> Apple owns "America's computer" (50+% of average American's internet usage), and they control it like a dictatorship If Apple didn't give their users tools to control tracking, wouldn't that be more dictatorial?
It would be fair business if the DOJ removed the app store, but Apple removed APIs that allow tracking. I would be fully on board with that. 100% pro-consumer, pro-small business. Apple needs to protect its consumers, but the US government needs to protect businesses against the Apple monopoly.
> It would be fair business if the DOJ removed the app store, but Apple removed APIs that allow tracking.
Why is that more fair? I bought an iPhone a month ago (my first) in part because I want their version of the App Store and I want more privacy controls. I actually like that Apple's requirements push developers to make a native app rather than a web app (for example).
I'm certainly sympathetic to the argument that 30% is too large of a cut and it's well past time for payment reform. However, I think consumers would be worse off losing Apple's more tightly controlled app store implementation. If you want more options, go Android. That's what I did for more than a decade.
If this isn't a lie and Apple flipping that switch cost Facebook $10bn, then that tells me my personal information is worth a lot. What I was getting from Facebook in exchange for my data was too little. I use Google a lot more than Facebook and frankly what I get from them in exchange for my data is probably also way too little. I wish there was some type of consumer union where we could negotiate with these compani…
It's not perfect but you can look at average revenue per user on Facebook. There are huge differences based on the country (note this is quarterly): Q4 '20 Worldwide: 10.14 US: 53.56 Europe: 16.87 Asia Pacific: 4.05 Rest of world: 2.77 So you're worth just over $200 a year. This has gone up a lot over time and is considerably higher than other social networks. Just a year ago, it was 41.41 (23% less) and a year befor…
Averages can mislead. In gaming there are "whales" who spend most of the money on in-app purchases.
Certain ads being seen by certain people might be a lot more valuable than average? It might be interesting to know who these people are.
Interesting. I feel the exact opposite. I don't really care about content anymore, it's really just mind numbing drudgery. There's a reason there's a meme about getting addicted to HN and doing "deep work" with "digital minimalism". In recent times I've cared more and more about what my friends and family are doing, because those are the people I'm connected with in actuality, in real life.
I agree with your position - but I don't think it necessarily means you disagree with the other post. I've completely stopped using FB because I want to connect with my friends and family. After using the product for many years I realized that idly surfing past pictures of children, weddings, BBQs, etc, that despite FB's loud insistence, that's not connection . Even commenting on friends' posts isn't... really connec…
I prefer direct communication even though the surrounding culture seems to be less comfortable with that these days. While I will still post an update
on FB every few months, I got annoyed with how the algorithm made the feed harder to follow so many years ago. In the early days I was a big proponent of blasting out a post to whoever might see it, but I have too many “friends” and even if I curated that list I’d still miss so much amidst the clutter because the algorithm made it so some important-to-me stuff will never appear in my feed. And so often the people I want to see something don’t see my posts. Hence directly texting and emailing them photos! If there were a social media tool that had my best interests in mind, perhaps I could trust it to show my people the content I want to share. Maybe I’m old school since I appreciate getting email and snail mail letters from people, but now if I want to tell people something I send it to them directly. If there are too many people to email/text/call, maybe I should rethink what I’m doing and why. Some people respond positively to that and I’m guessing others find it too forward, but I don’t feel bad about being too forward. Decades ago we used to knock on front doors without telling them in advance that we were dropping by, so I don’t feel an unsolicited texted photo of my baby is so uncomfortably forward compared to that. :)
So let’s say I’m in CA voting for my two Senators. How much does my vote actually count when 10 other states combined have the same population but 20 Senators? How much does my vote count even for representatives if I’m in a state that’s heavily gerrymandered?
The allocation of Senators isn’t supposed to be proportionate to state population by design . It’s a non-issue. Proportional representation occurs in the House.
Simply because something was designed a certain way 250 years ago, doesn’t mean it’s a non issue.
The political problem they were trying to solve at the time (balancing the interests of independent sovereign political entities with respect to land claims and future political power) doesn’t necessarily map onto the problems we have today.
So let’s say I’m in CA voting for my two Senators. How much does my vote actually count when 10 other states combined have the same population but 20 Senators? How much does my vote count even for representatives if I’m in a state that’s heavily gerrymandered?
The allocation of Senators isn’t supposed to be proportionate to state population by design . It’s a non-issue. Proportional representation occurs in the House.
Just because it was done by design doesn't mean it's a non-issue. The Senate is an extremely undemocratic organization. The population discrepancy between States is much higher now than when the country was founded.
Nor do the reasons the founders did it this way exist anymore.
Also this is 54% of people who saw the prompt. The standard practice for this sort of prompt in products that are trying to _optimise_ acceptance is to pre-ask the user first, almost "If we asked you if we can track you, would you be likely to accept". So that's 54% of users who are probably ok with the idea of personalised ads or however the app pitched it, then go on to say "actually no". Essentially this number is…
Facebook does pre ask.
Everyone does, because a) you get to control the messaging to the user, and b) once they've declined the OS prompt, you can never re-do in your app, whereas if they decline your own prompt, you can ask them again whenever you like, like when you know they've just had a positive experience.
The comment is not about repost, it's about the short video, and I also don't see much of it on yt
The YouTube recommendation algorithm prefers longer videos than that. It is specifically trained to optimize for “watch minutes,” and longer videos seem more effective than extremely short ones.
Youtube has recently started recommending short videos too, varying from 10 sec to 1 min, but that depends on your viewing habits. They even have a "#shorts" feature to compete with TikTok.
> Maybe, but I'm not sure a working professional adult is an ad-clicker, and I'm not sure that the ads they click on can con them into doing something they wouldn't normally do very often. As a working professional adult, who has access to many others working professional adults, I assure you, ads work. You’re simplifying ads to a barebones click to rate exchange. Ads are way more subtle than that.
I don't doubt they work. I doubt the margin of work done by facebook ads on working professional adults over the work of ads that they are exposed to through other means and by word of mouth. And not that that margin doesn't exist and not that it's not worthwhile to advertise on facebook, but the doubt is that as compared to any other demographic being advertised to that it's worth so much more. Advertising to impuls…
Wouldn't people with more disposable income (like professional adults) be more likely to be impulsive spenders? They can afford to be.
Why would disabling personalized ads necessarily disable tracking? [EDIT] Consider: toggling the display of something does not necessarily change the underlying data, or data collection, behavior. Why would all data used to personalize ads have to be tracking? It could also be things like purchase data from the very service that's advertising to you. Halting collection—not use for ad personalization, but collection—o…
I think we are coming at it from different directions. You need tracking for personalized ads, you don't need personalized ads for tracking.
No you don’t need tracking for personalized ads. Apple defines tracking as sharing information about the user between distinct 3rd parties, while it personalizes ads based on your behavior within Apple’s own services.