that can collect information on users in other ways even with Apple’s move to stop tracking.

That may be true in the short term.

If legislation trends in the CCPA, GDPR direction and users prefer the moves Apple is making then the ad model may start to falter for them too.

The sooner, the better.

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