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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

#361

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…

In the old Internet Explorer monopoly situation, Microsoft was forced to prompt the user which browser to use on first startup.

It was not an option of choosing an alternative from the default, the order was random. Same for the default search engine.

If this was setup in the same way i wonder what the ratio would be. With that i mean a fair yes/no choice, not the GDPR-joke where accept is a big green button and reject is hidden in confusing fine print 3 sub-pages deep.

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

#362
post #357
post #355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is literally an open specification. There is no geolocation involved here. You're talking out of your ass. Don't you think if geolocation was tracked people would have kicked up about this? It collects randomised Bluetooth IDs, that is it.

It’s impossible to know what metadata is stored, so I have to assume all of it is. Really weird how many people in this community are willing to defend surveillance now. As a former NSA director said, they want to “collect it all”. Why would this be any different? The crux of the NSA story in one phrase: 'collect it all' | Glenn Greenwald | The Guardian https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/jul/15/crux-n...

Posting bullshit from 2013 is not going to help you here.

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

#363
post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For years I had a professional email and a non-pro email address that I kept separated. Personal email for job applications/linkedin/bills etc, non-pro for regular surfing. It's worked great until last year. I think it's Google cuz I login from the same browser/device, but they eventually linked it and I'm now being contacted by recruiters via my non-pro email which pretty much unmasks me and my social media accounts…

I doubt it was Google itself – Google is a one-way sieve when it comes to data. Google allows advertisers to tap into their user graph for targeting and attribution, but they don't actually give access to user-level info in any meaningful form, let alone in a form that would allow you to get your hands on user emails. The closest you can get is Ads Data Hub[1], which requires advertisers to import their first party d…

I agree: it won’t have been Google (and the email came to a non-Google email address), but some data aggregator somewhere who is cross referencing login emails with stored cookies.

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

#364
post #359

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They aren't exactly using ML or AI to help you get better ads. They most certainly are, and this is not a secret.

To what end? While there is complexity, diversity, and numbers on the end-user side, there aren’t enough advertisers to warrant such hair splitting data crunching. There are only so many jogging pant brands out there.

A billion users, a million advertisers? Nah, we can do it with a key-value lookup table.

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

#366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t see why the TSA having awful reasons they can get away with is any better or any better hedge than any other player invading privacy unnecessarily.

Even if it may be awful on an absolute scale, on a relative scale, I find egregious privacy violations more justifiable if the claimed intention is mitigating supposed risk of bodily harm or death rather than showing me advertisements. I have the right to simultaneously hate and be disgusted by the TSA yet hate and be disgusted by advertisers and ad tech even more.

Interesting. I feel the opposite. Theater and bad faith lying or trickery are far worse to me. The intent from the get go isn’t even trying to do the right thing while also trying to show themselves as the “good”.

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

#367

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are not wrong. But not right either. All those nice settings (for google and everyone else) are only for the minimum they are required by law. That means anything that they can claim to be "anonymized" is fair game and not visible to you in any way.

...are they? In the US? One thing I really do appreciate about Google products is that I'm able to fully disable personalization. My Youtube homepage is completely depersonalized, because I went through their privacy settings and switched off everything . I can't say whether or not Google is still secretly tracking me, but my biggest concern is actually that algorithmic recommendations put me in a filter bubble. Goog…

Google gives you the illusion. Ads are still targeted just fine.

Did you receive any ads in spanish or chinese recently? did you see any political ad to a party you vehemently oppose? All that is still decided by your profile and history. Just with hocus pocus anonymization on the front end.

So google is not that different from netflix and amazon. they just give you a blanket.

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

#368

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 think this speaks to the power of defaults." Even more, it speaks to the power of removing choice. When app tracking is enabled by default it effectively removes choice because most users never touch settings (and may not even know they exist). Therefore users are not choosing anything. Someone else is choosing for them. "Tech" company employees will respond to criticism of their employer's behaviour with somethin…

If users don’t care enough to see the options available to them, it’s on them.

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

#369
post #359

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They aren't exactly using ML or AI to help you get better ads. They most certainly are, and this is not a secret.

To what end? While there is complexity, diversity, and numbers on the end-user side, there aren’t enough advertisers to warrant such hair splitting data crunching. There are only so many jogging pant brands out there.

I used to write ad targeting algorithms. There are tons of adtech companies that claim to use AI to "find the right audience" for a given client's ads. Some of them actually do it. I only had one project at that job that was complicated enough to justify using a neural network. The VAST majority of targeting really is just a SQL lookup.

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

#370
post #368

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I think this speaks to the power of defaults." Even more, it speaks to the power of removing choice. When app tracking is enabled by default it effectively removes choice because most users never touch settings (and may not even know they exist). Therefore users are not choosing anything. Someone else is choosing for them. "Tech" company employees will respond to criticism of their employer's behaviour with somethin…

If users don’t care enough to see the options available to them, it’s on them.

I feel like this isn’t respecting your user’s time. I’ve converted to opting out of relationships like this where possible; it’s not healthy. I wouldn’t enter a personal relationship on these grounds, I don’t know why I’d do it for some company.

A service provider makes one decision and it impacts N users. A user consumes from M service providers. A user evaluating whether a service provider is trying to “pull one over” on them in the TOS costs M units of time, 1 unit per service provider. A service provider deciding to choose the cow path as the default saves N units of time and costs the service provider 1 unit.

I engage with service providers that respect my time. If I suspect your default is user hostile, and provide a “we won’t exploit you in this relationship” as an option, I look elsewhere.

This breaks down in places though. Example: I haven’t found a communication provider that doesn’t default to building a profile on me and selling it to anyone willing to pay.

The lack of choice for me makes me wish a governing body would intervene and give me a marketplace where I didn’t have to waste my valuable time making sure the person I was engaging with wasn’t going to pull one over on me.

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