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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

#331

Post by dbbk »

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…

I opted in, because if I'm going to see ads, I would prefer they be somewhat relevant to me. And I want to support the sites/apps I use for free.

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

#332

Post by codebook »

anders_p wrote: post #317
distribot wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there anything written about this? I'm extremely skeptical that a big chunk of people in such a highly online country just left their phones at home. Maybe some of the Hardeim but I would guess 95+% of people wouldn't do this.

Seriously? Why would you be so skeptical of that? Would you really bring your phone with you, when going out for a beer or coffee, even if it could easily result in you being forced to stay quarantined for 2 weeks? Is your smartphone really that important to you? Even though I have personally stayed socially distanced and worn a mask everywhere it was required, it makes perfect sense to me, after seeing how a lot of…

I do want to know whether I am exposed to COVId and get to be quarantined to not spread out the covid to others who I really take care of. Dont want to be a person that possibly make my family or friends sick.

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

#333

Post by DrJohanson »

SideburnsOfDoom wrote: post #219

4% is level with the Lizardman constant, i.e. the threshold of noise in the data: https://slatestarcodex.com/2013/04/12/noisy-poll-results-and... So that 4% is basically meaningless, indistinguishable from 0%, it might represent misunderstanding, misclicks and the like. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27076848

Thank you, I now understand why the popularity of the former French president Francois Hollande was at 4%.

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

#334

Post by beagle3 »

distribot wrote: post #310
shmatt wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Israel, covid exposure notification was can't-ever-opt-out. What happened next was people stopped going out with their phones, because any exposure would result in a Police enforced 14 day quarantine

Is there anything written about this? I'm extremely skeptical that a big chunk of people in such a highly online country just left their phones at home. Maybe some of the Hardeim but I would guess 95+% of people wouldn't do this.

I'm aware of quite a few people who selectively turned their phone off or left them at home in some circumstances, but I'm not aware of anyone who really gave up their phone use.

In israel, this was done centrally by cell tower triangulation rather than app/os, so no way to opt out even with dumb phones. However, reliability was not very good - e.g. people got notice that they must quarantine because a neighbour 2 floors up was positive, or because they stood outside a wall of a closed room where a positive person was on the other side of said wall. The appeal process was initially non-existent, then slow and cumbersome - so the risk of being "jailed" for 14 days due to false positive was small but serious.

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

#335

Post by beagle3 »

codebook wrote: post #332
anders_p wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seriously? Why would you be so skeptical of that? Would you really bring your phone with you, when going out for a beer or coffee, even if it could easily result in you being forced to stay quarantined for 2 weeks? Is your smartphone really that important to you? Even though I have personally stayed socially distanced and worn a mask everywhere it was required, it makes perfect sense to me, after seeing how a lot of…

I do want to know whether I am exposed to COVId and get to be quarantined to not spread out the covid to others who I really take care of. Dont want to be a person that possibly make my family or friends sick.

Most people do. However, the precision of the Israeli system (Based IIUC on cell tower triangulation) was not good, meaning you'd have a nontrivial chance of getting randomly get flagged for 14 days quarantine (with legal consequences for not doing so); Some people were flagged multiple times within 3 months, and it's not entirely clear what the rate of FP was, but it was nontrivial.

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

#336

Post by beagle3 »

NightMKoder wrote: post #208
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…

Im not sure why this is cataclysmic for FB - they’re mostly a first party advertiser. App tracking transparency doesn’t prevent Facebook from running ads on their own apps and using SkAdNetwork to track conversions (which works even if the user opts out). Granted the fidelity and latency of SkAdNetwork is a concern but hardly enough to materially impact the bottom line.

FB SDK is basically everywhere (including e.g. Google's Waze app), and the data is incredibly useful to FB to segment users.

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

#337

Post by Lammy »

dbbk wrote: post #330
Lammy wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

You clearly don't understand how the system works, there is no data related to location involved.

You clearly don’t understand my point. It becomes location data as soon as it’s triggered.

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

#338

Post by woeirua »

Spivak wrote: post #286
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. Absolutely not. Using defaults because you know most people wont' change them to achieve a specific outcome that you, the default setter want, is exactly the same evil. Just because you're doing it for "good" doesn't justify it.

LOL. OK. How many lives could’ve been saved if everyone had Covid exposure notifications enabled during the pandemic? The answer is most certainly not zero. Maybe it’s hundreds or thousands.

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

#339

Post by rawrfml »

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…

I'll give my perspective which I think is very different than the rest of the HN crowd here in the comments. I think this mainly stems from the fact that I'm probably much younger than a lot of the folks here. I do a lot of random shopping online...

I opted into the FB tracking when I got the popup yesterday because I do FB/IG a lot and I click on interesting ads. Honestly, I tend to buy quite a bit from the ads that I see because they genuinely interest me, and a lot of them are from smaller businesses that I want to try out. If I see ads on FB/IG, at least I want them to be relevant to me rather than be generic.

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

#340

Post by tracerbulletx »

Iv wrote: post #186
nothis wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't really get how trends like this one (and IMO that's just the tip of the ice berg – this is companies preparing for the inevitable legislation that will make most forms of tracking illegal within the next 10 years) don't affect facebook or google stock. This IMO makes two scenarios likely: 1) The market is currently just dragging along, hoping this will all go away and we're really in a major ad-bubble that's…

I wonder if we are not overestimating the value of tracking and underestimating the value that Google brings by forcing some "quality advertisement" from their clients.

Google still has search intent to provide most of the value without tracking anything and it's by far the most effective thing anyways. FB still has their internal profile data.
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