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Facebook is pushing back on Apple’s new iPhone privacy rules

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Re: Facebook is pushing back on Apple’s new iPhone privacy rules

#331

Post by nojito »

chillacy wrote: post #154
nojito wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup. Ebay for example gained revenue when they stopped buying targeted ads. More information here. https://freakonomics.com/podcast/advertising-part-2/

Ebay didn't stop buying targeted ads, afaik they stopped buying a specific type of ad in google search that had the keyword 'ebay' in it. Most companies bid up their own searches with the theory that they have to or else their competitor would, but ebay showed that people who search 'ebay magic cards' would most likely skip the search ads and go straight to ebay.

No they completely stopped buying ads. The brand keyword experiment gave them the confidence to run an experiment to completely turn everything off.

>TADELIS: Yes. So, for non-branded search, we actually had no idea what the results are going to be. Because here, if I am searching for, example, a studio microphone I’m sure that on eBay I might find a variety of used ones. But if I’m not thinking about eBay, and I just search for “studio microphone,” if eBay doesn’t pay an ad, they might not even show up on the first page. And by the way, the automated machines at eBay that were doing the online bidding, they had a basic library of close to 100 million different combinations of keywords, because eBay has practically everything you could imagine for sale on the site. So, we really had no idea what the returns for the non-branded searches would be.

>TADELIS: And we took a third of these D.M.A.’s, and we turned off all paid-search advertising. This was an extremely blunt experiment where we’re saying, “What would happen if we didn’t advertise at all?” And to our surprise the impact on average was pretty much zero.

Re: Facebook is pushing back on Apple’s new iPhone privacy rules

#332

Post by nicky0 »

paulgb wrote: post #222
drewvolpe wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"You're Apple's customer and Facebook's product" is often repeated but completely true in this case. It's all about incentives. Apple makes money by selling more products which means they innovate by making Watches, Earpods, M1, etc. Facebook makes money by selling your attention and data, which meants they innovate by extracting data from every experience they can (Oculus, Whatsapp, ...), using more complex technolo…

Also, you literally are Apple’s product to their iOS developer ecosystem, in the sense that developers fork over 30% of their revenue to Apple for access to you.

No, that's not right. The app is the product, the customer is the buyer of the app, and the split of revenue is 70/30 (or 85/15 for small devs).

Saying that developers are "buying" users makes no sense. Devs are not a customer of apple. If anything, devs are a supplier to apple. Since the net money flow is from Apple to Dev.

As always, just follow the money.

Re: Facebook is pushing back on Apple’s new iPhone privacy rules

#333

Post by Swizec »

sakis wrote: post #330

I wonder what would happen if FB and Google went a step further and decided to give Apple the Windows Phone (or Huawei) treatment, by pulling all their apps from the App Store, citing these changes as the reason they can't support Apple's platform. I'm not sure the majority of iOS devices users would be happy with any of the involved parties, and that includes Apple.

They all work great in the browser. You don’t need their apps.

Re: Facebook is pushing back on Apple’s new iPhone privacy rules

#334

Post by reaperducer »

SergeAx wrote: post #181
mokus wrote: post #3

The fact that Facebook appears to consider user consent an existential threat to their business model tells me everything I need to know about them right now.

Devil advocating attempt: they obviously did a measure how much of their userbase will allow the app to serve personalized ads and how it will impact their revenue. Even if it is in a ballpark of 10%, it is still a ton of money and, as a commercial enterprise acting in the interests of its shareholders, FB should do it's best to avoid or reduce potential damage.

should do it's best to avoid or reduce potential damage.

The way to reduce potential damage is to evolve, adapt, pivot, and diversify. Not to kick and scream.

Facebook has enough money and enough smart people to do and be anything it wants. It chooses to be the neighborhood creep in the bushes watching your daughter through your windows.

Re: Facebook is pushing back on Apple’s new iPhone privacy rules

#335

Post by kstrauser »

dhdhhdd wrote: post #226

How can an app track activities in other apps? Is it only possible if those other apps use the same tracking networks, or can the app track activities in _any_ other app? How does this work? What can facebook extract today? (I'm surprised a bit, i thought phones offer app isolation). The only things that comes to mind is to correlate device ids from different apps if the apps use the same analytics/advertising networ…

> The only things that comes to mind is to correlate device ids from different apps if the apps use the same analytics/advertising networks.

This, and also anything that uses "Sign in with Facebook". (That's one of several reasons I have for never using anything that requires signing in with Facebook or Google; if I can't create a username or enter an email address, I generally don't want to use it.)

Re: Facebook is pushing back on Apple’s new iPhone privacy rules

#336

Post by nicky0 »

Spivak wrote: post #272
paulgb wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, you literally are Apple’s product to their iOS developer ecosystem, in the sense that developers fork over 30% of their revenue to Apple for access to you.

This is absolutely true. Both companies play the game of selling customer acquisition. But we seem to be generally more okay with middlemen squeezing a two sided market. Sometimes. If it’s DoorDash or Amazon then public opinion seems to go the other way. But regardless it’s not Facebook’s value prop to business that people have an issue with but ya know, how they actually deliver it.

No, devs don't buy customers from apple. Customers buy apps, and Apple takes a commission. No money flows from Developer to Apple (apart from to 100$ annual fee if you want to be anal about it).

Re: Facebook is pushing back on Apple’s new iPhone privacy rules

#337

Post by that_guy_iain »

rising-sky wrote: post #233
czbond wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wholly internalized that there was a real problem when I started taking my phone to other parts of the house, placing it in a drawer before returning and shutting the door to have an in person conversation with someone.

I'm not sure why this is getting down-voted, but I think the point here is the _fact_ that you have been put in a situation where, as an individual, you are concerned enough to do this is telling, crazy or not

This logic could be used to say there is a problem that some people believe they need to wear tinfoil hats to stop mind-reading. No, we should help them seek medical help. It's easily verifiable to check if your phone is sending data, so if they're concerned, they can check that like many people do and find out what data is being sent. But stopping a conversation midway through to hide your phone to continue to talk while not being a major underworld criminal is a worrying level of paranoia. If you are an underworld criminal, what are you doing with a phone? Didn't you see what happened to encrochat?

Re: Facebook is pushing back on Apple’s new iPhone privacy rules

#338

Post by coldcode »

executive wrote: post #208
simonh wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If Apple genuinely though that, you’d expect them to be selling access to their customer data to the highest bidder, but they aren’t. In fact they were offered billions of dollars in revenue by Google for customer location data in Google Maps. Apple turned it down and instead spent billions of dollars and several years building Apple Maps instead.

But they'll gladly take ~$12 Bn/year to have Google as Safari default search provider.

For now. Building their own search provider is not beyond them.

Re: Facebook is pushing back on Apple’s new iPhone privacy rules

#340

Post by celsoazevedo »

dnh44 wrote: post #176
lwhi wrote: post #133

This tracking needs to be reduced, I applaud Apple for helping progress this. Next order of business is removing the Apple's marketplace monopolisation; the App Store should not be the only marketplace available.

>the App Store should not be the only marketplace available. Wouldn't Facebook then simply stop distributing it's app through the Apple App Store and then create it's own app store that doesn't have any of the anti-tracking restrictions?

Is the permission popup that asks users to allow/block access to the location, tracking, etc, tied to the App Store?

On Android, it doesn't matter the source of the app. If the app wants to access your location, camera, files, etc, you need to give it access. I don't see why this new iOS feature to "ask apps not to track" has to be different, isn't it all part of what the "app sandbox" lets them do?

Apple can't control what's in the 3rd party stores, but they control iOS and what apps are allowed to do.

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