Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

iOS 14 and Facebook Pixel causing increase in PSL inclusion requests

github.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 111 posts

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

#91

Post by dwaite »

pornel wrote: post #79

Reminder that the Public Suffix List is a non-scalable hack, and platforms should be reducing their reliance on it, not increase it: https://github.com/sleevi/psl-problems

It doesn't really propose an alternative to the PSL for 'same site' behavior, instead just pushes for 'same origin' (aka exact match) behavior.

I would agree that e.g. Apple would be better to support both same-site and same-origin, and say, clobber PCM if it receives a request for one after it has already received a request for the other.

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

#92

Post by slenk »

dialtone wrote: post #47
kelnos wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FB seems to believe they are entitled to the ability to track people on iOS. Apple is under no obligation to allow that.

Apple literally built a feature that requires addition to PSL to support a usecase that was addressed multiple times in the PrivacyCG meetings. How is this entitlement, they are following the Apple requirements.

Another thing that would follow Apple's requirements is just buying myweirdwebsite.com

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

#93

Post by 3np »

mrweasel wrote: post #45
kogir wrote: post #36

Isn’t the easiest solution here for companies to register their own domain? Why be company.service.tld and not just company.tld? What are these businesses doing for email?

In this case I think the issue is trackers. If you owned a retargeting or tracking service, you might have customer1.retargetting.com and customer2.retargetting.com. Apple will now see these as being the same site, unless individually registered in PSL. This limits the amount of data that can be aggregated by retargetting.com, unless each subdomain is added to PSL.

I think this is it - the only "small businesses" I see being actually hurt (as opposed to slightly inconvenienced) by this would be retargeting and tracking companies.

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

#94

Post by katbyte »

fshbbdssbbgdd wrote: post #72
local_dev wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>these sites won't be able to run ads that track purchases Isn't that part of the purpose of the changes that Apple is making? As a user, this seems like a great change. Less tracking is a positive.

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…

Maybe I’m crazy but I don’t want to be tracked and I don’t want my purchase to be linked to an ad click* - I don’t want to be tracked so stop it?

*I haven’t clicked on an ad in a decade so I’m probably not the target audience

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

#95

Post by 3np »

mangosquash wrote: post #55
donmcronald wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, it is. The main reason I can think of for using subdomains would be for super low value content that isn’t worth $10-30 / year for a real domain. There could also be a setup / maintenance angle I guess. Specifying a big list of custom domains is more work than *.example.com.

I work on digital advertising for a franchise where each individual store manages their own shopify site at location.franchise.com. Soon, these sites won't be able to run ads that track purchases, unless franchise.com is added to this list. I understand the PSL managers' position that this is an unfair burden to place on them though.

I think that's precisely according to intentions. Either they're separate entities with separate domains, or they're run by the same entity and get the same entropy.

> Soon, these sites won't be able to run ads that track purchases, unless franchise.com is added to this list.

They still can, though, right? Just that they don't get more bits than if they had everything on one site. It's just that they can't "eat the cake and have it".

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

#96

Post by fshbbdssbbgdd »

katbyte wrote: post #94
fshbbdssbbgdd wrote: post #72

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…

Maybe I’m crazy but I don’t want to be tracked and I don’t want my purchase to be linked to an ad click* - I don’t want to be tracked so stop it? *I haven’t clicked on an ad in a decade so I’m probably not the target audience

If they know somebody clicked the ad and made a purchase, but they can’t know it was you, why are you bothered? Is it about something other than privacy?

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

#97

Post by ankmathur96 »

3np wrote: post #82
ghughes wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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/articl…

Do you have an actual response to this point or are you just criticizing that multiple people made that same argument?

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

#98

Post by ankmathur96 »

slenk wrote: post #92
dialtone wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple literally built a feature that requires addition to PSL to support a usecase that was addressed multiple times in the PrivacyCG meetings. How is this entitlement, they are following the Apple requirements.

Another thing that would follow Apple's requirements is just buying myweirdwebsite.com

The entire point of these generated subdomains is that you do not have to buy a domain name...

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

#99

Post by ankmathur96 »

irrational wrote: post #89
willxinc wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Apple is literally the one recommending the PSL I have no idea what you're talking about

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

#100

Post by geocar »

3np wrote: post #82
ghughes wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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/articl…

These people believe they’re lucky to work at a place like Facebook, and after reading some of these asinine comments, I'm inclined to agree.

The idea that they shit in the pool and get the swimmers to defend them sounds crazy, but people do defend Facebook’s doo-doo, and it makes sense that if you’re already covered in shit, it’s probably easier to pay people like this to walk around with shit all over themselves and say with a straight face “Apple should pay for our shit” than I ever thought.

Post reply on HN