Apple to delay privacy change threatening Facebook, mobile ad market • Hacker News Board

Re: Apple to delay privacy change threatening Facebook, mobile ad market

#81

Post by amadeuspagel » Thu, Sep 03, 2020, 7:30 PM UTC

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #44

baby wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you realize the number of free services that one uses thanks to ads? Not everyone can afford to pay for these. I for one use gmail, google maps, google calendar, google docs, etc. Every day

The world would be arguably a better place if all of those services went dark tomorrow. Everything offered there can be done elsewhere by better products with less user harm, for free, today.

Meaningless drivel. Billions of people rely on these free service, but in some unspecified place they could be done better, without some unspecified harm. OK.

Re: Apple to delay privacy change threatening Facebook, mobile ad market

#82

Post by dialtone » Thu, Sep 03, 2020, 7:30 PM UTC

GekkePrutser wrote: post #60

m0zg wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Zuck needs this least of all - people post their lives to FB via Instagram, all you need is a high quality, high cardinality object detector, and some NLP. For ads shown on e.g. Instagram or FB, there should be no impact at all. Google could mine Photos I suppose, but there's no user graph there, and no text blurb, and no "likes", so it's less valuable. Google is also more reliant on tracking due to DoubleClick and a…

Well Facebook was the biggest name complaining in the media that this would seriously hurt their ad revenue. I also wonder why, because their apps already require a user to sign in. It must reference to cross-app tracking, I'm also surprised they were so dependent on that.

Facebook didn’t complain... they said they would shut off FAN which generated a whole of $2B in revenue for them in 2018 when they make $80B this year.

They were telling their customers to find an alternative monetization strategy since this wasn’t going to be worth it for them.

Re: Apple to delay privacy change threatening Facebook, mobile ad market

#83

Post by amadeuspagel » Thu, Sep 03, 2020, 7:33 PM UTC

ramraj07 wrote: post #34

godzillabrennus wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It pays for the modern web. It is probably in need of more transparency and clear user defined controls but hardly a cancer.

And what have we gained from it? Toxic unconstrained social networks, more methods to make everyone feel uglier and worthless, endlessly consume random crap without producing anything of value, and robotic hamburger making shops that no one asked for and are somehow IT related?

This site, for one, is funded by job ads. No one forces you to use it, or any other "toxic" site that makes you feel "ugly and worthless". If you think the entire web (or the entire ad funded web) is toxic and makes you feel "ugly and worthless" what are you doing here?

Re: Apple to delay privacy change threatening Facebook, mobile ad market

#84

Post by amadeuspagel » Thu, Sep 03, 2020, 7:34 PM UTC

moron4hire wrote: post #50

godzillabrennus wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It pays for the modern web. It is probably in need of more transparency and clear user defined controls but hardly a cancer.

Given the number of newspapers and blogs closing every year, it doesn't actually seem to be the case that adtech successfully pays for the "modern Web".

Lots of businesses go broke, that doesn't mean we should dismiss the idea of paying for things as "cancer", similarly the fact that some websites go broke doesn't mean we should dismiss ads as "cancer".

Re: Apple to delay privacy change threatening Facebook, mobile ad market

#85

Post by corobo » Thu, Sep 03, 2020, 7:34 PM UTC

gowld wrote: post #64

AnonHP wrote: post #6

(Re-posting on this thread) What a bummer! As an iOS user, I was eagerly looking forward to this feature, wanting to tell others about it and how the upgrade to iOS 14 would be worth it just to clearly expose apps that want to track users. I already have ad tracking limited in my settings (Settings->Privacy->Limit Ad Tracking), but that was something I had to explicitly turn on, and there’s no notice on which apps us…

The only reason you are so desperate for this feature is that Apple refuses to let you install a firewall on the phone you supposedly own. Otherwise you could be running pihole today.

How’ve you got it set up on not Apple? Sounds cool

Re: Apple to delay privacy change threatening Facebook, mobile ad market

#86

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Sep 03, 2020, 7:35 PM UTC

gowld wrote: post #64

AnonHP wrote: post #6

(Re-posting on this thread) What a bummer! As an iOS user, I was eagerly looking forward to this feature, wanting to tell others about it and how the upgrade to iOS 14 would be worth it just to clearly expose apps that want to track users. I already have ad tracking limited in my settings (Settings->Privacy->Limit Ad Tracking), but that was something I had to explicitly turn on, and there’s no notice on which apps us…

The only reason you are so desperate for this feature is that Apple refuses to let you install a firewall on the phone you supposedly own. Otherwise you could be running pihole today.

[deleted]

Re: Apple to delay privacy change threatening Facebook, mobile ad market

#87

Post by amadeuspagel » Thu, Sep 03, 2020, 7:35 PM UTC

loceng wrote: post #33

godzillabrennus wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It pays for the modern web. It is probably in need of more transparency and clear user defined controls but hardly a cancer.

By your logic the conclusion is that the modern web is heavily cancerous, which arguably it is. There are other ways to pay for innovation and tools, to be preventative-proactive so cancer can't exist or at least not thrive.

Clearly those unspecified other ways aren't working well enough, or ads wouldn't be so dominant.

Re: Apple to delay privacy change threatening Facebook, mobile ad market

#88

Post by legulere » Thu, Sep 03, 2020, 7:36 PM UTC

sushid wrote: post #63

legulere wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you realize how much bullshit people buy that they do not need because of ads? People end up with much less money because of that. And the environment suffers too. And no, without apps people would be able to discover new things. Current ads are not about facts but connecting feelings with products.

It's not exactly like people weren't buying things before the internet. Hell, there's advertising on the walls of Pompeii. If anything, better advertising gets us to buy stupid shit people are actually more interested in than before. At least we're not buying pet rocks now.

Psychology and a normalization of false promises (thus far will make you a real man, this product will make you desired) only started around 1900.

The benign ads can still be seen in China when people write their service and a phone number on the wall, basically the only graffiti you will see there.

Re: Apple to delay privacy change threatening Facebook, mobile ad market

#89

Post by mmacvicarprett » Thu, Sep 03, 2020, 7:36 PM UTC

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #67

vanc_cefepime wrote: post #38

As much as I like iOS in this regard, it’s a shame Apple felt this threatened to delay this feature. I’m sure privacy is a high priority to Apple but when it comes to money, expect them to do this more often. Privacy users are already taking things into their own hands anyway, so this only hurts the tech novices. Edit: It’s funny how on HN, you can tell the ones who get triggered when you say something disparaging ab…

Yeah, I'm curious which large partner or top 10 app provider said they'd delist on iOS if not given a stay of execution. The number of companies that could cause this decision is small.

It is more complicated than that. There is a whole industry that depends on tracking IDFA to function, it is not about being creepy, something simple as knowing if your marketing campaign is effective becomes very hard. On one side we have hoarders of data like Facebook and Google, on another side there are legitimate use cases like app publishers measuring marketing performance.

SKAdNetwork was poorly designed, it did not involve publishers and channels and till this week it was literally impossible to test. A 3 month period will allow all actors in the advertising industry to integrate and come up with solutions that protect the user's privacy.

If this was released in the current state, you are giving the whole advertising market in a silver plate to google and facebook, who because of their huge share of SDK integrations are much better prepared to overcome the limitations. The market would also shrink instantly, many publishers and channels would disappear, specially the small ones.

Re: Apple to delay privacy change threatening Facebook, mobile ad market

#90

Post by dialtone » Thu, Sep 03, 2020, 7:37 PM UTC

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #57

njitram wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ads will definitely not disappear, only the tracking aspect. It will be more contextual ads probably, related to what page your are looking at, less related to you as an individual.

And that is both a user-respecting and effective way to advertise!

This would have been true for this change as well, clearly if Apple chose a different path means that it's not as clear cut as you imply here. And yeah contextual and stuff is nice but will simply not drive the same revenue for publishers.