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Preparing Our Partners for iOS 14

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Re: Preparing Our Partners for iOS 14

#241

Post by shajznnckfke »

adrr wrote: post #233
shajznnckfke wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Facebook’s top ad business on iOS is for app installs. Their cross-app tracking is how they demonstrate that the ad resulted in app sales. Apple is cutting that off here. As you mention, Apple’s competing ad service is also for app installs.

Apple will actually hurt themselves with this change. The apps that can afford to advertise have a paid component to generate revenues. Apple taxes this revenue at 30%. I don’t get why they are going after FB when they aren’t a threat and Social media is the reason to people upgrade your phone to get a better camera. Not to mention the revenue FB drives in App Store purchases.

That’s a solid point. I’d look out for Apple to push their app install ads into more places (eg. the home search bar, various apps they bundle with the phone). Maybe a second attempt at iAd - it will be easier for that to succeed with the competition blocked.

Re: Preparing Our Partners for iOS 14

#242

Post by bredren »

snowwrestler wrote: post #83
oblio wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm honestly interested about this, Facebook is a big company. Is there no case of FB screwing over its partners? Like locking or limiting an API that they had offered in the past, etc. One thing that comes to mind immediately is that Facebook Messenger used to be accessible through XMPP and then they blocked that.

I mean, at one time you could build apps on Facebook that basically downloaded all of a user's data when they used it. The Obama campaign built an app that you could use to find your Facebook friends who hadn't been contacted by the campaign yet, so you could call them on the campaign's behalf. I heard of other political operations that built a "wish [famous person] happy birthday" app solely so they could grow their…

I had an early fb app that let you track shows from a band you had been to and display this on your wall.

I was able to download tons of user data. I think the guide was to only take what you need and you were not supposed to store it longer than 48 hours.

But that was def an honor system thing and I’d be surprised if people were purging data back then. It was (still is?) the Wild West with consumer tracking.

Re: Preparing Our Partners for iOS 14

#243

Post by chaps »

partiallypro wrote: post #172
usmannk wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If Microsoft say, added something to your host file, that blocked all ad trackers except from the Microsoft network, everyone would be up in arms. You'll love this: https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/microsoft/windows-10-h...

Not seeing how this is similar? Telemetry data used to detect OS bugs vs highly intrusive data collection that is used for advertising?

Consider a scenario where a non-technical person whose friend blocked telemetry through the hosts file for them, and they get a pop-up saying that the hosts file is risky. It's stochastically likely that it's scary enough that they'll undo the privacy-preserving changes. In this case, Microsoft is using their weight to push users away from privacy.

Re: Preparing Our Partners for iOS 14

#245

Post by nuker »

Cannot wait for iOS 14. Apple is the only big company taking privacy seriously, well done.

How is that so many anti-Apple comments in this thread? Are we already in a stage when giant Ad Corps are intentionally distorting public discussions?

Re: Preparing Our Partners for iOS 14

#246

Post by dialtone »

criddell wrote: post #3

> We believe that industry consultation is critical for changes to platform policies, as these updates have a far-reaching impact on the developer ecosystem. Why should platform makers consult the advertising industry? It's not like the advertising industry consulted anybody before they started collecting every bit of data they could.

It's the same way with software APIs... Creating new APIs is generally easy and doesn't need too much consultation compared to removing or changing APIs which would break behavior for all of your users. Apple created IDFA with the explicit intent of targeting ads and avoid using IMEI or MAC addresses. Now they are operating on it without consultation after having allowed a huge market to develop on it. Seems a pretty reasonable comment to make honestly.

Re: Preparing Our Partners for iOS 14

#247

Post by danShumway »

renewiltord wrote: post #235
pseudalopex wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is Facebook alarmed about users getting a choice if users are happy to be tracked?

Because forced decision making is a barrier to tool use. For instance, imagine if every time you opened your IDE it asked you which language you're going to type in. You like your IDE to be work best with the language you're working in, so that's good. You're adding user choice here, so that's good. But the outcome is bad. Why is that?

This isn't every time you open an app though, it's once, on install.

Imagine if the first time you opened your IDE it asked you what language you're going to type in. That would actually be very reasonable and helpful.

Re: Preparing Our Partners for iOS 14

#248

Post by gregorythecat »

Nextgrid wrote: post #135
gregorythecat wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe it will still comprise a reduction in their revenue. The internet as a whole will be less profitable, and only the big players will be able to survive. Maybe with time there can be a shift in the economics, but I would not bet on it. I can’t imagine people will start paying for email, search, music streaming...

> I can’t imagine people will start paying for email, search, music streaming... There's absolutely now reason why these services can't all fit in a 5-10$/month allowance. E-mail is already ~2$/month with Office 365, and if everyone starts paying economies of scale would make even cheaper plans profitable. Some of these services can just as well be provided by the ISP, like e-mail was back in the days. A lot of ISPs…

FB’s ARPU in US in 2019 was $112. Google’s was $256.

By comparison, paid services would cost $30/month. You might be willing to pay that, but many will not. People already share Netflix accounts or bootleg their friend’s HBO accounts.

I think a shift to paid services is _possible_ but I won’t bet on it. The economics and market forces that brought us metered data and text usage haven’t really changed. Destroying the advertising-supported offerings will not spawn competition overnight. But in any case I think the big players are positioned to weather the changes.

And by the way, $30/month/user is an average. If you are have high disposable income you are likely netting FB et al more than that.

Re: Preparing Our Partners for iOS 14

#249

Post by dialtone »

jkubicek wrote: post #185
an_opabinia wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The idea that privacy needs to be conceded in order for a healthy ad market to exist is false. You can't in practice verify that clicks or impressions are real, as opposed to initiated by bots, without correlating them with real human behavior. If you have an idea for how to verify a click or impression was real without also gathering some kind of data, go make ten billion dollars selling that technology.

That's why you don't pay per click or impression. The newspaper/magazine model has worked fine for 100 years. I fully understand why advertising companies would be opposed to this, it's in direct opposition to their value prop. As a consumer, though, I don't want anyone who is not the entity I'm interacting with to know anything about me.

There is a reason why the news paper industry moved in the direction that they did. Or do you think they were forced to move this way? Measurement on the web can be more precise and allows to understand the impact of revenue, it's also vastly more distributed than magazines and TV channels of which there's only thousands or so for each while there are literally millions of websites. There's too much noise and fraud on the web to be able to make marketing decisions with little tracking. The W3C is working with Google on establishing what it would take to accomplish this stuff without sharing data, this isn't the approach apple took with its platform in plain disregard for all the apps that run on it, but than again at this point this shouldn't surprise anyone.

Re: Preparing Our Partners for iOS 14

#250

Post by renewiltord »

danShumway wrote: post #247
renewiltord wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because forced decision making is a barrier to tool use. For instance, imagine if every time you opened your IDE it asked you which language you're going to type in. You like your IDE to be work best with the language you're working in, so that's good. You're adding user choice here, so that's good. But the outcome is bad. Why is that?

This isn't every time you open an app though, it's once, on install. Imagine if the first time you opened your IDE it asked you what language you're going to type in. That would actually be very reasonable and helpful.

Well, if the discussion has shifted from "Why is Facebook alarmed about users getting a choice if users are happy to be tracked?" to "What frequency of being asked about a choice is acceptable?", I think all the tough parts of the argument are now complete and it's possible for the reader to walk through to the conclusion of why Facebook is alarmed.
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