Apple's privacy push cost Meta $10B • Hacker News Board

Re: Apple's privacy push cost Meta $10B

#191

Post by AlexandrB » Fri, Feb 04, 2022, 2:50 PM UTC

chillage wrote: post #175

Nextgrid wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good riddance? People will keep finding & buying things they need. If nobody’s buying anything from these businesses without invasive advertising & tracking then maybe whatever goods they were selling aren’t actually necessary? Of course there is nuance and edge cases to this, but in general I wouldn’t be surprised if society and the planet was better off once we stop producing useless garbage.

I don't think you've ever started a company with a new product. What if you make the world's best cheese grater. Nobody knows about it. You don't have connections to supermarkets. Smaller stores don't want to carry your niche item. You have $5000 budget to get your cheese grater out. How do you let people know about it? Online targetted advertising is basically the current established way to find those people who act…

I think this covers how it's supposed to work, but the reality is far messier and worse. In particular, the hypothetical cheese grater manufacturer would probably be have to pay Google to advertise on their own brand name adword so a generic competitor doesn't steal customers that already know about their great cheese graters. Oh, and about 90% of the people who see your cheese grater ads would be people who just bought one of your cheese graters. Even worse, cheesegraterreviews.com would be paid off by your (larger) competitors to review their cheese graters better and this site has much better SEO than forums.graterenthusiasts.com so they would list higher in organic cheese grater search.

All of this is to say that targeted advertising for niche, high-quality brands is only viable (at least if you're targeting someone like me) in an environment where search isn't beshitted by SEO, Google doesn't run a trademark protection racket, and reviews aren't 90% noise. Unfortunately, that's not the world we find ourselves in. At this point I'm more likely to just go to the kitchen store and physically examine cheese graters to find one I like than relying on the internet.

Re: Apple's privacy push cost Meta $10B

#192

Post by ShamelessC » Fri, Feb 04, 2022, 2:50 PM UTC

hotpotamus wrote: post #154

isodev wrote: post #32

All Apple did was give users the choice. Users choosing to deny Facebook the permission to share their data? That's entirely on Facebook.

I see this in the thread but I have to say that I disagree a bit. I'm certainly glad Apple gave users a choice, but you have to consider "the tyranny of the default" which is a great phrase I think. Most people will simply use the default option, so Apple's choice of default says something.

Right and the previous default was to allow all tracking.

Re: Apple's privacy push cost Meta $10B

#193

Post by codechad » Fri, Feb 04, 2022, 2:51 PM UTC

sfe22 wrote: post #153

sfe22 wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

There is no democracy other than direct democracy. If you cant fire your government this afternoon, they own you, not the other way around.

No post body was provided.

Re: Apple's privacy push cost Meta $10B

#194

Post by patrec » Fri, Feb 04, 2022, 2:53 PM UTC

YXNjaGVyZWdlbgo wrote: post #78

trollied wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Something isn't a conspiracy theory just because it's an opinion that you do not like. I personally found the OPs take interesting, though obviously written a little tongue-in-cheek.

it's a conspiracy theory because he presents it as facts without providing sources for his statements. it's about how not what. yikes.

How about a bit of critical thinking before yelling "Conspiracy!"? Concerning "sources", if Apple and Google are engaged in joint anti-competitive behavior, they'd probably not write press releases about it. But of course there is well-documented precedence of them doing exactly that, being caught and getting a mild slap on the wrist, so it's not a completely outlandish notion to entertain.

As for the officially stated reason: do you really think that there is an alternative search engine provider that Apple would switch to if Google didn't pay them 10 figures a year? If so, which one(s)? If not, what are they actually paying for? To mitigate the risk of a second Apple Maps? But is the case for entering the search engine market really remotely as compelling as entering the mapping space?

I'm not saying it's an open and shut case, but the idea that Google essentially pays Apple money a) as a "good-will gesture" b) to give regulators the impression that the search engine market is more competitive than it is seems possible to me. Whereas one of the alternative scenarios proposed here, that Apple would pick duckduckgo otherwise, really does not.

Personally, if I were Sundar, I'd be way more worried about anti-trust or Apple siding too much with the privacy of their users or stepping otherwise on my toes than say duckduckduckgo becoming a serious competitor because Apple anointed them default search provider after I failed to fork over enough money. I'd probably even do my best to keep a bunch of minimally viable competitors around -- not viable enough to ever pose a threat, but viable enough to keep anti-trust at bay for a bit longer. And both duckduckgo and firefox seem to fit that bill perfectly.

Re: Apple's privacy push cost Meta $10B

#195

Post by mojuba » Fri, Feb 04, 2022, 2:55 PM UTC

disgruntledphd2 wrote: post #181

mojuba wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So if there's SKAdNetwork attribution, why do I need to give the unique device ID to FB or Google in addition to that? They will know which ad led to the install via SKAdNetwork calls anyway, right? I know IDFA benefits them because they can connect the dots and know which apps are installed on a given device. But does my app's campaign benefit from that so much that I should go for the ATT popup?

> So if there's SKAdNetwork attribution, why do I need to give the unique device ID to FB or Google in addition to that? They will know which ad led to the install via SKAdNetwork calls anyway, right? Nope, they'll only know that some percentage of impressions of an ad lead to installs. With their SDK, they'll know who installed, and they can then feed this back into their ML models to find more similar people for yo…

Thanks. I still doubt it though. Firstly even without the IDFA they can heuristically identify devices in vast majority of cases, in fact even more accurately compared to the IDFA method given the current opt-in rates of 30-50%. Branch does this with deep linking and it's pretty successful despite the tightened privacy on the iOS side (I can imagine how Branch and similar services irritate Apple).

My hypothesis is that Facebook pushes developers to enable IDFA because it saves them some effort: of course it's faster and easier than heuristics. Therefore, apps don't benefit from enabling the IDFA. But I might be terribly wrong and am open to counter-arguments.

Re: Apple's privacy push cost Meta $10B

#196

Post by aerosmile » Fri, Feb 04, 2022, 2:55 PM UTC

criddell wrote: post #101

eric4smith wrote: post #91

Lies. Don’t you all see it? Facebook has been declining over the past year and this is a convenient way to blame someone - anyone. Let’s face it, what are your friends all using now? That’s right - video - YouTube and TikTok. Facebook had no answer for video and thus lost a lot of eyeballs. Instagram is a poor clone of TikTok and most people just repost their popular TikTok videos on Instagram reels anyway - hardly a…

If this isn't a lie and Apple flipping that switch cost Facebook $10bn, then that tells me my personal information is worth a lot. What I was getting from Facebook in exchange for my data was too little. I use Google a lot more than Facebook and frankly what I get from them in exchange for my data is probably also way too little. I wish there was some type of consumer union where we could negotiate with these compani…

Your data are only as valuable to Facebook as your buying power. Obviously that's not the same across all people, and while the average revenue per US user might be in the teens per month, many US consumer are in the single digits. So presumably a consumer union might get you a fraction of that value back - a few bucks per month. Why not - who wouldn't want a free monthly cup of coffee? I suppose the only catch here is the more excited you get about this concept, the less money your union could negotiate on your behalf.

Re: Apple's privacy push cost Meta $10B

#197

Post by jjulius » Fri, Feb 04, 2022, 2:56 PM UTC

chillage wrote: post #175

Nextgrid wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good riddance? People will keep finding & buying things they need. If nobody’s buying anything from these businesses without invasive advertising & tracking then maybe whatever goods they were selling aren’t actually necessary? Of course there is nuance and edge cases to this, but in general I wouldn’t be surprised if society and the planet was better off once we stop producing useless garbage.

I don't think you've ever started a company with a new product. What if you make the world's best cheese grater. Nobody knows about it. You don't have connections to supermarkets. Smaller stores don't want to carry your niche item. You have $5000 budget to get your cheese grater out. How do you let people know about it? Online targetted advertising is basically the current established way to find those people who act…

I still don't care. My privacy shouldn't be forced to be sacrificed just because you decided to make a cheese grater that's better than every other cheese grater in existence.

>If you feel cheese graters are useless and somehow deserve to remain unbought, then replace it with any other item which does match your bar for utility value.

I am doing this for nearly everything I can think of, and my privacy wins every single time.

Re: Apple's privacy push cost Meta $10B

#198

Post by alexashka » Fri, Feb 04, 2022, 2:56 PM UTC

sfe22 wrote: post #173

alexashka wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. You can't have a democracy with 100 IQ idiot majority, because their decisions are governed by whatever gets poured into their poorly working brains that week, so you end up with corporatocracy or fascism, pretending to be a democracy.

Then we need to fix the apparent problem of idiot majority. If you say most people are stupid why would you want them to vote every 4 years. Can you trust their vote? Do you still advocate for the current form of “democracy”? Maybe we should go back to monarchy and have only one glorious ruler rather than one glorious government.

You can fix most people, or you can just abandon one idea because it's incompatible with how most people are.

Tough choice, but I think I'll opt in for the latter.

Uh! Oh! But if not democracy, then what? Then fascism and corporatocracy - what we have had for as long as you've been alive. You just don't know it :)

Re: Apple's privacy push cost Meta $10B

#199

Post by r0m4n0 » Fri, Feb 04, 2022, 2:58 PM UTC

visarga wrote: post #155

r0m4n0 wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you know what you are getting from them is too little until the service itself is gone? I suppose you can estimate but I feel like without targeted advertising the web would be a dark place. Personally I don’t pay for much (prime, Netflix, NY Times) and expect a lot. The people I know are the same

This comes up again and again. People will continue creating and posting even without ad money. They will post for art, for study, hobbies, social issues or just to organize events. There are also those who publish free content and make a profit on something related. That's how the good old internet was working back in the day. The problem with current internet is that everyone is trying to get the ad money so they d…

The problem is the freeloaders of the internet far outweigh the people that want to pay for services. Until that changes, we will continue to see the internet dominated by targeted advertising. Honestly, it will be interesting to see what happens to services like DDG. I think it will be a true test of what the world wants, an extremely well funded machine like Google or a more lean privacy centric tool. Capitalism is an interesting thing though. Targeted advertising naturally brings in more money (back to the freeloaders point)

Re: Apple's privacy push cost Meta $10B

#200

Post by orbifold » Fri, Feb 04, 2022, 2:59 PM UTC

dalbasal wrote: post #184

throwhauser wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was with you up to here: > And Zuck is very smart. The moment I saw the rebrand to Meta I knew that he saw this day coming perhaps years ago. He knows the next frontier is the meta verse Zuckerberg has been a surprisingly good steward of the one successful idea he came across, the social network graph. His acquisitions (Instagram, etc) worked very well to supplement the social network graph and keep it going longer…

There's an element of having shot themselves in the foot. FB moviled from content driven purely by your friends and what they post to content that FB have decided to feed you. That worked great in a lot of senses. You never run out of content. FB have a lot more options for their optimisation efforts. It also made them more of a general media company. But... it also devalued the social network/friends aspect. Now it'…

Yeah, whenever I see others scrolling through content at Facebook, I can't help but wonder who would voluntarily subject themselves to so much garbage information. It is similar with Twitter, which I use for "science communication". But the amount of miscellaneous memes and low quality click bait ads that one has to endure is almost physically painful.