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iOS 14 and Facebook Pixel causing increase in PSL inclusion requests

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Re: iOS 14 and Facebook Pixel causing increase in PSL inclusion requests

#81
post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In principle, you can know that an ad click resulted in a purchase without knowing who clicked the ad and who made the purchase. Apple supports these kinds of measurements for its own Apple Search Ads product. The “entropy limit” you see people talking about elsewhere in the thread is one means that attempts to allow ads to be measured like this without revealing information about the users. But if every store *.shop…

How can you give every subdomain in *.shopify.com their own entropy pool without also giving domains the ability to serve a distinct subdomain for each user (eg, user-1.example.com & user-2.example.com) and therefore bypassing the restrictions Apple is seeking to implement?

That’s the debate happening in the GitHub issue. I think a natural answer is with carrots and sticks. Shopify will police their platform if that is what’s necessary to prevent Apple from destroying its business by cutting them all off.

There aren’t that many “build your own store” SaaS platforms, so it is feasible to maintain a whitelist.

It may sound strange at first to propose that Apple should be essentially auditing the behavior of other companies, but they have shown a willingness to pick up that mantle. Apple has already undertaken the huge effort of regulating the business practices of anyone on the App Store with the privacy label and other areas such as payments for digital goods. In this case, they’ve sort of delegated responsibility to a volunteer effort, which is understandable given how the situation evolved, but doesn’t seem sustainable.

Re: iOS 14 and Facebook Pixel causing increase in PSL inclusion requests

#82
post #61
post #12

Summary: Apple introduced PCM [1], and to keep people from using it for cross-site tracking it limits the bits available to a single site (as defined by the PSL). If shop-a.retail.example and shop-b.retail.example are completely separate, and don't want to compete for bits, Apple will still treat them as a single site unless retail.example is on the PSL. Being on the PSL is a big change (partitioned cookies, etc) but…

That thread between FB & Apple is fascinating. The potential solutions being discussed have significant implications: 1. Apple: "not support eTLDs in PCM and only support TLDs" - so no more ad attribution for multi-tenant domains. 2. Facebook: "some sort of vetting process to determine who is using subdomains in a way that is aligned with the intended purpose of the PSL" - so Apple takes over the PSL inclusion proces…

> That would cause tremendous harm to all the small businesses who operate on subdomains of TLDs like myshopify, and for what?

This was the giveaway that it was an FB person. Parts of that comment is verbatim from FB propaganda ads[0]. Maybe that awkward video from ~last month[1] was targeted more at aligning FB employees internally around the message, not the general public.

[0] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-12-16/facebook-...

[1] Which I can’t find now

Re: iOS 14 and Facebook Pixel causing increase in PSL inclusion requests

#83
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It sounds like there's two cases: 1. Multi-tenant domains that probably should've always been in the PSL (ex. to provide cookie silos) but are only realizing now that they should be in it due to the arrival of PCM. 2. Sites that want to abuse an eTLD to do something like give all users on their social network a custom subdomain so that they're not polluting the same pool. -- I think it was actually reasonable for App…

Nice link to the GitHub issue which explains the problems clearly. Can anyone explain why something like this wasn't implemented in the first place via DNS TXT records or tied to SSL somehow?

> Can anyone explain why something like this wasn't implemented in the first place via DNS TXT records or tied to SSL somehow?

The idea is to be able to use it without a network access, such as looking for unstructured URLs in text (e.g. "get a discount code at example.com/hn-reader"), formatting a URL in a browser bar (e.g. put the non-eDLD+1 in bold, or at least show the site name properly and not abbreviate all UK sites to "co.uk") or managing the cookie name properly (again, so everyone in co.uk doesn't share the same cookie).

Presumption is that the eTLDs are a tiny fraction (by orders of magnitude) from the domains registered under them so this db doesn't have to get too large.

I am not sure how to manage these strings automatically without them being spammed. They aren't all under the control of the TLD administrators (com.au is but cheapo-shop-hosting.com.au is not).

Re: iOS 14 and Facebook Pixel causing increase in PSL inclusion requests

#84
post #23
post #12

Summary: Apple introduced PCM [1], and to keep people from using it for cross-site tracking it limits the bits available to a single site (as defined by the PSL). If shop-a.retail.example and shop-b.retail.example are completely separate, and don't want to compete for bits, Apple will still treat them as a single site unless retail.example is on the PSL. Being on the PSL is a big change (partitioned cookies, etc) but…

It sounds like there's two cases: 1. Multi-tenant domains that probably should've always been in the PSL (ex. to provide cookie silos) but are only realizing now that they should be in it due to the arrival of PCM. 2. Sites that want to abuse an eTLD to do something like give all users on their social network a custom subdomain so that they're not polluting the same pool. -- I think it was actually reasonable for App…

1. Multi-tenant domains that probably should've always been in the PSL (ex. to provide cookie silos) but are only realizing now that they should be in it due to the arrival of PCM.

uff, well I did not know about that list and we have a domain that uses multi-tenacy.

I mean I'm unsure to include it but it probably adds a security benefit, so that it is impossible to add bad cookies from subdomains.

edit: can't add it anyway I'm not sure but our provider only allows to renew for 1 year (I'm not sure if that is a tld limit, since I also do not see other additional domains with de inside the list)

Re: iOS 14 and Facebook Pixel causing increase in PSL inclusion requests

#85

This is a result of Apple limiting the entropy of marketing data that can be received from a domain (defined as an eTLD+1) to 6 bits. This causes problems for platforms like Shopify or marketplaces like Alibaba or eBay that may have multiple sellers trying to run ads on a domain and competing for the same small pool of entropy. This solution? Leverage the "public suffix" list to define your domain as an eTLD and give…

> This causes problems for platforms like Shopify or marketplaces like Alibaba or eBay that may have multiple sellers trying to run ads on a domain and competing for the same small pool of entropy. This is essentially https://github.com/privacycg/private-click-measurement/issue... . Effectively it boils down to, "how can you distinguish the seller from the website owner?", if you want to give both seller and website…

> One thing that will not change is the existence of small businesses; in particular, small merchants who do not have their own eTLD+1 registered. Registering an eTLD+1, and hosting a website specific to a your business is a pretty high bar to demand of all businesses.

Benjamin savage is with FB I assume...? Registering a domain name should be table stakes if you want to run a business and have ad tracking with increased entropy online.

Is it reasonable to deny access to individuals without a phone number but unreasonable to give less ad tracking entropy to businesses without their own domain? Something about mosquitoes and camels there, no?

If a business cares more than 10$/year, registering a domain is a nobrainer. “Small businesses” are just being pawns in the chess game here - I’m yet to see an legit “small business” owner who cares or thinks this is an actual issue

Re: iOS 14 and Facebook Pixel causing increase in PSL inclusion requests

#86
post #54
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretty much all Shopify shops have their own domains, only a minority drive traffic to their .myshopify.com subdomain

I was a bit surprised that a shopify biz that could not be bothered to use its own domain would be very concerned about monitoring ad performance. Seems someone would first effect to have a better branded site. As in, a decent TLD. And that if anything, this is a kick in the pants of an ecommerce site to get its own domain(s) to deal with this. Do I have that right?

Maybe shopify domains have better SEO than randomwebsite.com

Re: iOS 14 and Facebook Pixel causing increase in PSL inclusion requests

#87
post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was a bit surprised that a shopify biz that could not be bothered to use its own domain would be very concerned about monitoring ad performance. Seems someone would first effect to have a better branded site. As in, a decent TLD. And that if anything, this is a kick in the pants of an ecommerce site to get its own domain(s) to deal with this. Do I have that right?

Maybe shopify domains have better SEO than randomwebsite.com

This is a good point. It looks like google treats subdomains as internal links to the main domain. No idea if they treat myshopify.com this way.

FWIW, it looks like a 301 to a new domain should transfer the seo juice. If the site is valuable, a new domain should stand up pretty well. It also decamps from myshopify.

This all seems more valuable to the store owner, but I get why people would want to avoid all those changes and just try to figure out the thing "Apple is making them do."

Re: iOS 14 and Facebook Pixel causing increase in PSL inclusion requests

#88
post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Um, because those engineers don't have commit access to the repository? You can't just hire an engineering team and take over any open source project you want.

Oh, I was assuming the engineering team would lie a pretend like they did not work for Facebook. I assumed they would slowly work to gain the confidence of those in control and little by little they gain the access they required themselves. Maybe they could pretend not to know each other and use that to their advantage. Surely a company with the resources of Facebook could manufacture fake alternate lives for the eng…

Do you mean Apple, whose usage of the PSL caused this?

Re: iOS 14 and Facebook Pixel causing increase in PSL inclusion requests

#89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh, I was assuming the engineering team would lie a pretend like they did not work for Facebook. I assumed they would slowly work to gain the confidence of those in control and little by little they gain the access they required themselves. Maybe they could pretend not to know each other and use that to their advantage. Surely a company with the resources of Facebook could manufacture fake alternate lives for the eng…

Do you mean Apple, whose usage of the PSL caused this?

No, Facebook. Facebook is telling companies to use the PSL. The PSL people are saying, “we give no guarantees about how long it will take us to add a domain to the PSL”. They could drag their feet so long as to make the PSL useless. To make sure it works, I could see Facebook wanting to get some of their people into position so that they can immediately approve PRs on the PSL.

I can’t think of any reason Apple would want to support the PSL.

Re: iOS 14 and Facebook Pixel causing increase in PSL inclusion requests

#90
As an aside, it's insane that decisions of such import are being made by folks working at a couple of large US companies. This is going to impact users and small businesses across the world. Where is the representation from African/Indian/Chinese businesses and technologists? This would require the big tech cos to truly be interested in "diversity" of course, instead of the lip-service they pay to it in practice.
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