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

WebKit Tracking Prevention Policy

webkit.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 254 posts

Re: WebKit Tracking Prevention Policy

#51

Post by downandout »

rale00 wrote: post #40

So what is going to happen when Apple succeeds in making it impossible to make any money off advertisements shown to iOS users on the web? I'm currently imagining a future where publishers start to just redirect iOS traffic to install their app, where they can actually make money. Good news for the walled garden, I guess?

I came here to say exactly this. Most profits for online ventures come from retargeted ads, and most businesses lose money on cold audiences just so that they can build retargeting audiences. As a result, when tracking dies, so does most online ad spend.

I am really curious what the web itself (outside of apps) will look like in a world where the quality of content and services implodes because of the inability of publishers to generate revenue to pay for it. You may have your privacy, but you may also not have much left to do on the web. This is definitely a “be careful what you wish for” scenario.

Re: WebKit Tracking Prevention Policy

#52

Post by geofft »

eridius wrote: post #20
anaisbetts wrote: post #18

If this tweet is accurate, Apple's choices here are pretty hard to explain as anything but "leverage / abuse mobile phone monopoly to kneecap competitors", especially because nowhere in this document does it actually describe how this makes users' lives better in any concrete, specific way https://mobile.twitter.com/Carnage4Life/status/1161779661644...

> Google Analytics Website analytics should not rely on cross-site tracking. Breaking any cross-site tracking ability of GA is unambiguously good for users. > Google Ads conversion tracking Apple already proposed a mechanism of privacy-protecting click attribution. If Google doesn't want to use that, it's because they don't respect your privacy. Again, unambiguously good for users. > Using same login across different…

Also I thought that the way Google solves the shared login problem is that completing the login process on accounts.google.com redirects you to YouTube briefly (as a top-level navigation), which sets a first-party cookie for itself and sends you back to Google.

Re: WebKit Tracking Prevention Policy

#53

Post by kibwen »

geofft wrote: post #47
rale00 wrote: post #40

So what is going to happen when Apple succeeds in making it impossible to make any money off advertisements shown to iOS users on the web? I'm currently imagining a future where publishers start to just redirect iOS traffic to install their app, where they can actually make money. Good news for the walled garden, I guess?

Didn't people make money off internet advertising before the modern surveillance-marketing complex? What happened to it? I mean, maybe the answer is that those ads were only profitable because of the novelty factor and now that we have metrics we know they don't work, or at least don't work anywhere close to how much they cost. But I do miss things like the webcomics running their own ad network, Google's textual ads…

> Didn't people make money off internet advertising before the modern surveillance-marketing complex? What happened to it?

And to take the exercise one step further: "Didn't people make the internet worth being on before it was feasible to make money off of it? What happened to that?"

Re: WebKit Tracking Prevention Policy

#54

Post by nitrogen »

downandout wrote: post #51
rale00 wrote: post #40

So what is going to happen when Apple succeeds in making it impossible to make any money off advertisements shown to iOS users on the web? I'm currently imagining a future where publishers start to just redirect iOS traffic to install their app, where they can actually make money. Good news for the walled garden, I guess?

I came here to say exactly this. Most profits for online ventures come from retargeted ads, and most businesses lose money on cold audiences just so that they can build retargeting audiences. As a result, when tracking dies, so does most online ad spend. I am really curious what the web itself (outside of apps) will look like in a world where the quality of content and services implodes because of the inability of pu…

Quality should increase dramatically because the SEO spam networks will not have ads to make money, and the remaining sites will either have a solid subscription base or be from people sharing for the love of sharing.

Re: WebKit Tracking Prevention Policy

#55

Post by peanutz454 »

andykx wrote: post #42
rale00 wrote: post #40

So what is going to happen when Apple succeeds in making it impossible to make any money off advertisements shown to iOS users on the web? I'm currently imagining a future where publishers start to just redirect iOS traffic to install their app, where they can actually make money. Good news for the walled garden, I guess?

It is not impossible to advertise without tracking users.

For some reason people just have an aversion to paying for stuff they use. Facebook's revenue per user is less than 7$, I don't use facebook, but do not mind paying that little for something I use instead of getting tracked wherever I go. Similarly Google's service that I use like gmail and photos are easily worth about 7$ per month. I would pay if they said they will stop tracking me. I don't know about youtube.

Re: WebKit Tracking Prevention Policy

#56

Post by GrifMD »

geofft wrote: post #47
rale00 wrote: post #40

So what is going to happen when Apple succeeds in making it impossible to make any money off advertisements shown to iOS users on the web? I'm currently imagining a future where publishers start to just redirect iOS traffic to install their app, where they can actually make money. Good news for the walled garden, I guess?

Didn't people make money off internet advertising before the modern surveillance-marketing complex? What happened to it? I mean, maybe the answer is that those ads were only profitable because of the novelty factor and now that we have metrics we know they don't work, or at least don't work anywhere close to how much they cost. But I do miss things like the webcomics running their own ad network, Google's textual ads…

There is a resettable device id (IDFA) that in-app (but not Safari based) ads can use for identification, but it doesn't seem to be as heavily utilized as cookie-ids in browsers.

Re: WebKit Tracking Prevention Policy

#57

Post by kibwen »

downandout wrote: post #51
rale00 wrote: post #40

So what is going to happen when Apple succeeds in making it impossible to make any money off advertisements shown to iOS users on the web? I'm currently imagining a future where publishers start to just redirect iOS traffic to install their app, where they can actually make money. Good news for the walled garden, I guess?

I came here to say exactly this. Most profits for online ventures come from retargeted ads, and most businesses lose money on cold audiences just so that they can build retargeting audiences. As a result, when tracking dies, so does most online ad spend. I am really curious what the web itself (outside of apps) will look like in a world where the quality of content and services implodes because of the inability of pu…

Not to suggest offense, but I wonder how old you are? I may not quite be a greybeard just yet, but I remember being enraptured by the content on the internet long before it was caught in the stranglehold of advertisers. Big-budget affairs would be more scarce, but there would be no dearth of content.

Re: WebKit Tracking Prevention Policy

#58

Post by stockkid »

downandout wrote: post #51
rale00 wrote: post #40

So what is going to happen when Apple succeeds in making it impossible to make any money off advertisements shown to iOS users on the web? I'm currently imagining a future where publishers start to just redirect iOS traffic to install their app, where they can actually make money. Good news for the walled garden, I guess?

I came here to say exactly this. Most profits for online ventures come from retargeted ads, and most businesses lose money on cold audiences just so that they can build retargeting audiences. As a result, when tracking dies, so does most online ad spend. I am really curious what the web itself (outside of apps) will look like in a world where the quality of content and services implodes because of the inability of pu…

I think that quality services need not implode at the cost of more privacy on the web, if we collectively shift our mind to actually pay money for the services we use rather than paying in our data. But I suspect that such change will be not easy to come by.

Re: WebKit Tracking Prevention Policy

#59

Post by sesellis »

ARandomerDude wrote: post #43
rale00 wrote: post #40

So what is going to happen when Apple succeeds in making it impossible to make any money off advertisements shown to iOS users on the web? I'm currently imagining a future where publishers start to just redirect iOS traffic to install their app, where they can actually make money. Good news for the walled garden, I guess?

Yes. The walled garden of AAPL. Spend money in an app, Apple gets a cut. As it is, Google and Facebook get the revenue instead.

As an end user I’d rather have it be this way though. At least under this model I can download apps and vote with my wallet.

Re: WebKit Tracking Prevention Policy

#60

Post by [deleted] »

stockkid wrote: post #58
downandout wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I came here to say exactly this. Most profits for online ventures come from retargeted ads, and most businesses lose money on cold audiences just so that they can build retargeting audiences. As a result, when tracking dies, so does most online ad spend. I am really curious what the web itself (outside of apps) will look like in a world where the quality of content and services implodes because of the inability of pu…

I think that quality services need not implode at the cost of more privacy on the web, if we collectively shift our mind to actually pay money for the services we use rather than paying in our data. But I suspect that such change will be not easy to come by.

[deleted]
Post reply on HN