Apple's privacy push cost Meta $10B • Hacker News Board

Re: Apple's privacy push cost Meta $10B

#431

Post by sebow » Fri, Feb 04, 2022, 7:28 PM UTC

Correction: Apple's war on FB/Meta/Zucc cost Meta $10B.

Let's not disingenuously pretend they did it out their own good hearts and for people's privacy: they did not. Also more people overly attribute this loss of Meta to Apple measure's than general Meta trends.Meta's rebranding, dystopian vision about the future and it's anti-society effects though their business model which promotes less trust in the population is what brings up this number, not entirely Apple, not entirely Android.Then again outlets and people who do these kind of oversimplifications might aswell do it for sensationalism, since we need the same people to be explained the truth when something changes.

Re: Apple's privacy push cost Meta $10B

#432

Post by kmlx » Fri, Feb 04, 2022, 7:30 PM UTC

user_7832 wrote: post #238

ksec wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I cant upvote you enough. This single comment contains many of the contrarian view against HN. It is nice we have these real world stories on HN to balance the ideological fight against ads, where All Ads are evil.

I disagree. The problem was never about the ads. It was about the fact that ads were forced, privacy-invasive (due to customization) and generally were terrible overall (think malware/crypto mining risks, terrible UX - think annoyingly flashy gifs, or those gigantic banners in the middle of a scenic drive), not to mention poorly regulated, leading to lots of "double your money/phallus in 3 days!" type of scams. There…

> and the average privacy-conscious user not wanting tracking.

zero traction in the real world for this. people will click on whatever you show them.

Re: Apple's privacy push cost Meta $10B

#433

Post by oconnore » Fri, Feb 04, 2022, 7:33 PM UTC

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #419

ksec wrote: post #389

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I disagree. I dont think we disagree. Like I wrote in another post, most on HN couldn't understand the difference between placement ad on Google Search Engine and Google Ads Network. And suggested we should ban all "tracking ads". And later all ads. I explicitly ask them and suggest what you just wrote. That there could be good ads, and they, by majority disagree. This isn't just on HN, it is pretty much across the…

> This single comment contains many of the contrarian view against HN. It is nice we have these real world stories on HN to balance the ideological fight against ads, where All Ads are evil. I still don't understand your point. The only reason Facebook's ability to properly attribute went down drastically is specifically because of the iOS privacy changes that require user opt in to track across different sites . Fin…

Why does ability to attribute an ad depend on the ability to track individuals?

IIUC, you can do attribution with a very basic ad: Come buy my product, you'll love it!

Then you sum up all the "/ad-34" hits, and figure out how many of those user sessions (which are now on your own site -- single domain, but perhaps leveraging a script supplied by the ad network) went and actually bought something. The ad network can correlate those sessions with the "ping" it receives to determine clicks vs. conversions.

Re: Apple's privacy push cost Meta $10B

#434

Post by babypuncher » Fri, Feb 04, 2022, 7:39 PM UTC

skizm wrote: post #223

Facebook's revenue up 35% year over year: -26% (P/E ~16) Amazon's revenue up 15% year over year: +12% (P/E 60+) I don't get the stock market. Facebook can simply turn on billions in revenue whenever they want still with WhatsApp, which has north of 2 billion MAU, and has not been monetized at all yet. Facebook is a reverse meme stock.

It's not just about how well they are doing, it's about how well they are doing compared to how well they were expected to be doing. If a bunch of people bought Facebook stock last year based on expectations that revenue would go up 45% year over year, then they probably over-valued the stock.

Re: Apple's privacy push cost Meta $10B

#435

Post by babypuncher » Fri, Feb 04, 2022, 7:41 PM UTC

slenk wrote: post #417

stjohnswarts wrote: post #402

Looks like I jumped on the iPhone bandwagon just in time to cost facebook some money! (got my iphone ~1.5 yrs ago). What I don't get is why iphone needs to scan your phone at all. I mean they literally have a treasure trove of information of most of their users, why do they need to sell that? Why don't they just act use the megatons of info they already have on you from scanning your page and your messages to other u…

What about just not using Facebook...

Before this change, Facebook could still track you in non-Facebook apps that use their software. Even if you are not a Facebook user.

Re: Apple's privacy push cost Meta $10B

#436

Post by deckard1 » Fri, Feb 04, 2022, 7:43 PM UTC

bryan_w wrote: post #412

cheriot wrote: post #377

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then they lacked the imagination. The Facebook app would have become a web browser where Facebook controls user auth, contacts and then payments. Big $$$

>would have become a web browser Not on iOS where that sort of thing is prohibited. Sure they could put a skin over safari, but apple would have banned the entire FB app as soon as they found a developer's app they didn't like.

I always wondered: why is Apple allowing WeChat to exist? Their mini apps seem in direct competition with the app store. Is this a China political thing? Are they worried about losing all access to the market there? It seems clear Apple is not applying their own rules consistently. If that's the case, wouldn't there also be anti-trust implications here?

Re: Apple's privacy push cost Meta $10B

#437

Post by chrischen » Fri, Feb 04, 2022, 7:50 PM UTC

bryan_w wrote: post #408

tehjoker wrote: post #370

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ads synthesize desire and cause people to be unhappy when the ads work. They encourage expending money that could have been saved, or taking on debt. They also create a funding situation where media producers are beholden to corporations. The implementation of ads is also wildly invasive, creepy, and propagandistic. However, focusing on implementation allows ad salesmen to lessen the sharpness of the criticism by sup…

Ads aren't inherently trying to make people unhappy (at least the good ones). Ads in the best case, are just informing a person about the existence of a thing. There have been many ads that I've found useful, not because of some evil mind games, but rather because i didn't know of a company providing such a service. I don't think there is anything inherently wrong with expending money for things that are valuable. Th…

Ads are a corruption of organic discovery though. Yes it could help you but say person A hocks product 1 because they are paid, even though product 2 is actually superior for you. Ads corrupt their incentives. Even if product 1 is good for you, product 2 is better. Product 1 ends up succeeding because they decide to play the game of corrupted promotion.

Re: Apple's privacy push cost Meta $10B

#438

Post by bobthepanda » Fri, Feb 04, 2022, 7:53 PM UTC

FabHK wrote: post #311

user_7832 wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree. The problem was never about the ads. It was about the fact that ads were forced, privacy-invasive (due to customization) and generally were terrible overall (think malware/crypto mining risks, terrible UX - think annoyingly flashy gifs, or those gigantic banners in the middle of a scenic drive), not to mention poorly regulated, leading to lots of "double your money/phallus in 3 days!" type of scams. There…

Exactly. In the old world, ads were attached to matching content, which gave an incentive to produce insightful pertinent content (and develop a reputation in a certain content subject area). Those ads were not much of a problem. Today, the ad industry tracks the user, and ads are attached to matching user interest, which gives an incentive to produce arbitrary, but addictive content, with most of the benefit accruin…

also, while ads were certainly dispersed through magazines and the like, a huge chunk of them were really just in the back and not with the main stuff.

Re: Apple's privacy push cost Meta $10B

#439

Post by HWR_14 » Fri, Feb 04, 2022, 7:59 PM UTC

ksec wrote: post #63

samwillis wrote: post #9

As a rough datapoint, I run a consumer targeted e-commerce site. We ran a campaign before Christmas were we were selling a new product that was only marketed on Facebook, we are certain that (almost) all customers found it though that Facebook campaign. Facebook was only able to attribute about 50% of the sales to the ads, it should have been close to 100%. This then meant that Facebooks estimated CPA was effectively…

I cant upvote you enough. This single comment contains many of the contrarian view against HN. It is nice we have these real world stories on HN to balance the ideological fight against ads, where All Ads are evil.

First, it's not "all ads are evil". It's the spying and tracking of ads that most people oppose.

Second, how is this a "balanced ideological fight" counterargumnet. Let's say I oppose Facebook ads as invasion of privacy (and I do). A person on the internet used Facebook ads to make money. Those are contrary why? It's not like I'm sitting here and was like "oh, now that someone made money on the ads, I'm totally in favor of them."

Re: Apple's privacy push cost Meta $10B

#440

Post by babypuncher » Fri, Feb 04, 2022, 8:01 PM UTC

FearlessNebula wrote: post #384

ajayyy wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

to link between the facebook app and other apps with the facebook ads sdk

They can’t use your Facebook account or something else for that? I’m pretty ignorant about ad tech, it’s something I’d like to learn more about.

So here's how IDFA works.

User logs in to the Facebook app, and Facebook ties the user's IDFA to their Facebook account.

User opens non-Facebook app X that uses the Facebook SDK for ads/tracking. App X sends the IDFA to Facebook, who then looks it up in their database and sees it on your account. They can now tie all user activity tracked by app X to the user's Facebook account.

Without IDFA, this kind of cross-app tracking becomes considerably more difficult.