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Analytics suggest 96% of users leave app tracking disabled in iOS 14.5

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Re: Analytics suggest 96% of users leave app tracking disabled in iOS 14.5

#251

Post by burke »

nemothekid wrote: post #234
hparadiz wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've seen all sorts of solutions put together by municipalities big and small from counties to states to countries and everything in between during this whole Covid thing and the thing that struck me is how easy it was for them to essentially track you with perfect precision and tie it back to a phone number. > Except it wasn’t hastily built They were built very hastily with little oversight with iterative beta cycle…

It isn't fair to claim they were built with (1) no oversight, (2) hastily, and (3) out of plain view when you haven't even looked into how it works. AFAIK none of the implementations use location data.

In fact, Apple and Google won't accept apps that use both exposure notification and location APIs.

Re: Analytics suggest 96% of users leave app tracking disabled in iOS 14.5

#252

Post by tannhauser23 »

woeirua wrote: post #147

I think this speaks to the power of defaults. 96% of users have not turned this on because they didn't even know that its disabled, and when an app asks you if they can track you, the response is going to be a strong no. The reality is that FB's entire business model has been predicated on the default being that tracking is allowed. If this holds, this will be cataclysmic for FB. You can't have a huge portion of your…

How is going to be 'cataclysmic' for FB? They can still serve up ads. The ads won't be as targeted as before, but they still have billions of users. Advertisers will spend money on the platform. Perhaps they'll have to spend more since they can't fine-tune the ads as much.

Re: Analytics suggest 96% of users leave app tracking disabled in iOS 14.5

#254

Post by hollerith »

clircle wrote: post #129
ghostpepper wrote: post #96

The interesting thing to me is that it's only 96% in the US. Worldwide it's closer to 78%, according to the linked article.

Because Apple can't stop tracking in China?

That's a great point: the statistics in the OP might have been calculated by people who did not take into account the possibility that a large fraction of the sample might not be free to choose.

Re: Analytics suggest 96% of users leave app tracking disabled in iOS 14.5

#255

Post by disgruntledphd2 »

mumblemumble wrote: post #250
disgruntledphd2 wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, this is a weird one. I mean, all of this stuff is pretty much automated, there isn't a team of people at adtech companies going hmmm user 621163091 is looking for PC's serve him an ad for Lenovo. Its a series of complicated ML models with large amounts of inputs and outputs that no human understands at a level where they could predict which ad a human gets. In the above scenario, I'm not sure that I see a violati…

Data has a way of being used in ways other than the one for which it was ostensibly originally collected. Especially once you let data scientists get in there and start having fun with it. (Source: I should know, I am one.) Or maybe you've got a unscrupulous employee who uses their access to the data to dox people. (Source: I used to work at a company where that happened.) And since, in a country like the USA, they a…

So, I totally agree with everything you've said, (I am also a data scientist, so appreciate that part especially).

OTOH, ads pay for a lot of stuff, so if you could delete the raw data after some short time, and only retain the model which was used for serving/prediction, then I think a lot of those concerns go away, and the whole infrastructure around data is made an awful lot safer.

Lots of your other points only really apply to the US (the cavalier attitude towards data and privacy, especially), so I wonder if this is something that would work better in the EU, because you do have much stricter laws around the use of personal data.

Re: Analytics suggest 96% of users leave app tracking disabled in iOS 14.5

#256

Post by bun_at_work »

bogwog wrote: post #133

I'm curious about the 4% of users who enabled it. Did they get tricked into doing so? Was it an accident? Or do some people out there really genuinely want to be tracked?

Some folks I've talked to about ad tracking things (unrelated to ATT, specifically) prefer to see targeted ads. Most people (in the US) will knee-jerk refuse, which the data indicates (so far as it's accurate data). However, enough people don't mind.

Re: Analytics suggest 96% of users leave app tracking disabled in iOS 14.5

#257

Post by smhenderson »

minikites wrote: post #11
varispeed wrote: post #6

It's great that Apple does this, but I think this should be mandated by law that tracking should be opt-in and for adult users only. I think people who decide to be tracked should also be compensated for their data.

That sounds like government interfering with the free market, which is completely unacceptable under any circumstance for ~50% of the population.

I'm not sure why you're being down voted. As far as I can see you're not advocating one way or another. And you're not wrong, with apologies for being so US-centric, that about half this country would agree with you that the parent idea is "interfering with the free market". I happen to disagree with those people but that doesn't mean you're incorrect to point them out.

Re: Analytics suggest 96% of users leave app tracking disabled in iOS 14.5

#258

Post by nojito »

rsj_hn wrote: post #190
zffr wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Has apple ever said they were anti ads? I thought their position was that they were anti tracking without consent.

I would even go further and say that Apple doesn't care about anything other than making money by making good products. As more and more people begin to be concerned about privacy, Apple takes steps to try to reassure them that the phone is still a safe platform in which they can store private information such as photos, personal messages, address books, banking information, etc. Neither does Apple want a lot of anno…

Apple has been pro privacy for decades.

They even called out google and Facebook 10 years ago and were vilified for it.

Re: Analytics suggest 96% of users leave app tracking disabled in iOS 14.5

#259

Post by burke »

hparadiz wrote: post #237
azinman2 wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you say Apple or Google installed, I assume you’re talking about exposure notifications that they built. I work at Apple and witnessed it. Nothing about it was slapdash and privacy was #1. In this system, it’s not easy at all for government agencies to track you. That was very explicitly part of the design, as is shown in all the public docs. It’s not like how it works is a secret [1]. Your location isn’t being…

Here's one example: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.alohasafe.... No idea if it's using the official API or what. I honestly just don't believe that it can work well enough in some places. Especially here in Hawaii where gatherings are on a beach and people leave their cellphones in their car or backpacks or whatever. I was even recently at a camp where people were sharing a blunt and there wasn't a…

What are you even trying to draw attention to here? This appears to be using the EN framework, which suggests it wouldn't have been approved for distribution if it collected any personal data or location information.

I get that you have an axe to grind here for some reason but I'm not even sure what point you're trying to make.

Re: Analytics suggest 96% of users leave app tracking disabled in iOS 14.5

#260

Post by dillondoyle »

nothis wrote: post #175
woeirua wrote: post #147

I think this speaks to the power of defaults. 96% of users have not turned this on because they didn't even know that its disabled, and when an app asks you if they can track you, the response is going to be a strong no. The reality is that FB's entire business model has been predicated on the default being that tracking is allowed. If this holds, this will be cataclysmic for FB. You can't have a huge portion of your…

I don't really get how trends like this one (and IMO that's just the tip of the ice berg – this is companies preparing for the inevitable legislation that will make most forms of tracking illegal within the next 10 years) don't affect facebook or google stock. This IMO makes two scenarios likely: 1) The market is currently just dragging along, hoping this will all go away and we're really in a major ad-bubble that's…

'users who clicked on also clicked on' is at the core of a lot of the tracking Apple is banning in many cases. This is why Google is pushing FLOC and 'anonymous' cohorts in Chrome.

This happens on every single HN thread on this topic. I'm not a total expert but there is a lot of arm chairing that's wrong.

Tracking is profitable and more so than contextual for a lot of direct response in a lot of industries.

Not in all cases, e.g. usually not for brand advertising. But it works.

For my clients is the direct data I have - and we have extensively tried every single other option. FB is the only platform that delivers strong ROI and we use the targeting iOS blocks. And yes - it's always retorted - I know 100% the donations come from the ads, it's incredibly simple to track even as simple as making a new page or individual product only linked from that ad.

So far this change is definitely effecting our ads and FB seems pretty buggy with the new ads manager changes. But they 'always find a way.' But so far it's not as bad as I originally thought it would be.

Plus you can still upload offline conversion data. most purchases have full contact info. We'll see if Apple comes after that, but they would then have to go after the entire ecosystem including Visa.

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