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Google Joins Apple to Opt-out of Mobile Advertising IDs

thebigtech.substack.com

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Re: Google Joins Apple to Opt-out of Mobile Advertising IDs

#141

Post by danaris »

nottorp wrote: post #40
dougmwne wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Zuck is personally all in on capturing the VR and AR market and making it the next ubiquitous computing platform. They already have their own OS. One fifth of the company is working on VR and AR, 10,000 employees. They are pouring billions into it. Zuck likely understands that he missed the platform boat last time around and doesn't intend to miss the next one. https://www.theverge.com/2021/3/12/22326875/facebook-rea…

I don't think VR will ever take over the world. Too many people get motion sickness from it and I don't think it's only a matter of more pixels/fps. AR... maybe. My personal opinion is the needed electronics (and especially the battery tech) aren't small enough yet, if we're talking AR glasses. If we're talking AR on phones, where's the killer app? Pokemon go?

The killer app for AR isn't going to be on phones. It's going to come when (and, I suppose, if) the hardware gets small enough that it can be integrated into glasses that are comparable in weight and bulk to current prescription eyeglasses (and, ideally, can actually incorporate prescription lenses, for those of us who need those to see every day).

At that point, the "killer app" becomes the ability to augment your own senses and memory with, for instance, facial recognition that reminds you of who this person is, useful facts you know about them, etc. Or walking or driving directions that are overlaid directly on your view of the actual paths/streets/etc. Or even virtual tours of places—either places you're physically in, or places you're nowhere near, but have a space of comparable size you can walk around in!

The danger, as we saw with Google Glass, is twofold: on the one hand, allowing an unregulated tech titan like Google or Facebook to have access to cameras attached to people's faces; and on the other hand, the fear of allowing anyone to walk around with an always-on (or potentially always-on) camera, whether its recordings ever left the device or not.

Re: Google Joins Apple to Opt-out of Mobile Advertising IDs

#142

Post by Jaepa »

choppaface wrote: post #125
manigandham wrote: post #64

10+ year adtech veteran here. This article is nonsense, written by someone without any industry experience. Facebook has billions of users on several different apps. And people log into these apps to use them. FB, Instagram, Whatsapp. Cross-app tracking is not a big deal, they already know who you are. The big hits are going to be a reduction in data collected by other apps fed to Facebook, and in measurement and att…

Isn't Google's position here, combined with their push for FLoC, just to create their own cookie and push out competition? It's them saying they have enough data about (profitable!) users now that they can join any future data against past data using not cookies nor app data but just Google property usage... ? And if they don't have enough data about you to do that joining today, then either you won't be profitable t…

FLoC as I understand it can be used by anyone who has a large enough user surface area. Facebook can and probably will to some extent capitalize on FLoC.

Re: Google Joins Apple to Opt-out of Mobile Advertising IDs

#143

Post by pavlov »

ABCLAW wrote: post #111
pavlov wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "Some random guy posting thoughts on Substack has remarkably turned into anti-"MSM" advocacy. Amazing." I wonder if there's a snappy name for this fallacy that professionals are somehow responsible for the failings of amateurs. It's pretty common. - Blogger writes poorly researched post -> "mainstream journalists are much worse" - Crypto project is fraud -> "banks are the real scams" Applying this logic to the tech…

>this fallacy It's a garden variety false equivalence.

A bit more specific than that, it has elements of both conspiratorial thinking and “look what you made me do” gaslighting.

Re: Google Joins Apple to Opt-out of Mobile Advertising IDs

#144

Post by spideymans »

bredren wrote: post #39
insert_coin wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it that crazy? It's the reason Google not only developed Android, but Chrome, ChromeOS, Fuchsia, the Google speaker thing and all that, and Samsung has Tizen, which is sort of their plan B, of plan F or whatever, and Amazon developed the Fire line, Alexa, AWS, the speaker thing, etc. They know they can't trust each other. Even Apple had to develop their own maps! It's really a surprise Facebook was so blindsided b…

When the initial FB OS attempt failed, I think Zuck realized the investment to make something work was beyond the capital he was willing to invest. When FB released its first “phone” it was still unwilling to take mobile seriously. They left the head of mobile position open for a very long time. Zuck himself has said he missed mobile. With the IPO around that time, making some major strategic investment in tech was n…

>You give Apple Maps as an example, but that product was a major fumble at release. To the point Apple fired the exec in charge over it.

They fumbled, but that really didn't matter in the long run. Apple now has a perfectly competent mapping application. They've siphoned data away from Google and redirected it to themselves. Maps is now a key component to Apple's products and service, and has clearly become a cornerstone of Apple's AR roadmap. Apple Maps is now part of Apple's moat, and nobody can take that away from them. There is no situation in which Apple would go back to Google Maps. Sounds like a strategic win to me.

Re: Google Joins Apple to Opt-out of Mobile Advertising IDs

#145

Post by nottorp »

nr2x wrote: post #84
nottorp wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think VR will ever take over the world. Too many people get motion sickness from it and I don't think it's only a matter of more pixels/fps. AR... maybe. My personal opinion is the needed electronics (and especially the battery tech) aren't small enough yet, if we're talking AR glasses. If we're talking AR on phones, where's the killer app? Pokemon go?

The book rainbows end by Vernon vinge had some really intriguing ideas about AR. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rainbows_End

Gibson's Virtual Light is about a stolen pair of AR glasses.

Charlie Stross's Accelerando has a chapter where the main character is basically crippled because ... he lost his AR glasses and can't function without the info in them.

Last one is available online:

http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/fiction/accelera...

Re: Google Joins Apple to Opt-out of Mobile Advertising IDs

#146

Post by hedora »

manigandham wrote: post #64

10+ year adtech veteran here. This article is nonsense, written by someone without any industry experience. Facebook has billions of users on several different apps. And people log into these apps to use them. FB, Instagram, Whatsapp. Cross-app tracking is not a big deal, they already know who you are. The big hits are going to be a reduction in data collected by other apps fed to Facebook, and in measurement and att…

I only log into Facebook to tighten the privacy settings (I probably should just delete it, but they obviously had already built a large shadow profile for me before I created my account; presumably they’d keep doing that after I deleted it.)

They gather tons of my information from third parties, often through data sharing deals.

For instance, when I bought a car, the manufacturer somehow linked it to my Facebook account (without my knowledge or consent, and I don’t have a car app installed on my phone).

However, the vast majority of their profile on me is from cross-app sharing.

Re: Google Joins Apple to Opt-out of Mobile Advertising IDs

#147

Post by kevin_thibedeau »

swiley wrote: post #122
xanaxagoras wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait, what?

Sorry, I'm not sure what part of that wasn't clear. Facebook ships useful libraries to app developers as binaries and they use that to get code on everyone's phone in order to add to their data collection apparatus. I'm pretty sure they're not the only ones who do that either. It's a pretty effective method to get around app sandboxes.

My stock camera app pings FB on startup because of this. Fortunately it can be blocked on Android.

Re: Google Joins Apple to Opt-out of Mobile Advertising IDs

#148

Post by manigandham »

choppaface wrote: post #125
manigandham wrote: post #64

10+ year adtech veteran here. This article is nonsense, written by someone without any industry experience. Facebook has billions of users on several different apps. And people log into these apps to use them. FB, Instagram, Whatsapp. Cross-app tracking is not a big deal, they already know who you are. The big hits are going to be a reduction in data collected by other apps fed to Facebook, and in measurement and att…

Isn't Google's position here, combined with their push for FLoC, just to create their own cookie and push out competition? It's them saying they have enough data about (profitable!) users now that they can join any future data against past data using not cookies nor app data but just Google property usage... ? And if they don't have enough data about you to do that joining today, then either you won't be profitable t…

No, web and apps are very different environments. Websites used cookies to track users across sites from a 3rd-party company/domain. But cookies were constantly deleted and each domain had its own cookies so matching profiles was always rough. Apps all used the same long-lived device-level ID, allowing them to share data about the same profile much easier while having access to more details from APIs (like GPS and bluetooth).

The web saw ad blocking, tracking protection, and privacy regulation which eliminated 3rd-party cookies - but apps were overlooked for a long time. Apple and Google finally added more API permissions and removed this device ID meaning that apps are now in the same place as websites. FLoC is just a way to solve for targeting by creating interest-based cohorts within your browser that don't reveal personal details.

However none of this affects 1st-party tracking. The more you share with an app or site, the more they know, and if you login then they obviously know who you are. They can also still share that data with Facebook (subject to regulations). The major change here is to stop tracking in anonymous situations (like app installs that won't know which device clicked on an ad and then installed on app), not to stop all data collection.

Re: Google Joins Apple to Opt-out of Mobile Advertising IDs

#149

Post by JW_00000 »

clairity wrote: post #83
oefrha wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> they're just more cunning in disguising it. Are they? For instance, Ars Technica used to be a source of high quality tech journalism for nerds, where the journalists seemed to really “get it”. There’s still some of that left, but in the recent years, I observed more and more bland nothingburger articles coated in clickbait titles popping up in my feed; to add insult to injury, the comment section was sinking deeper…

hopefully covid sensationalism will open the eyes of more folks to this kind of emotionally-wearing manipulation. simple phrases like "could have" and "may" are simultaneously designed to be outwardly innocuous, seemingly informative, and highly effective in leading people to jump to overblown conclusions that keep readers heightened (i.e., stressed) so that they desire more information. it's the same primal anxiety…

Hasn't this been going on for a very long time (possibly forever)? I'm thinking of the stress about North Korea launching nukes that would end the world, the stories about the EU banning curved bananas and thereby introducing totalitarianism, the idea that Brexit would eventually lead to WW3, the fear by some that Trump would cause the collapse of the US, the fear by others that Obama was a Muslim who would dismantle the US from the inside, the idea that George W. Bush would cause the collapse of the American democracy, the idea that 9/11 was an inside job, the idea that the Patriot Act was the end of freedom, etc. (I choose extremes from both sides on purpose.)

Re: Google Joins Apple to Opt-out of Mobile Advertising IDs

#150

Post by manmal »

disgruntledphd2 wrote: post #59
poidos wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's really hard to trust google... I feel the same way; very little chance Google stops this unless it doesn't affect them at all (either by having determined these identifiers aren't particularly effective, or by having cooked up some new scheme.)

But of course it won't, this is a (similar to Apple's) play to reduce the amount of data other ad platforms get.

Apple’s tracking rules also apply to their own apps.
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