Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Preparing Our Partners for iOS 14

facebook.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 311 posts

Re: Preparing Our Partners for iOS 14

#41

Post by netik »

actuator wrote: post #22
manishsharan wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the app makers were merely showing an ad , even an intrusive one without selling out my information -- I will be able to tolerate that. However when app developers include libraries from foursquare or facebook, what they are doing is violating the users' privacy and selling their information to third party aggregators who will apply data analytics to build a full predictive model of your behavior and then they wil…

FB has done plenty wrong but you can make the point without upping the hyperbole as well. There is a danger of FB manipulating things on its own but they didn't sell the data to any third party including Cambridge Analytica, it was harvested because of poor API policy(your friend auth giving access to some of your details) which was fixed in the future. The behavioral profiles were built by Cambridge Analytica on its…

I suppose in a way they are monetizing/selling the use of your data because they're collecting it and selling the aggregation of that data back to advertisers.

Sure, it's not a selling of the raw data record but with advertising and targeting an advertiser can get pretty close.

Re: Preparing Our Partners for iOS 14

#42

Post by ocdtrekkie »

room500 wrote: post #37
G4E wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It won't prevent them to show ads. It will prevent them to show targeted ads. So your point is either invalid or rather "they won't be able to be datamining their potentials users to pay the bills" ?

Advertisers are willing to pay way more for targeted ads. If an app is relying on advertising revenue, the inability to target ads will directly cause the app to generate less revenue.

The solution here is to outlaw targeted advertising, so that marketing budgets can realign to appropriately pay for normal advertising again.

As it is, the efficacy of targeted advertising is a myth. Google claimed in a blog post that their own internal study showed over a 50% benefit in targeted advertising for publishers... but an independent, academic study showed a difference of about 4%.

https://techcrunch.com/2019/05/31/targeted-ads-offer-little-...

https://services.google.com/fh/files/misc/disabling_third-pa...

(Google has suggested, of course, that their wildly different outcomes are because you know, Google has data nobody else has, and obviously Google would never manipulate it's exclusive access to all that data to make studies look like what is best for their business.)

Adtech giants need advertisers to believe they need targeted advertising, because targeted advertising relies on mass data collection only they are capable of getting. If people realized the necessity of using Google and Facebook's mass user data was... a complete lie... any old ad firm could compete with their businesses.

Re: Preparing Our Partners for iOS 14

#43

Post by _jal »

nicoburns wrote: post #27
actuator wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FB has done plenty wrong but you can make the point without upping the hyperbole as well. There is a danger of FB manipulating things on its own but they didn't sell the data to any third party including Cambridge Analytica, it was harvested because of poor API policy(your friend auth giving access to some of your details) which was fixed in the future. The behavioral profiles were built by Cambridge Analytica on its…

> it was harvested because of poor API policy which was fixed in the future Is there any evidence that it was actually fixed?

I believe they made modifications after that, yes.

But if you believe they don't still provide access via substantially similar APIs to "trusted partners", I have a bridge that may interest you...

Re: Preparing Our Partners for iOS 14

#44

Post by judge2020 »

marbletiles wrote: post #5

The wording here is subtly different from the text they reportedly emailed out - https://twitter.com/rjonesy/status/1298662658934222848 Notably, it omits the line saying they won't use the prompt in their own apps (which they'd be required to do whether or not they used IDFA) and omits the advice that implies their customers should figure out other ways to gather identifying information

> Use non-IDFA match methods such as adopting Facebook Login or using Advanced Matching to share hashed customer contact information

nice

Re: Preparing Our Partners for iOS 14

#45

Post by lucb1e »

tmpz22 wrote: post #24
TACIXAT wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is what gets me to move away from Android. I like the Andoird ecosystem more, but my hate for advertising supercedes all of that.

That's ironic given some of the best possible ad blocking on mobile devices is Ublock Origin on Firefox mobile which is only available on Android (Apple only allows third party browsers to wrap Safari on iOS). Its 2020 and the only modicum of privacy you can get is a rooted android device.

TrackerControl is also a great app (available on F-Droid[1]; probably also on the Play Store but I wouldn't know) that works without root. It blocks a blacklist of known tracker domains and you can turn them on/off per-app.

For example, does your HackerNews app need to talk to Google? Probably not, so that gets blocked by default. Does your Newpipe/YouTube app? Yes, so you should unblock that from talking to Google. The Spotify app also tries to talk to like 9 different tracking domains, but only one category is actually required to fully use the app. Screenshot: https://dro.pm/n.png (Current version doesn't yet allow toggling per-domain in an attempt to make it easier/more manageable; but iirc allowing that is a planned change.)

The app is under active development and the dev seems to listen to feature requests, so if you have any... :). One downside is that it doesn't work alongside other VPN apps because it pretends to be a VPN. If anyone has a good idea how to solve that, the dev asked for ideas if I remember correctly.

I already blacklisted advertising domains in /etc/hosts and disabled things like broadcast listeners so certain apps don't receive the OnBoot/OnAppInstalled/etc. events to limit what they notice and can do, but with TC I feel like my privacy on Android got a substantial boost. Spotify was the last app I use with Facebook integration and I was wondering what to do about it, but I think that is not an issue anymore now.

[1] https://f-droid.org/en/packages/net.kollnig.missioncontrol.f...

Re: Preparing Our Partners for iOS 14

#47

Post by dylan604 »

nerfhammer wrote: post #28
dylan604 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It reads to me like "Wah, we can't do what we want anymore. Boohoo! However, we are working hard to find a way to get around the upcoming limitations."

it will impact small apps that are whose business is dependent on buying or selling mobile ad space more than facebook itself

I have no sympathy for a company who is so dependent on the invasive use of personal data to survive.

Re: Preparing Our Partners for iOS 14

#48

Post by gregorythecat »

Given the attitude on HN about iOS14, I don’t think most here grasp the implication of gutting ad attribution. All publishers (news sites, indie games, etc) are going to see huge drops in CPM. It could easily be a business ending shift.

Sure removing IDFA will help protect user privacy, but let’s not kid ourselves that there will not be collateral damage. Being a third party publisher will be that much harder and walled gardens (FB, Google, Instagram) will be further cemented as the only viable business model.

Re: Preparing Our Partners for iOS 14

#49

Post by techbra »

noxer wrote: post #38

The online ads business is collapsing. I predicted that some years ago and now the first signs become visible. First data collecting will be come harder and harder because people simply don't want that anymore. Then if targeted ads are no longer possible we have a level playing field again where everyone can deliver ads not just the big players. And finally if ads do no longer pay for everything on the net we will fi…

Did you predict other stuff too?

Re: Preparing Our Partners for iOS 14

#50

Post by actuator »

netik wrote: post #41
actuator wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FB has done plenty wrong but you can make the point without upping the hyperbole as well. There is a danger of FB manipulating things on its own but they didn't sell the data to any third party including Cambridge Analytica, it was harvested because of poor API policy(your friend auth giving access to some of your details) which was fixed in the future. The behavioral profiles were built by Cambridge Analytica on its…

I suppose in a way they are monetizing/selling the use of your data because they're collecting it and selling the aggregation of that data back to advertisers. Sure, it's not a selling of the raw data record but with advertising and targeting an advertiser can get pretty close.

Yeah, that targeting bit is fine to argue and I tried to infer that with my comment as well.

I just have an issue with hyperboles like "sold individual user's behavioral profile to Cambridge Analytica" being thrown around in articles related to tech when in HN of all places, you can argue without resorting to that.

Post reply on HN