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France fines Apple €150M for “excessive” pop-ups that let users reject tracking

arstechnica.com

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Re: France fines Apple €150M for “excessive” pop-ups that let users reject tracking

#51

Post by abdullahkhalids »

duskwuff wrote: post #36
bilbo0s wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right. I'm not sure this is fixable? Or maybe there is widespread misunderstanding of the requirements in this scenario? But I also thought the rule was tough enough to require verifying that extra consent? Maybe it's not? Truly confused here.

> I'm not sure this is fixable? Not from Apple's end. Apple mandates that all requests for permissions go through a single, OS-provided dialog. If a user accepts, the permission is granted; if the user rejects, the permission is not granted, and the app can't ask again. Simple enough. App developers try to maximize their chances of getting that permission granted by adding another warm-up dialog before actually doing…

It's part of acceptable use by Apple [1], with guidelines how to show the first popup.

[1] https://developer.apple.com/design/human-interface-guideline...

Re: France fines Apple €150M for “excessive” pop-ups that let users reject tracking

#52

Post by joshstrange »

So much dumb in this article that it's hard to figure out what's actually going on.

I have to assume this this is the same "issue" with all Apple permissions. They can only be requested once by the app and if the user denies it then the user has to dig into Settings to turn it on later. To avoid/work around this a lot of app developers prompt the user before they trigger the OS-level prompt so that if the user says "no thanks" they don't "burn" their one chance to request a permission.

Apple, it seems, doesn't use those "pre-consent" screens so it's only 1 dialog. Also, to my knowledge, Apple doesn't allow it's apps to prompt with the system dialog multiple times either so they are on equal footing it appears.

As always it's important to see who is complaining/behind this:

> The French investigation was triggered by a complaint lodged by advertising industry associations.

Ahh, got it.

The "Autorité de la concurrence" seems to suffer from the same issue almost all government regulators suffer from, they know fuck-all about technology which is perfectly summed up with this:

> Benoit Coeure, the head of France's competition authority, "told reporters the regulator had not spelled out how Apple should change its app, but that it was up to the company to make sure it now complied with the ruling,"

Not only is it a "You need to make _A_ change but we won't tell you what it is"-type thing which is super annoying [0] but "Apple should change its app". If you don't understand the difference between an "App" and an "OS" then you should not be making rules for either.

ATT is a 100% win for consumers and I don't for a second believe the BS around "but what about small businesses!", just look at all the people championing small business, it's check notes, ahh, yes, Facebook and large ad agencies, bastions of small business /s.

[0] Yes, it's even more annoying when Apple does it to developers and I think we are all feeling a little bit of Schadenfreude over it.

Re: France fines Apple €150M for “excessive” pop-ups that let users reject tracking

#53

Post by stagalooo »

leereeves wrote: post #26
ezfe wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, but that second click isn't coming from Apple and they can't control it. The article specifically says that many apps feel like they need additional consent which means they have to request it through two channels. If Apple doesn't feel like they need additional consent and/or doesn't use ATT-blocked systems then they don't need that. This is stupid.

> The article specifically says that many apps feel like they need additional consent Are they right about that? Does Apple provide the app with confirmation that the user consented, and if they do, is it legal to rely on that confirmation?

> Third-party publishers "cannot rely on the ATT framework to comply with their legal obligations," so they "must continue to use their own consent collection solution," the French agency said.

This absolutely sounds like a problem caused by the law and not apple. Apps can’t rely on the prompt for legal authorization (presumably because it is filtered through apples apis?) and must therefore ask themselves.

The only two solutions I see to this is either Apple can’t prompt which means they can’t protect the user or the law can change to accept the prompt as authorization to track.

Re: France fines Apple €150M for “excessive” pop-ups that let users reject tracking

#54

Post by thebruce87m »

refulgentis wrote: post #47
thebruce87m wrote: post #29

> Benoit Coeure, the head of France's competition authority, "told reporters the regulator had not spelled out how Apple should change its app, but that it was up to the company to make sure it now complied with the ruling," Sounds like a good shakedown to me. Wait until they tweak it then fine them again for getting it “wrong”. I wonder if they even got the chance to change anything before they were fined the first…

> "told reporters the regulator had not spelled out how Apple should change its app, but that it was up to the company to make sure it now complied with the ruling,"...shakedown I wonder if this sheds light: if they said exactly what to do, there's a strong argument that they went too far when business regulators became UI designers. > Wait until they tweak it then fine them again for getting it “wrong” I don't worry…

> I can't find that bit in the article and I haven't heard it before: could you share some more?

> The Autorité also found that the rules governing the interaction between the different pop-up windows displayed undermined the neutrality of the framework, causing definite economic harm to application publishers and advertising service providers.

https://www.autoritedelaconcurrence.fr/en/press-release/targ...

“Economic harm to … advertising service providers” says it implicitly.

Re: France fines Apple €150M for “excessive” pop-ups that let users reject tracking

#55

Post by ohgr »

dinkblam wrote: post #49
gruez wrote: post #21

No good deed goes unpunished. Don't protect users' privacy, and you get flak from regulators for "not doing enough". Protect users' privacy, and you get flak from regulators because it's "too complex and hurts small companies that rely on advertising revenue". You see similar levels of cynicism directed at Google. When firefox banned third party cookies, it was almost universally welcomed, but when Chrome does it the…

[flagged]

Indeed. If they really gave a shit they'd be getting Apple to open up their APIs so we can get data out of Reminders and Notes etc without having to resort to necromancy and hacking...

Apple need one of these https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/openspecs/

Re: France fines Apple €150M for “excessive” pop-ups that let users reject tracking

#56

Post by tedunangst »

nottorp wrote: post #2

Actually Apple were fined because they don't apply the same standard to their own pop-ups that allow users to reject tracking. On Apple popups you seem to need one click, while on 3rd party popups you need to confirm twice. So the fine seems to be for treating 3rd parties differently from their own stuff. They could make their own popups require double confirmation instead...

I'm actually okay with the Apple Camera app asking me once and the Domino's Pizza app having to ask me twice. Who are the consumers being harmed here?

Re: France fines Apple €150M for “excessive” pop-ups that let users reject tracking

#57

Post by jonplackett »

Can we just frikkin ban tracking completely and just see how that goes?

I do not really care if some businesses can no longer make money in the way they like to. I’m sure they’ll figure it out if they have to. Businesses existed for a loooooong time without tracking their customers. I’m sure they can do it again.

Re: France fines Apple €150M for “excessive” pop-ups that let users reject tracking

#58

Post by enasterosophes »

refulgentis wrote: post #47
thebruce87m wrote: post #29

> Benoit Coeure, the head of France's competition authority, "told reporters the regulator had not spelled out how Apple should change its app, but that it was up to the company to make sure it now complied with the ruling," Sounds like a good shakedown to me. Wait until they tweak it then fine them again for getting it “wrong”. I wonder if they even got the chance to change anything before they were fined the first…

> "told reporters the regulator had not spelled out how Apple should change its app, but that it was up to the company to make sure it now complied with the ruling,"...shakedown I wonder if this sheds light: if they said exactly what to do, there's a strong argument that they went too far when business regulators became UI designers. > Wait until they tweak it then fine them again for getting it “wrong” I don't worry…

> I can't find that bit in the article and I haven't heard it before: could you share some more?

The second paragraph has what you want. From the article:

> The App Tracking Transparency (ATT) framework used by Apple on iPhones and iPads since 2021 makes the use of third-party applications too complex and hurts small companies that rely on advertising revenue ... The system harms "smaller publishers in particular since, unlike the main vertically integrated platforms, they depend to a large extent on third-party data collection to finance their business," the agency said.

Is there another way to interpret this than that the agency wants to protect advertizing and data collection practices by small businesses?

Re: France fines Apple €150M for “excessive” pop-ups that let users reject tracking

#59

Post by frizlab »

Swenrekcah wrote: post #33
gruez wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can definitely check on whether the user answered yes to the prompt, because if they declined you'll get a null (ie. all 0s) uuid. Whether app developers can rely on that as confirmation for tracking on their side is a purely legal question, and I wish the French government would try to resolve it on their side rather than going straight to fining Apple.

As a European Apple user I welcome any and all fines that can be levied on Apple for their anticompetitive practices.

As a European Apple user, I don’t. I specifically WANT the walled garden. It’s one of the reasons why I buy Apple.

Re: France fines Apple €150M for “excessive” pop-ups that let users reject tracking

#60

Post by ginko »

dinkblam wrote: post #49
gruez wrote: post #21

No good deed goes unpunished. Don't protect users' privacy, and you get flak from regulators for "not doing enough". Protect users' privacy, and you get flak from regulators because it's "too complex and hurts small companies that rely on advertising revenue". You see similar levels of cynicism directed at Google. When firefox banned third party cookies, it was almost universally welcomed, but when Chrome does it the…

[flagged]

You seriously underestimate the size of EU countries' budgets if you think $150M would even register.
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