Apple to delay privacy change threatening Facebook, mobile ad market • Hacker News Board

Re: Apple to delay privacy change threatening Facebook, mobile ad market

#201

Post by notriddle » Fri, Sep 04, 2020, 12:30 AM UTC

likeabbas wrote: post #182

crazygringo wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In no other domain is implicit, cross-arena tracking by default acceptable. Maybe you don't think it should be acceptable, but it's the norm everywhere. Computers aren't an exception. Your purchases are tracked by credit card companies. Your license plate is tracked by road cameras. Your financial history is tracked by credit bureaus. Your phone calls are tracked by your telephony provider. And you haven't opted in…

Giving examples of a bad pattern doesn't make the pattern less bad. This should have never been the default behavior.

curiousllama said that implicit tracking was not allowed in any domain other than software. Don't move the goalposts.

Re: Apple to delay privacy change threatening Facebook, mobile ad market

#202

Post by rosege » Fri, Sep 04, 2020, 12:41 AM UTC

makecheck wrote: post #107

librish wrote: post #7

One thing that removes a lot of credibility from Apple's "for the good of the user" communication on this is that they broke out the personalization for their own ad network as an option, put it in a different location, and made it opt-out instead of opt-in. https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnkoetsier/2020/08/07/apple-a...

Yeah, this is crazy: Settings -> Privacy -> Location Services -> (ALL the way to the bottom of the list, past all apps) System Services -> Location-Based Apple Ads. Oh, and if you have text size increased by any amount, “Ads” doesn’t even appear and it’s just “Location-Based Apple...” (on or off). The harder something is to find and disable, the shadier it seems.

Apple definitely does shady stuff. Sure on privacy they are the better option, usually. But don't forget it recently came out that Siri was sending recordings to be analysed without the users knowledge. They also will only very begrudgingly fix design faults in their products. I recently was a victim of their flexgate issue and because I have the 15" MacBook Pro it isn't automatically covered. Other users with this issue are fighting Apple in a class action over it. You would hope that a company that makes as much money as Apple would stand behind their products better but unfortunately that's not the case.

Re: Apple to delay privacy change threatening Facebook, mobile ad market

#203

Post by m3kw9 » Fri, Sep 04, 2020, 12:47 AM UTC

librish wrote: post #7

One thing that removes a lot of credibility from Apple's "for the good of the user" communication on this is that they broke out the personalization for their own ad network as an option, put it in a different location, and made it opt-out instead of opt-in. https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnkoetsier/2020/08/07/apple-a...

They do that because they don’t sell any of your info, unlike Facebook which should be opt in. The whole issue Apple has with FB is privacy and selling of your data. If apple was selling data and they needed opt out then you may have a point

Re: Apple to delay privacy change threatening Facebook, mobile ad market

#204

Post by zakki » Fri, Sep 04, 2020, 12:57 AM UTC

m3kw9 wrote: post #203

librish wrote: post #7

One thing that removes a lot of credibility from Apple's "for the good of the user" communication on this is that they broke out the personalization for their own ad network as an option, put it in a different location, and made it opt-out instead of opt-in. https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnkoetsier/2020/08/07/apple-a...

They do that because they don’t sell any of your info, unlike Facebook which should be opt in. The whole issue Apple has with FB is privacy and selling of your data. If apple was selling data and they needed opt out then you may have a point

Any source that Apple doesn’t/didn’t sell customers info?

Re: Apple to delay privacy change threatening Facebook, mobile ad market

#205

Post by crakhamster01 » Fri, Sep 04, 2020, 1:13 AM UTC

JoshTriplett wrote: post #174

crakhamster01 wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> hopefully that will become "was" at some point > their interests are not aligned with user interests How do you propose apps monetize going forward? The vast majority of users do not want to pay for the apps/utilities on their phones, but still appreciate the value these apps provide them nonetheless. Targeted advertising enables apps to provide these services to users for free by having marketing budgets front the…

> The vast majority of users do not want to pay for the apps/utilities on their phones, but still appreciate the value these apps provide them nonetheless. Chicken and egg problem. There are enough free apps that they drag down user expectations for pricing. It's hard to figure out value on an absolute scale ("hmmm, is this worth $4?"), and easy to compare value on a relative scale ("wow, $8 seems expensive for an ap…

How is it a chicken and egg problem if we're in a post-ads world? Billions of people now have the expectation that content, utilities, and information can be made accessible to them, for free, by simply allowing ads in their feed. From the perspective of someone in a developed nation, the change to a patronage revenue model may seem trivial, but for the vast majority of the world this is a non-starter. You're arguing that information should paywalled, when it currently can exist free of charge.

Also re: the Youtube anecdote - YT ads actually pay out quite well, especially if you're huge. You usually see Patreons, etc. from the smaller channels or content creators that want to hit a certain quality of life/stability. The top 10 YouTube channels easily clear $10M from ad rev alone.

Re: Apple to delay privacy change threatening Facebook, mobile ad market

#206

Post by __warlord__ » Fri, Sep 04, 2020, 2:05 AM UTC

lilyball wrote: post #138

makecheck wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, this is crazy: Settings -> Privacy -> Location Services -> (ALL the way to the bottom of the list, past all apps) System Services -> Location-Based Apple Ads. Oh, and if you have text size increased by any amount, “Ads” doesn’t even appear and it’s just “Location-Based Apple...” (on or off). The harder something is to find and disable, the shadier it seems.

I don't see "Location-Based Apple Ads" on my iPhone running iOS 14.

Settings -> Privacy -> Apple Advertising (all the way down) > Personalized Ads

Re: Apple to delay privacy change threatening Facebook, mobile ad market

#207

Post by dialtone » Fri, Sep 04, 2020, 2:18 AM UTC

GekkePrutser wrote: post #175

dialtone wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Facebook didn’t complain... they said they would shut off FAN which generated a whole of $2B in revenue for them in 2018 when they make $80B this year. They were telling their customers to find an alternative monetization strategy since this wasn’t going to be worth it for them.

I'm not the only one viewing that as a complaint: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2020/09/facebook-complains-a...

I'm really not sure that makes you right. It's a fact that FAN is 2% or so of revenue for FB. And it's also a fact that FB, with their analytics/ads SDK and all the data they ingest from their own applications, already owns a very important data source for their targeted ads. These are plain as day facts. If you ever bought ads, you'd know that FAN, for the typical buyers, represents a tiny fraction of spend on FB (less than 5% typically). Then journalists can write what they want, as much as I like Arstechnica and pay for it, that's just plain wrong and countered by facts. It's also frankly funny how little journalists know about ads when in most cases it's the source of their income.

Furthermore, it's absolutely hilarious to think that the most valuable company in the world, with enough cash reserves to be able to almost buy FB outright, would somehow be willing to walk back their core value message because their, allegedly, value adversary asks. Apple made the change because they would have cratered their app economy and they themselves weren't going to play by their own rules, FB maybe played a role because $2B are a lot of money for the free apps, but they aren't a lot of money for FB. It's really hilarious to think that Apple gives a crap about what FB writes on their site, specifically when it's about privacy. Apples cares about its ecosystem, not about what FB says. Totally hilarious.

Re: Apple to delay privacy change threatening Facebook, mobile ad market

#208

Post by Nextgrid » Fri, Sep 04, 2020, 2:20 AM UTC

K0nserv wrote: post #179

MayeulC wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are hundreds of ways to fingerprint you and your device, without an avertising ID. You just need a few (5-7?) To uniquely identify someone. A few examples that come to my mind: Current battery level, typing speed, phone model, OS version, battery wear (guessable from charge/discharge rate), charge rate (depends on the charger), finger width, propensy to use features differently (scrolling, zooming, selecting te…

What you've said is accurate, but one thing that's different in this case compared to the web is Apple's walled garden. The walled garden certainly has problems but in this case a real benefit is that Apple forbids these kinds of technical workarounds. You can implement them, but do you want to run the risk of your app being banned from the only distribution channel on iOS because of it?

That walled garden still appears to have major holes in its fences, as shown by the Facebook SDK having infected every single mainstream app for the sole purpose of stalking the user in the background (over time Facebook can correlate the traffic by date/time, IP address, device type, etc and link different instances of the SDK together).

Re: Apple to delay privacy change threatening Facebook, mobile ad market

#209

Post by Nextgrid » Fri, Sep 04, 2020, 2:21 AM UTC

iainmerrick wrote: post #71

dudus wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This reads as just another popup you'll need to click before you can use any app. Just like cookies.

Except there will be an option to deny tracking. Hopefully Apple will require and enforce a genuine free choice and opt-in. With GDPR cookie warnings, you’re required to opt in, but everybody uses dark UI patterns to make you “opt in” (like forcing you to uncheck each tracker individually, and claiming it takes several minutes to “update your preferences”)

The problem with the GDPR is the lack of enforcement which allows criminal companies to get away with bullshit like this. With the potential of huge fines (and the fact that the cases seem very straightforward and there's plenty of strong evidence of a breach) I think the only explanation for this blatant lack of enforcement is that the same people who are supposed to enforce the law are in bed with those that break this same law.

Re: Apple to delay privacy change threatening Facebook, mobile ad market

#210

Post by Nextgrid » Fri, Sep 04, 2020, 2:31 AM UTC

crakhamster01 wrote: post #205

JoshTriplett wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The vast majority of users do not want to pay for the apps/utilities on their phones, but still appreciate the value these apps provide them nonetheless. Chicken and egg problem. There are enough free apps that they drag down user expectations for pricing. It's hard to figure out value on an absolute scale ("hmmm, is this worth $4?"), and easy to compare value on a relative scale ("wow, $8 seems expensive for an ap…

How is it a chicken and egg problem if we're in a post-ads world? Billions of people now have the expectation that content, utilities, and information can be made accessible to them, for free, by simply allowing ads in their feed. From the perspective of someone in a developed nation, the change to a patronage revenue model may seem trivial, but for the vast majority of the world this is a non-starter. You're arguing…

> Billions of people now have the expectation that content, utilities, and information can be made accessible to them, for free, by simply allowing ads in their feed.

They can still opt-in; not to mention this is about creepy ad targeting that exposes the user to lots of risk if the targeting data ever leaks (it's a time bomb); advertising per-se isn't banned, it just can't stalk the user.

However this will hopefully open the door for alternative monetization options, like you know, the old-school, boring paper bills that some people might have in their wallet and might be willing to hand over in exchange for a good app, service or product. ;)