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Google Joins Apple to Opt-out of Mobile Advertising IDs

thebigtech.substack.com

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Re: Google Joins Apple to Opt-out of Mobile Advertising IDs

#71

Post by distribot »

swiley wrote: post #56
faitswulff wrote: post #4

> However, if Mark Zuckerberg goes back on the drawing board to figure what went wrong, he’ll probably realize that data breaches and privacy awareness aren’t the causes of an impending downfall. > Instead, a lack of effort in developing their own operating system a decade ago might be Facebook’s biggest regret. And this has come back to bite them today. Crazy that it came to this.

They had the open web, which they worked well to kill. Facebook can go die in the grave they dug for themselves.

I don’t see how that is related since nowadays most people use Facebook products from mobile apps. They’d still be hosed right now.

Re: Google Joins Apple to Opt-out of Mobile Advertising IDs

#72

Post by sequoia »

Through shrewd acquisitions, blatantly copying the exclusivity of rivals (read: Snapchat, TikTok), Facebook managed to become an integral part of our lives in less than a decade.

This is just plain stupid. Yes Facebook is a Big Evil Corp but they created a ton of value through original product development, not just “shrewd acquisitions” and ripping off other products.

Didn’t read past this point, author blew their credibility here.

Re: Google Joins Apple to Opt-out of Mobile Advertising IDs

#73

Post by parthdesai »

alexanderdmitri wrote: post #31
parthdesai wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anecdotal, but I think people on HN tend to care about privacy more than the general population. In my friend group, where no one else works in tech, everyone still actively uses facebook. And I haven't even started to talk about Instagram and Whatsapp. An average person doesn't care about it as much as you think or you would like to think that they do. Heck a part of me is happy that I get relevant ads rather than s…

Many people on HN are the ones making the "sausage" grandparent refers to. Maybe the more general public still eats the free food and looks the other way to give the benefit of the doubt, but it's surely a signal that a good deal of people involved with the factory process and its engineering are having a hard time stomaching it.

Is there? Is facebook really having a hard time hiring new engineers? Last time I checked, it still was super hard to get a job at facebook, implying there are a lot of people willing to work at facebook.

Re: Google Joins Apple to Opt-out of Mobile Advertising IDs

#74

Post by Miraste »

gpm wrote: post #50
nottorp wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think VR will ever take over the world. Too many people get motion sickness from it and I don't think it's only a matter of more pixels/fps. AR... maybe. My personal opinion is the needed electronics (and especially the battery tech) aren't small enough yet, if we're talking AR glasses. If we're talking AR on phones, where's the killer app? Pokemon go?

> Too many people get motion sickness from it and I don't think it's only a matter of more pixels/fps. What do you think it's a matter of then? I guess I would add latency to the list, but those 3 metrics seem to capture the difference in visual perception between vr and the real world?

There are a lot of differences, some of which cause more discomfort than others. Color and contrast are two smaller ones; VR headsets aren't HDR yet and it really shows when trying for realism.

There is also focal length, which is fixed (generally at 2 meters) in VR and creates discomfort, especially when reading. Facebook has eye tracking and motorized varifocal lenses to deal with this, but they're too big and loud and they haven't been able to put them in commercial headsets.

Re: Google Joins Apple to Opt-out of Mobile Advertising IDs

#75

Post by pmontra »

tmccrary55 wrote: post #62
insert_coin wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it that crazy? It's the reason Google not only developed Android, but Chrome, ChromeOS, Fuchsia, the Google speaker thing and all that, and Samsung has Tizen, which is sort of their plan B, of plan F or whatever, and Amazon developed the Fire line, Alexa, AWS, the speaker thing, etc. They know they can't trust each other. Even Apple had to develop their own maps! It's really a surprise Facebook was so blindsided b…

Facebook's never done anything great or prescient. They were just at "the right place, at the right time" to be MySpace 2.0.

I don't like FB as anybody else but FB was not alone there at that time. There were many other social networks and FB was the one that succeeded. Other social networks were born later on and FB is still here. Beating the competition and surviving almost 20 years is quite great enough IMHO.

Re: Google Joins Apple to Opt-out of Mobile Advertising IDs

#76

Post by browningstreet »

distribot wrote: post #71
swiley wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They had the open web, which they worked well to kill. Facebook can go die in the grave they dug for themselves.

I don’t see how that is related since nowadays most people use Facebook products from mobile apps. They’d still be hosed right now.

People visit sites outside of apps and those sites feed back data to Facebook for targeting purposes. On desktop, people use FB in browsers, too.

Re: Google Joins Apple to Opt-out of Mobile Advertising IDs

#77

Post by heavyarms »

dannyw wrote: post #41
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is common for Substack articles recently: It delivers a conclusion readers want to hear (Facebook bad! Zuckerberg going to lose a lot of money! Business model destroyed!) but the reality doesn’t quite match the pitch once you decipher the underlying facts. It feels like Substack authors got started in an ultra-competitive world where they knew clickbait journalism was the norm, so they’ve gone all-in on saying w…

It's not just substack. It's a plague that has infected regular journalism; they're just more cunning in disguising it. Think about all the "Sources say" articles you've read at 'respected publications' over the past few years. How many of them turned out to be true or collaborated?

You are agreeing to a chain of comments about an article that reaches an exaggerated conclusion based mostly on opinion and not on facts and careful analysis, and your response is to claim that the entire news industry is guilty of it too based on a vague notion that there was a lot of "sources say" reporting that was (made up? inaccurate?) over a specific period.

So, in conclusion, human beings excel at pattern matching, even when the patterns aren't there, and sometimes use their pattern matching ability to validate the point of view which aligns most closely to their identity and psychological needs.

Re: Google Joins Apple to Opt-out of Mobile Advertising IDs

#78

Post by prox »

oefrha wrote: post #67
dannyw wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not just substack. It's a plague that has infected regular journalism; they're just more cunning in disguising it. Think about all the "Sources say" articles you've read at 'respected publications' over the past few years. How many of them turned out to be true or collaborated?

> they're just more cunning in disguising it. Are they? For instance, Ars Technica used to be a source of high quality tech journalism for nerds, where the journalists seemed to really “get it”. There’s still some of that left, but in the recent years, I observed more and more bland nothingburger articles coated in clickbait titles popping up in my feed; to add insult to injury, the comment section was sinking deeper…

I would wager that advertisement income and quality of journalism go hand in hand?

Re: Google Joins Apple to Opt-out of Mobile Advertising IDs

#79

Post by breakfastduck »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #36
pavlov wrote: post #16

The article manages to contradict itself at every turn. For example: "Only yesterday, Google announced its plans to make advertising ID an opt-in feature." A few paragraphs later: "Google’s opt-out ad-tracking popup isn’t on the forefront like in iOS. Instead, it’s buried deep in the Google Play Service settings — which could be difficult for the non-tech savvy user to find out." And this opener: "Facebook has a mark…

This is common for Substack articles recently: It delivers a conclusion readers want to hear (Facebook bad! Zuckerberg going to lose a lot of money! Business model destroyed!) but the reality doesn’t quite match the pitch once you decipher the underlying facts. It feels like Substack authors got started in an ultra-competitive world where they knew clickbait journalism was the norm, so they’ve gone all-in on saying w…

That's not substack. It's the entire news based media.

Journalism is probably at its lowest ever point.

Re: Google Joins Apple to Opt-out of Mobile Advertising IDs

#80

Post by ryandrake »

alexanderdmitri wrote: post #31
parthdesai wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anecdotal, but I think people on HN tend to care about privacy more than the general population. In my friend group, where no one else works in tech, everyone still actively uses facebook. And I haven't even started to talk about Instagram and Whatsapp. An average person doesn't care about it as much as you think or you would like to think that they do. Heck a part of me is happy that I get relevant ads rather than s…

Many people on HN are the ones making the "sausage" grandparent refers to. Maybe the more general public still eats the free food and looks the other way to give the benefit of the doubt, but it's surely a signal that a good deal of people involved with the factory process and its engineering are having a hard time stomaching it.

> a good deal of people involved with the factory process and its engineering are having a hard time stomaching it.

Yet we continue to make the sausage.

Whenever privacy stuff comes up on HN, the comments go really weird: "Privacy is good, companies should stop spying on users. Targeted ads are intrusive and collect too much data." - said by people whose next JIRA ticket at work is to add another ad tracker to their own product! Point this out, and suddenly it's "Well, a job's a job.. We have no power over what we work on, and just do what management says." - Right next to the other HN article talking about how software engineers have a great deal of market power, company choice, and mobility due to the shortage of engineers. It's just contradiction after contradiction.

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