Analytics suggest 96% of users leave app tracking disabled in iOS 14.5 • Hacker News Board

Re: Analytics suggest 96% of users leave app tracking disabled in iOS 14.5

#271

Post by jamiek88 » Fri, May 07, 2021, 7:05 PM UTC

coldcode wrote: post #269

laurent92 wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And as an advertiser, I confirm losing a lot of money trying to advertise, not seeing revenue. Choosing to advertise 25-34 males (in addition to being the definition of sexism/ageism) who type “Jira time tracking” (because “Jira” keyword is reserved anyway) is useless. I want to put an ad on websites that talk about Jira. And that requires no tracking at all.

It's only a big issue if you try to advertise a specific item on a generic platform; but if you can target websites that cater to your specific business, you really don't need anything more. Of course it means ad networks lose out since they can't just target specific people, they have to only target specific websites or apps. Personally in the old days of newspaper ad's, I always wondered what the point was of anyth…

Point of those ads generally is that people were looking intentionally at them for a plumber, sparkie, piano tuner, gramophone polisher, used tap shoes or what ever else newspapers used to advertise.

In fact many people only bought the paper on ad day.

Whole different kettle of fish.

Re: Analytics suggest 96% of users leave app tracking disabled in iOS 14.5

#272

Post by beervirus » Fri, May 07, 2021, 7:07 PM UTC

hhjj wrote: post #188

BugsJustFindMe wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not quite right. If you turn it off apps may still be able to track you nefariously but they'll be violating Apple's policies. Apple's explanation for wording it this way is that it's impossible to block all tracking through technical means at the system level because there will always be new nefarious tricks that malicious people will try to use against you. They can only do it at the policy level and try to…

That's clear but can't they turn the setting into "Require apps to ask consent before tracking" ?

But that’s a very different question. If you say yes, you get lots of pop ups from apps asking to track, and if you say no, they track you without asking.

Re: Analytics suggest 96% of users leave app tracking disabled in iOS 14.5

#273

Post by Lammy » Fri, May 07, 2021, 7:09 PM UTC

azinman2 wrote: post #267

lrem wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And this is exactly why the apps failed: even HN readers don't know how they work.

And that's really a shame. It has the power to make an even larger dent in the epidemic. This is the cult of ignorance at play, where mistrust of all institutions (heavily fueled by need to get clicks to serve ads) means we can't have nice things.

I’m not ignorant just because I don’t want to be tracked, and slinging insults like this just reaffirms my beliefs :)

Re: Analytics suggest 96% of users leave app tracking disabled in iOS 14.5

#274

Post by Lammy » Fri, May 07, 2021, 7:11 PM UTC

JeremyBanks wrote: post #236

hparadiz wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've seen all sorts of solutions put together by municipalities big and small from counties to states to countries and everything in between during this whole Covid thing and the thing that struck me is how easy it was for them to essentially track you with perfect precision and tie it back to a phone number. > Except it wasn’t hastily built They were built very hastily with little oversight with iterative beta cycle…

Your choice to be ignorant about the contact tracing frameworks is your own, but please stop spreading misinformation: https://www.google.com/covid19/exposurenotifications/#exposu... There were many locations who built their own apps that did not follow this privacy model, or used it incorrectly, but for most cases "your location data being put into some database" is not accurate.

There is no amount of mental gymnastics you can do to turn “app that tracks when yours and other phones are together and does about it” into something that is inside my moral boundaries.

Re: Analytics suggest 96% of users leave app tracking disabled in iOS 14.5

#275

Post by titzer » Fri, May 07, 2021, 7:15 PM UTC

hparadiz wrote: post #178

woeirua wrote: post #147

I think this speaks to the power of defaults. 96% of users have not turned this on because they didn't even know that its disabled, and when an app asks you if they can track you, the response is going to be a strong no. The reality is that FB's entire business model has been predicated on the default being that tracking is allowed. If this holds, this will be cataclysmic for FB. You can't have a huge portion of your…

> BTW, this is also why the covid exposure notification apps failed miserably. They should have always been opt-out. If Google or Apple remotely installed a hastily built tracker controlled by a government agency on my device I'd be pretty miffed about it.

I hope you don't use Google Play Services, because you really don't want to know what it does.

Re: Analytics suggest 96% of users leave app tracking disabled in iOS 14.5

#276

Post by no_wizard » Fri, May 07, 2021, 7:19 PM UTC

Firebrand wrote: post #167

Based on Apple’s job postings I’m beginning to suspect their stance on ads and tracking was nothing more than a clever ruse to weaken competitors while they build their own a personalized ad business for iOS: https://i.imgur.com/y1s9F4J They also just hired Facebook’s first ads targeting product manager to work for their ad platform. I don’t think Apple ads won’t be limited to the App Store within a couple years.

It's never been a matter of ads, it's always been about tracking. Ads just happen to be the vector in which tracking is default included, as is well, other tracking scripts around the web and via mobile SDKs.

What Apple's doing here is trying to undercut in a serious way the ability for everyone to be able to do the kind of granular tracking we have today all over the place.

I'm not shocked they're building / expanding an ads division. The real key is this: will their ads be served up with the kind of granular, identifiable tracking we have today? My gut feeling is no, it won't be[0]

[0]: As an aside, I want to note the following:

When I say tracking or speak of it in this context, I do not mean simple metrics, like how many page views did this get compared to Ad B? That is the kind of, well, tracking, that can be done in a way that isn't privacy invasive (and should never be invasive), akin to A/B testing. Technically, error logs are a form of tracking, if we want to be pedantic. Instead, I to point out that I'm talking about granular tracking data that can be used to identify a person or granular set of data that can sort people into unique groups that then make it easy to identify them. The real quandary here of course, is that in some cases Facebook, Amazon, Google and others have enough data to actually be able to say oh hey, this is no_wizard, not some other person. Thats a huge part of this problem, however, its also not always the case that they can harvest enough data to be able to do that. The other, often overlooked issue by many (particularly those that don't follow this sort of thing. Not likely your average HN reader but probably most people you know, is that they also have the heustristic data that confidently sort people into little groups, and they are constantly continuing this narrowing. So instead of saying hey, this is no_wizard they can say, well, looks like someone who identifies as no_wizard believes in these causes, has these purchasing habits, and has seen these ads, along with x people from Y area, lets put them in Z group

I know people get upset (ever so rightly) about being personally tracked, but both issues need to be systemically addressed. Its not about ads, its about what ads became, and through that we now have this kind of detailed tracking all over the place, from mobile SDKs to CLIs to most popular websites.

I would welcome an Apple Ads platform that went against all this and could prove it

Re: Analytics suggest 96% of users leave app tracking disabled in iOS 14.5

#277

Post by kwdc » Fri, May 07, 2021, 7:19 PM UTC

Why would you enable it? What possible benefit is there in doing so?

The ads won't get better regardless of the data they have on you. They aren't exactly using ML or AI to help you get better ads. Its really just boring data queries in SQL or some graph language. That's the sum total of most advertising intelligence. Its not 21st century high tech. Its mostly relational databases with some NoSQL to make that table linking faster and cached. In cases where they do actually bring out that NoSQL it is to reimplement all the relational smarts just with extra steps. Then its at least shiny and cool.

The whole thing is really just about storing and gathering a profile on you as part of them building an asset they can later resell. Creepy technology for creepy uses. An asset full of subtle errors about you that can likely never be seen or fixed. Much later they will invariably then leave all or some of it on a usb stick or some poorly protected cloud server. After that your details will end up in the hands of some scammer or other miscreant to enable them to send you endless emails full of typos, lies, emojis and if you're exceptionally average like the rest of us: an interesting tale about long lost nigerian princes just needing a bank account. If you're lucky.

So, yeah, leave it disabled. There's really no point in doing otherwise.

Re: Analytics suggest 96% of users leave app tracking disabled in iOS 14.5

#278

Post by gigatexal » Fri, May 07, 2021, 7:21 PM UTC

hu3 wrote: post #242

disgruntledphd2 wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, as long as they don't get into the ads business themselves, I'd say they'll be fine.

They might be trying to re-enter ad business since they are hiring: https://m.imgur.com/y1s9F4J

They’ve an ads business and have had one for years. App Store ads come to mind. And the iad network as well. I applied to a few ad related roles at Apple in the data engineering space.

Re: Analytics suggest 96% of users leave app tracking disabled in iOS 14.5

#279

Post by djrogers » Fri, May 07, 2021, 7:21 PM UTC

hparadiz wrote: post #178

woeirua wrote: post #147

I think this speaks to the power of defaults. 96% of users have not turned this on because they didn't even know that its disabled, and when an app asks you if they can track you, the response is going to be a strong no. The reality is that FB's entire business model has been predicated on the default being that tracking is allowed. If this holds, this will be cataclysmic for FB. You can't have a huge portion of your…

> BTW, this is also why the covid exposure notification apps failed miserably. They should have always been opt-out. If Google or Apple remotely installed a hastily built tracker controlled by a government agency on my device I'd be pretty miffed about it.

Except that’s not what the exposure notification APIs did at all. Location is never tracked or transmitted to anyone. What exactly would you have been concerned about?

Re: Analytics suggest 96% of users leave app tracking disabled in iOS 14.5

#280

Post by post_below » Fri, May 07, 2021, 7:23 PM UTC

azinman2 wrote: post #267

lrem wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And this is exactly why the apps failed: even HN readers don't know how they work.

And that's really a shame. It has the power to make an even larger dent in the epidemic. This is the cult of ignorance at play, where mistrust of all institutions (heavily fueled by need to get clicks to serve ads) means we can't have nice things.

There's some truth in what you're saying, but mistrust of institutions is completely rational in light of history. Empirically, ignorance in this context would be unskeptically trusting institutions.

That it strays into the irrational at times is as human as the inevitable corruption that fuels the mistrust.

For someone without full knowledge of the technology to assume (in this case wrongly) there's a privacy issue is entirely practical. It's an assumption that will be correct far more than it won't.