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Is Apple Banning Free Analytics SDKs?

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Re: Is Apple Banning Free Analytics SDKs?

#31

Post by _qulr »

simonh wrote: post #20
_qulr wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where do you see Apple bashing in the article? It was an article targeted at app developers, offering them advice on how to adapt to the new rules.

The Apple bashing is in the title and in the text, calling this a "def-facto ban" by Apple. No it's not, it's giving the option to the users. The fact that users generally abhor and detest this sort of tracking and want nothing to do with it is hardly Apple's fault.

If, as you say, the preference of users is obvious and predictable, and Apple gives an option to users with a completely predictable outcome that will prevent analytics SDKs from being viable, then I think it's fair to say that this is a de facto ban.

Whether that's good or bad is a subject for separate debate. But the main question of the article is whether developers can still use these SDKs, and the author speculates that it will no longer be possible for developers to use them. That sounds like a de facto ban to me. Again, I'm not even commenting whether that's good or bad.

If you read other comments here, some people would be very happy with an outright explicit ban. Are they "Apple bashing"? No, of course not. I still don't see how talking about a de facto ban is bashing, it's just a natural consequence of the iOS changes, at least according to the article author.

Re: Is Apple Banning Free Analytics SDKs?

#32

Post by djrogers »

stationfrocks wrote: post #3

The question is: will it be possible to use facebook and firebase sdk's without the opt-in consent, provided that no use of the idfa is made? My understanding is that as long as the opt-in popup isn't shown, the device won't allow access to the idfa, and as such the sdk you're using does not matter. Both facebook and firebase's sdks seem to have fallbacks in place for when the idfa is not available. This is to be tak…

From Apple: "you’ll need to receive the user’s permission through the AppTrackingTransparency framework to track them or access their device’s advertising identifier".

OR access IDFA being the key there. If you can't honestly and easily answer the question "does this 3rd party SDK track my users?" then you probably should not be using it.

Re: Is Apple Banning Free Analytics SDKs?

#33

Post by _qulr »

simonh wrote: post #14
akmarinov wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not a ban, but since all these 3rd party tracking platforms use the user's data to power ads, you have to show the opt in, which of course people will say no to, leading to the SDKs being mostly useless in your binary. Compare that to Mixpanel for example, where they don't power ads, you can skip showing the opt in and have a useful analytics SDK. Effectively the free SDKs need the data to make money for their o…

It really isn’t a ban though, not in any sense. It’s simply a requirement to ask for opt-in. Apple is making no decision about the use of IDFA, they are simply allowing users to make that decision. The truth is users are against this behaviour, but Facebook, Google, and the author of that blog don’t like to face up to that fact, so they will assiduously blame Apple for this not the people actually making the decision…

> the author of that blog don’t like to face up to that fact, so they will assiduously blame Apple for this

Could you please quote the relevant section of the article you're referring to?

If it's just "the article title", that seems to be quite a stretch to me.

Re: Is Apple Banning Free Analytics SDKs?

#34

Post by K0nserv »

Reason077 wrote: post #12
ohreallysteve wrote: post #10

From my understanding, the iOS permission to track prompt is only if your app uses user device data for the purpose of targeted advertising by accessing the IDFA. There shouldn't be a problem if you disable the collection of IDFA and you can configure exactly that via Firebase Google Analytics [1]. I don't see a whole sale banning of free analytics SDKs but I do see a positive shift in forcing developers to have more…

> "There shouldn't be a problem if you disable the collection of IDFA" Exactly. I hope this is true as this is exactly what I'm planning to do.

If you stop collecting IDFA and don't replace it with some other device identifier you are fine. If you create a new identifier i.e. some sort of fingerprinting you still needs user consent for that via the AppTransparency framework.

Re: Is Apple Banning Free Analytics SDKs?

#35

Post by simonh »

_qulr wrote: post #33
simonh wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It really isn’t a ban though, not in any sense. It’s simply a requirement to ask for opt-in. Apple is making no decision about the use of IDFA, they are simply allowing users to make that decision. The truth is users are against this behaviour, but Facebook, Google, and the author of that blog don’t like to face up to that fact, so they will assiduously blame Apple for this not the people actually making the decision…

> the author of that blog don’t like to face up to that fact, so they will assiduously blame Apple for this Could you please quote the relevant section of the article you're referring to? If it's just "the article title", that seems to be quite a stretch to me.

Sure, fourth paragraph:

"Apple is also enacting a de-facto ban on these free analytics SDKs. The setup looks like this:"

Re: Is Apple Banning Free Analytics SDKs?

#36

Post by _qulr »

simonh wrote: post #35
_qulr wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the author of that blog don’t like to face up to that fact, so they will assiduously blame Apple for this Could you please quote the relevant section of the article you're referring to? If it's just "the article title", that seems to be quite a stretch to me.

Sure, fourth paragraph: "Apple is also enacting a de-facto ban on these free analytics SDKs. The setup looks like this:"

Is it accurate to say that your only evidence that this article constitutes "Apple bashing" is the word "ban"?

If so, that seems hypersensitive and defensive IMO.

A "de facto ban" is not a "de jure ban", so it's already a pretty weak statement.

Re: Is Apple Banning Free Analytics SDKs?

#38

Post by jrochkind1 »

tabs_masterrace wrote: post #15

For those who have the freedom to decide what to use, I recommend looking into rolling your own. Especially if you're writing back-end services for your app anyway. After Google shutdown Fabric.io, we asked ourselves why even rely on 3rd parties for analytics. All we really wanted to know is basic usage statistics, like uniques, sessions, events. Turns out to be just a few days of work for what amounts to a CRUD serv…

It's weird if the policy is you can do whatever you want as powerful as you want if you roll your own, but you can't do anything no matter how simple if you use a free third-party SDK, but... is that what it looks like?

Re: Is Apple Banning Free Analytics SDKs?

#39

Post by apike »

fmajid wrote: post #30

It's a red herring. In addition to the IDFA, Apple has something called the IDFV (identifierForVendor). This ID is unique to a publisher, i.e. if a user has 3 of your apps installed, all three will share the same IDFV, so you can even do cross-app or cross-selling analytics. What you cannot do by design is use IDFV to build a cross-publisher dossier on users, or target users based on that ID other than on your own ap…

Yes, but – Apple's documentation says that the upcoming opt-in requirement is for more than for IDFA-based tracking. https://developer.apple.com/app-store/user-privacy-and-data-...

According to Apple, the opt-in API is also required for other activities, including:

> Placing a third-party SDK in your app that combines user data from your app with user data from other developers’ apps to target advertising or measure advertising efficiency, even if you don’t use the SDK for these purposes. For example, using an analytics SDK that repurposes the data it collects from your app to enable targeted advertising in other developers’ apps.

So as a developer, you need to ask: even though we don't use IDFA, is this analytics SDK repurposing our data to fingerprint and target our users? Certainly for the default setups of these adtech-backed free analytics SDKs the answer is "presumably yes?". But we don't yet have a clear answer from Apple or the vendors as to what exactly will trigger an App Review rejection here, and what exactly the SDKs do with the data they receive in different circumstances.

Hence the uncertainty.

Re: Is Apple Banning Free Analytics SDKs?

#40

Post by apike »

jrochkind1 wrote: post #37

> iOS apps currently using the Google Analytics, Flurry, and Firebase SDKs may need to migrate off of them promptly I don't develop in this space, but... Firebase is considered an analytics/tracking API? What happened?

Firebase includes a wide umbrella of services, which include what used to be Fabric Analytics and Crashlytics. From Apple's perspective, sharing data with these services may count as "sharing data with entities who display third-party ads" since Google owns the service, and Google displays ads. Or maybe not.
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