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Google’s new popup will further weaken Facebook’s advertisement business

thebigtech.substack.com

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Re: Google’s new popup will further weaken Facebook’s advertisement business

#171

Post by toast0 »

ThrowawayB7 wrote: post #133
toast0 wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Microsoft actually had a winning formula. Make cheap phones that work alright. And they were getting market share with later wp7 and throughout wp8. Between wp8 and WM10, they merged the phone team with the regular OS team, and eliminated (or at least gutted) their QA teams, and they decided to target the high end market only . There were no low spec WM10 phones, and there hadn't been many high end buyers anyway, so…

IIRC Microsoft didn't eliminate their QA teams until after Windows Phone 10 was mostly dead. Regarding apps, bear in mind that Google went out of their way to prevent Youtube and their other services from working on Windows Phone, e.g. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/appsblog/2013/aug/15/... . There's nothing that Microsoft could've done to overcome that much of a disadvantage and anti-competitive scrutiny of…

Google had apps for Windows Mobile 6, and Microsoft chose to throw that app ecosystem away for Windows Phone 7. WP8 could run WP7 apps, but for the best experience, you needed to redo a bunch of stuff in a way that only worked for WP8. Same thing for WM10, except that this time, Microsoft called it Universal, although a Universal app didn't work on the WP8 and WP7 devices; and AFAIK, WM10 never surpassed 7 or 8 in active devices; whoops.

Also, I had heard Microsoft blocked 3rd party browsers early on, when Mozilla wanted to develop Firefox for WP, that would have been a lot nicer than mobile IE and later Edge, and probably would have run YouTube just fine.

On the dates, I see a RTM date of Nov 2015, and GA of Mar 2016 for WM10; I think the end of QA and the merger of Windows Phone with Windows was actually at the same time, Nov 2014, AFAIK. It's a bit tricky to nail it down, but I think this article, read with hindsight speaks to those changes. https://www.zdnet.com/article/microsoft-layoffs-operating-sy...

Re: Google’s new popup will further weaken Facebook’s advertisement business

#172

Post by judge2020 »

sebastien_b wrote: post #161
alsetmusic wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Are there apps that give superior experience than web sites nowadays? The IMDB app is far better (to me) than the dumpster-fire that has become their website. Other than that, I agree with the sentiment that most apps for websites are not worthwhile to install.

> The IMDB app is far better (to me) than the dumpster-fire that has become their website Funny, to me the IMDB app is the perfect example of a dumpster-fire app, with every 3rd tap/action resulting in an “invitation” to sign up for an account.

Works for my use case, which is being signed-in and managing my reviews/watchlist.

Re: Google’s new popup will further weaken Facebook’s advertisement business

#173

Post by polyomino »

motoboi wrote: post #156
rmsaksida wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Problem is that VR took too long to arrive and death on mobile can kill Facebook? Facebook owns the most popular messaging app in the world (WhatsApp) and two of the most popular social networks in the world (Facebook, Instagram). Are they really in trouble because of the Android/iOS changes?

People need a phone to use Instagram. Instagram makes money out of ads, not out of its users. So anything that threatens this revenue source can kill Facebook. They can still do ads without tracking, but would that still be a trillion dollar business?

Yes, but it would be worse for everyone involved

Re: Google’s new popup will further weaken Facebook’s advertisement business

#174

Post by ggggtez »

Supermancho wrote: post #169
QuadmasterXLII wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To hurt you. The reason is to hurt you and it's unfortunate that we're in denial about it.

> The reason is to hurt you I'm not sure how this reasoning works. Some company making money using your information isn't with intent to hurt an individual, generally speaking. It's rare that such an opportunity even exists.

My data is worth money, that's why they want it. If they take it from me without permission, how is that not stealing? And then isn't stealing obviously hurting me?

Just because you don't know how much your data is worth, and may not even know the crime happened, doesn't make it not a crime or not harmful.

Consider voyeurs who take upskirt photos. Even though the victim may never know that data was stolen, it's undeniable that it's an invasion of privacy and often a criminal offence.

Re: Google’s new popup will further weaken Facebook’s advertisement business

#175

Post by ggggtez »

koalaman wrote: post #130

"Facebook _could_ still fingerprint users using BlueTooth" This article's title and narrative makes it sound like Facebook is using bluetooth fingerprinting to geolocate users against their wishes, and that Android's new permission will end that. However reading the text carefully it never actually claims Facebook is currently doing that. Are they or not? Is this article a hypothetical? That seems very disingenuous b…

My hunch is that the could language is couching since it can be hard to know for certain of Facebook is storing the data or just doing something else. But I think the implication is that they at least were looking at it when they weren't supposed to be

Re: Google’s new popup will further weaken Facebook’s advertisement business

#176

Post by ABCLAW »

Supermancho wrote: post #169
QuadmasterXLII wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To hurt you. The reason is to hurt you and it's unfortunate that we're in denial about it.

> The reason is to hurt you I'm not sure how this reasoning works. Some company making money using your information isn't with intent to hurt an individual, generally speaking. It's rare that such an opportunity even exists.

To the extent that the individual and the marketer's interests are not aligned, the harm is borne entirely by the individual. It doesn't matter if the intention is to harm the individual; a blatant disregard for their interests accomplishes the same thing at scale. Not caring about what occurs to the individual means that systemically decisions will be made at their detriment.

Get put in a filter bubble? Have your government track you for protesting? Get on the wrong side of grey market price discrimination? Have your access to data and websites revoked?

Parties to a transaction that have no power don't come out ahead.

Re: Google’s new popup will further weaken Facebook’s advertisement business

#177

Post by jbaber »

fsflover wrote: post #148
speeder wrote: post #5

Whenever I read articles like this, I get more and more horrified. I mean, I know that adtech spy on us a lot, but I didn't knew for example that using Bluetooth while the app is shut down was possible. Makes me very wary even of dumbphones, for example I bought a dumbphone recently, and yet it came with Facebook and Google Assistant both pre-installed.

> Whenever I read articles like this, I get more and more horrified. > Makes me very wary even of dumbphones If you care about it, consider GNU/Linux phones, Librem 5 and Pinephone, which run FLOSS and have hardware kill switches for microphone and other things.

Waiting for MMS support, my friend.

Re: Google’s new popup will further weaken Facebook’s advertisement business

#178

Post by Supermancho »

ABCLAW wrote: post #176
Supermancho wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The reason is to hurt you I'm not sure how this reasoning works. Some company making money using your information isn't with intent to hurt an individual, generally speaking. It's rare that such an opportunity even exists.

To the extent that the individual and the marketer's interests are not aligned, the harm is borne entirely by the individual. It doesn't matter if the intention is to harm the individual; a blatant disregard for their interests accomplishes the same thing at scale. Not caring about what occurs to the individual means that systemically decisions will be made at their detriment. Get put in a filter bubble? Have your go…

>> The reason is to hurt you and it's unfortunate that we're in denial about it.

> To the extent that the individual and the marketer's interests are not aligned, the harm is borne entirely by the individual. It doesn't matter if the intention is to harm the individual

Of course it does. That's the claim. Don't bring up tangential subjects and then try to associate them as if it's a rephrasing.

Re: Google’s new popup will further weaken Facebook’s advertisement business

#179

Post by saurik »

ecshafer wrote: post #132
oauea wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Easy access to push notifications (which can be sketchy, but doesn't have to be) and believe it or not: Letting users put a shortcut on their homescreen. Sure, you can place a shortcut to a PWA in the Chrome browser but most users won't be configuring that, even if you guide them through it.

These seem like reason that help the business, not the user. Are there any legitimate reason that help improve the user's experience for having an app? I can see this for some games and things that native access is usable. but a shortcut to the homescreen and push notifications are mostly an annoyance for users.

What? Those are pieces of functionality that some users actively want. The experience of having to hunt for Yelp in Safari sucks vs. having it as an icon. Being able to get push notifications is effectively the only thing messaging apps even do! If these features weren't important then why do they even exist?! The irony is that Apple knows if they provided push notifications to mobile websites then suddenly their catalog of apps would have a lot less value as people would be much more willing to just make websites.

Like seriously; compare your comment to this person: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27348626 . You just so happen to be weird: that's all.

Re: Google’s new popup will further weaken Facebook’s advertisement business

#180

Post by Supermancho »

ggggtez wrote: post #174
Supermancho wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The reason is to hurt you I'm not sure how this reasoning works. Some company making money using your information isn't with intent to hurt an individual, generally speaking. It's rare that such an opportunity even exists.

My data is worth money, that's why they want it. If they take it from me without permission, how is that not stealing? And then isn't stealing obviously hurting me? Just because you don't know how much your data is worth, and may not even know the crime happened, doesn't make it not a crime or not harmful. Consider voyeurs who take upskirt photos. Even though the victim may never know that data was stolen, it's unden…

> If they take it from me without permission, how is that not stealing?

They don't take it. The value of your information is either inherent (is all information inherently valuable somehow?) or in how it can be used. There is no information "staked claim" as with a natural resource. If you don't have the infrastructure and relationships, you can't monetize it... similar to natural resources. Maybe there should be an individual "staked claim" (which is what the GDPR mostly does), but arguing as if it's a given because "I should be able to make money and nobody else should" is not compelling. This is why there are so few laws regarding it and there's the inherent quasi-legal issue of tracking someone's "staked claim" without tracking them.

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