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

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

#291

Post by 1cvmask »

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…

While Apple and it's ad business will be the biggest beneficiaries, it will not be a surprise if Google and FB also partially benefit. The clear losers will be all the smaller players.

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

#292

Post by throwaway_att »

I just want to point out that Apple is ostensibly doing this in the name of transparency, and yet here we have a whole thread of technologically proficient people debating what the setting actually means.

Does it mean that if the users don't know about this option in the settings they will never be prompted to allow tracking, and just implicitly disallow it? If that's the case, the prompt is just transparency theater, Apple has already made the decision; and it's hard not to notice the conflict of interest.

[throwaway because I work in the industry, but not in ads]

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

#293

Post by Spivak »

lawtalkinghuman wrote: post #56
minikites wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That sounds like government interfering with the free market, which is completely unacceptable under any circumstance for ~50% of the population.

Government requiring car manufacturers fit seatbelts and airbags is intrusion in the free market. And a good one that saves hundreds of thousands of lives.

Well if consumers didn't want to die they would have upgraded to our premium safety module for only a $9.99/mo maintenance fee and $1200 installation (was $1700).

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

#294

Post by SCHiM »

pembrook wrote: post #228
RGamma wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Virtually every major consumer-targeted appliance or online service these days is like you describe. It's a side effect of eliminating friction when interacting with the product. Having to stop and read manuals or reflect or such is a big no-no and interferes with "engagement". And it's wildly successful and common to cater to and foster intellectual laziness instead of, say, furthering education or individual mündig…

Or, maybe all these “lazy normies” are just busy with things like friends, family, work and their community...so they don’t really care if X company is able to do better ad targeting. But sure, you guys have fun living under your rock and being super educated on the nuances of mobile ad targeting technology. The rest of us idiots will waste our time doing intellectually lazy things like spending time with our kids an…

Not to be too offensive, but it _is_ lazy no? This stuff is important! I feel like it's (and has been for a while) going wrong. I know user education it mostly a pipe dream. But it's all I can think of.

The iPhone is probably relatively free compared to the streamlined hassle-free applications and devices of the future. And all the while polarization in all our societies grows, until my government too has no option but to lock it down and forge social cohesion through state-sponsored psy-ops and information-ops. We'll be well on our way to a 1984 dystopia then. ---

And please, it's not like there's not time for a normal life. See my comment about my family member below. Maybe if tech people would just refuse to fix the internet, more people would understand how it works.

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

#295

Post by quenix »

kwdc wrote: post #277

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 l…

Disclaimer: I did not opt in to tracking.

However... I'm not sure how the discussion about the technology behind ad targeting is relevant to the end user. The point is that it -works- and that the ads shown to the user are indeed more likely to pique their interests. As an end user, I don't -care- whether the backend is using AI/ML or a relational database—I care that by enabling tracking, I get more relevant ads.

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

#296

Post by Lammy »

djrogers wrote: post #279
hparadiz wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

It is literally impossible to submit any exposure alert without including location data, and then it can reasonably be assumed that all the matched bluetooth device IDs were within the same general vicinity as well. Have you ever used a GeoIP database?

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

#297

Post by dlivingston »

bradgessler wrote: post #71

“Allow Apps to Request to Track” [ On | Off ] That’s the setting in iOS under Settings > Privacy > Tracking. What does it actually mean? If it’s turned off, does that means that apps are tracking you since they don’t have to ask? If it’s turned on, does that mean apps have to ask and you can disable tracking per app? Something feels very strange about the way this setting is worded. I’d have excepted something like:…

From a Wall Street Journal interview with Apple's Craig Federighi:

WSJ: "Why the verbiage 'Ask Not to Track'? Why not just 'Do Not Track'?"

Federighi: "There are other techniques that developers over time have developed, like fingerprinting, which is a bit of a cat and mouse game around other ways that an app might scheme to create a tracking identifier. And it's a policy issue for us to say 'you must not do that'. And so, we can't ensure at the system level that they're not tracking, [but] we can do so at a policy level."

https://youtu.be/G05nEgsXgoI?t=153

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

#298

Post by [deleted] »

disgruntledphd2 wrote: post #255
mumblemumble wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Data has a way of being used in ways other than the one for which it was ostensibly originally collected. Especially once you let data scientists get in there and start having fun with it. (Source: I should know, I am one.) Or maybe you've got a unscrupulous employee who uses their access to the data to dox people. (Source: I used to work at a company where that happened.) And since, in a country like the USA, they a…

So, I totally agree with everything you've said, (I am also a data scientist, so appreciate that part especially). OTOH, ads pay for a lot of stuff, so if you could delete the raw data after some short time, and only retain the model which was used for serving/prediction, then I think a lot of those concerns go away, and the whole infrastructure around data is made an awful lot safer. Lots of your other points only r…

[deleted]

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

#299

Post by mschuster91 »

hparadiz wrote: post #217
azinman2 wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except it wasn’t hastily built, and the tracking isn’t controlled by a gov agency in the nefarious way that you’re implying.

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…

> They were built very hastily with little oversight with iterative beta cycles in plain sight.

The amount of data that the Covid tracking API of Android and iOS makes available is precisely known. Germany's and a few other (https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/collection/open-source-observato...) are open source.

> Who has this data? No idea.

The users on their individual devices.

> How will it be used a year from now? 10 years from now? No idea.

It will be all but useless.

Except if you're in Singapore. Their tracing app morphed into a spy software for law enforcement: https://twitter.com/kixes/status/1384566617330229250

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

#300

Post by lawtalkinghuman »

Spivak wrote: post #293
lawtalkinghuman wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Government requiring car manufacturers fit seatbelts and airbags is intrusion in the free market. And a good one that saves hundreds of thousands of lives.

Well if consumers didn't want to die they would have upgraded to our premium safety module for only a $9.99/mo maintenance fee and $1200 installation (was $1700).

The children should have had the good karma to be born to more responsible parents.
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