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Facebook testing notification to users about Apple privacy changes

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Re: Facebook testing notification to users about Apple privacy changes

#231

Post by bavent »

kd0amg wrote: post #214
bavent wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't buy that. For example - I bought a rowing machine on Amazon. It was the first piece of home gym equipment I'd ever purchased. For months after, other rowing machines were suggested to me. I already bought one, why would I buy another, especially if I hadn't returned the first one? Ads like this are very common for me - a purchase that I would consider to be a one-off thing (at least, for several years, whatev…

> Clearly I'm missing something in my logic Sampling methodology. Every ad impression in your sample was shown to the same person, but the ad industry is interested in billions of people.

I’m sorry, I don’t really follow. Could you explain a little bit more?

Re: Facebook testing notification to users about Apple privacy changes

#232

Post by ska »

zepto wrote: post #198
ska wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No one actually needs FB. No one actually needs a car either. Or to eat industrially produced food. Or etc. etc. "Nobody actually needs X" where X is a thing that empirically a huge percentage of people do, is I suspect never a compelling argument. edit: bordercases brings up a good point, I picked particularly entrenched/difficult areas for examples but it wasn't necessary. My point was more about the futility of…

“No one actually needs a car either. Or to eat industrially produced food. Or etc. etc.“ This is a false equivalence. Facebook is nowhere near at that level of need yet.

I think it's not really a false equivalence, as a matter of degree - but see edit made in response to this.

There is also an issue of Maslow style leveling here, but the core point is identical.

Re: Facebook testing notification to users about Apple privacy changes

#233

Post by bavent »

Terretta wrote: post #148
bavent wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does that actually work though? I've been buying things on Amazon for over a decade. For a while I got my groceries through them, I watch a lot of stuff on Prime Video. You would think they, of all people, know what I like. I can't think of more than a couple times where anything suggested to me was actually something I wanted. Even when I used FB, the ads were so off target from things I am interested in as to be la…

Perhaps a small cohort of targeted-ad-susceptible users skew the targeting efficacy stats so far it looks like targeted ads work overall. Perhaps this cohort doesn’t overlap much with, say, New York Times readers, which might be why NYT and every other brand that tried first party non-retargeted ads saw an uptick in ROI. For most of us, perhaps these ads don’t work or are negative, while this cohort are more like Can…

Ah so it's the "Nigerian Prince" scam, basically?

Re: Facebook testing notification to users about Apple privacy changes

#234

Post by colejohnson66 »

JMTQp8lwXL wrote: post #219
K0nserv wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s against Apple’s guidelines, violations of which will get your app kicked off the only distribution channel on iOS. We’ll have to see how this shakes out in reality, but as a deterrent it’s pretty strong.

Apple might dislike Facebook, but it's difficult to imagine a world where it's removed from the App Store.

Apple, almost exactly 2 years ago, revoked Facebook's enterprise signing key after shenanigans they had pulled with their fake VPN. Until that was fixed, Facebook devs were unable to install new builds on their testing devices.

Based on that history, I don't think Apple is scared of Facebook. They probably won't pull the app because it would be flipped back on Apple, but I'm sure they could find something to push back on Facebook with.

[0]: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2019/01/facebook-and-google-...

Re: Facebook testing notification to users about Apple privacy changes

#235

Post by somedude895 »

kortilla wrote: post #222
kibwen wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Companies obsess about these metrics because they don't want their ROI to be less than their competitors', because that would put them at a competitive disadvantage. It's not in doubt that individual-targeted advertising is more effective than than the alternatives; by eliminating user tracking you would be decreasing ROI across the board, but that's fine because, again, all that you're fighting for is a higher ROI t…

This model is based on the assumption that ads are for things the consumers already know about. This is not correct. Example: I type “housing insurance” into Google and the “organic” results are dominated by the mega insurance companies. Without targeted advertising, the ads are also dominated by mega insurance companies because they have the biggest advertising budgets. With targeted advertising, I can see an ad fro…

> Without targeted advertising, the ads are also dominated by mega insurance companies because they have the biggest advertising budgets. > With targeted advertising, I can see an ad from a provider specific to my location that I didn’t know existed who offers way better rates because of the different risk pool. The same applies for thousands of other products/services that are localized.

You're talking about geo targeting here, which imo should still be possible. That's an in-the-moment targeting akin to an advertiser choosing to show their ad on a local news site. This doesn't require extensive tracking and profiling of users.

Re: Facebook testing notification to users about Apple privacy changes

#236

Post by cwkoss »

gowld wrote: post #174
tnt128 wrote: post #11

Here is the logic, if you allow tracking, we would show your more relevant ads, if you don’t allow, we will spam the shit out of you. Either way, you see tons of ads, but allow tracking, you see ads more relevant. Of course that’s not how they word this. They framed it as a benefit, Notice how it’s worded - allowing for better personalized ad experience - I bet when worded this way, a good percentage of people will t…

What's wrong with ads? Facebook costs money and effort to produce for its users to enjoy. I don't use FB, but people who do use presumably enjoy it.

Because Facebook's ads require a panopticon of surveillance across every page with a FB like button in order to function in current form.

People are sending much more data to facebook than they realize, and are typically upset when they learn the scope of facebooks dragnet.

If Facebook only used data from the Facebook platform itself (and none of their web of acquired companies), I think people would have much fewer objections to the tracking.

Re: Facebook testing notification to users about Apple privacy changes

#237

Post by olex »

kortilla wrote: post #222
kibwen wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Companies obsess about these metrics because they don't want their ROI to be less than their competitors', because that would put them at a competitive disadvantage. It's not in doubt that individual-targeted advertising is more effective than than the alternatives; by eliminating user tracking you would be decreasing ROI across the board, but that's fine because, again, all that you're fighting for is a higher ROI t…

This model is based on the assumption that ads are for things the consumers already know about. This is not correct. Example: I type “housing insurance” into Google and the “organic” results are dominated by the mega insurance companies. Without targeted advertising, the ads are also dominated by mega insurance companies because they have the biggest advertising budgets. With targeted advertising, I can see an ad fro…

On both examples, the user can trivially reach the desired search outcome by manually adding their location or "diy"/"for hire" to the search query, without the search engine needing to know a single thing about them.

Re: Facebook testing notification to users about Apple privacy changes

#238

Post by ROARosen »

bnj wrote: post #5

It's simultaneously remarkable and utterly unremarkable that Facebook has been dragged kicking and screaming into building a consent screen for this kind of tracking. Watching this tracking notification conflict unfold in the media has really helped me to refine where I stand on this: if a business depends on non-consensual tracking to be able to survive, then I'd prefer that the business has to fold before stripping…

From Facebook's consent screen: "This doesn't give us access to new types of information" [emphasis mine]

I don't know whether to laugh out loud or to cry. It literally shows the consumer that - at least according to Apple - the data Facebook was collecting up until now is detailed enough to require an extra prompt.

How exactly is that supposed to reassure someone who would supposedly deny them tracking once the prompt shows?!

Re: Facebook testing notification to users about Apple privacy changes

#240

Post by cwkoss »

kerng wrote: post #167

To be honest, I dont accept the argument that extremly detailed tracking is the only way to show relevant ads. High level information is probably enough and I'm sure FB would still make tons of money by even showing random ads. Makes you wonder if there is actually another reason for collecting all that data? Like building AI and ML models for other purposes.

If regulations don't prevent them from doing so, I expect FB to pivot into Surveillance As A Service for authoritarian states.
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