[HN Gopher] Facebook is pushing back on Apple's new iPhone priva...
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Facebook is pushing back on Apple's new iPhone privacy rules
Author : pedro-guimaraes
Score : 534 points
Date : 2021-02-26 15:01 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.npr.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.npr.org)
| mkl95 wrote:
| I don't think there will be such thing as a war. Rules are the
| same for every company, Apple are just telling FB in advance that
| they are not making an exception.
| mondainx wrote:
| Fuck Facebook and Apple too, they both suck ass and have shitty
| business practices.
| sjm wrote:
| If personalized ads are really so beneficial to their customers,
| Facebook should have no problem convincing them to allow the
| tracking they need and opt-in.
| Jonanin wrote:
| Apple controls the messaging on the dialog, not FB. It is
| worded in such a way that >95% of people will likely disallow
| it.
| jackson1442 wrote:
| In addition to my sibling comment, most apps now have pre-
| prompts for permissions, like where you see a full-pager
| telling you why the app wants to use notifications where you
| consent before getting the real consent prompt.
| sjm wrote:
| Part of the messaging (the title and buttons) is built-in,
| but in all of these sorts of dialogs apps provide their own
| strings to explain why they're asking for permission. The
| screenshot in the original article shows where Facebook can
| explain to end-users why they need to track them across other
| apps and websites.
| firephreek wrote:
| "Personalized Ads for Small Businesses" What a bunch of malarkey.
| I've worked in ad space and the actual ability for SB's to
| compete is laughable. Their budgets are so comparatively small
| that they simply don't get the assistance necessary. They're
| drinking through paper straws while the big dogs swim in lakes.
|
| SB's absolutely need a platform to compete, but I'm absolutely
| incredulous that FB is that platform, much less Google or any
| other like company.
| bredren wrote:
| For a small business that's been very successful through word-
| of-mouth and is now gearing up to begin marketing that includes
| online advertising:
|
| What tools or platforms for advertising are a better fit for
| small business in your mind?
| phabora wrote:
| Small business is just a propaganda tool. The idea has some
| allure, maybe because it reminds Americans of their priomordial
| beginning as settlers, homesteaders, yeomans, craftsmen (or so
| the stories go).
| giantrobot wrote:
| In real numbers most businesses in the US are "small
| businesses" because they have 500 or fewer employees. It says
| nothing about their financials though. A hedge fund managing
| billions of dollars, a start up with millions in VC funding,
| and a mom and pop florist are all "small businesses".
|
| I'm definitely not disagreeing "small business" has been
| turned into a propaganda term. That process was _helped_ by
| the silly tax classification of what 's a "small business". A
| lot of marketing dollars go into making people think the mom
| and pop florist when they hear the term and not the hedge
| fund.
| the-dude wrote:
| _Small business_ vs _Big tech_. A clever diversion.
| TheJoYo wrote:
| They should own their social media again instead of leasing out
| their IP to FB for little to no exposure.
| sakis wrote:
| I wonder what would happen if FB and Google went a step further
| and decided to give Apple the Windows Phone (or Huawei)
| treatment, by pulling all their apps from the App Store, citing
| these changes as the reason they can't support Apple's platform.
| I'm not sure the majority of iOS devices users would be happy
| with any of the involved parties, and that includes Apple.
| Swizec wrote:
| They all work great in the browser. You don't need their apps.
| Bilal_io wrote:
| You forgot the /s
| TheSpiceIsLife wrote:
| I wonder what would happen if all partied just came clean.
|
| This isn't about privacy or user data, it's a disagreement over
| how revenue is shared.
|
| So rather than this sort of wording from the article: _centers
| on the iPhone data of millions of people and whether companies
| should be able to track_
|
| We be read something like this: _Facebook and Google go to war
| with Apple over revenue sharing agreement_.
| FabHK wrote:
| Eh? Revenue is affected by this, no doubt (otherwise
| thefacebook.com wouldn't go to war), but of course this is
| also about privacy and user data. How can you deny that?
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| You should provide some data to support a bold claim like
| Facebook and Google is sharing their revenue with Apple.
| TheSpiceIsLife wrote:
| There's one big pie, and these companies slice the majority
| of it up between them.
|
| When one or another of them does things that changes who
| gets what sized slice, the others get upset.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| What does it mean to say "there's one big pie"?
|
| There's one big pie of US GDP. That doesn't mean anytime
| someone gains or loses revenue that they are sharing it
| with someone else. Or at least there is no utility to be
| gained from that statement.
| yladiz wrote:
| > I'm not sure the majority of iOS devices users would be happy
| with any of the involved parties, and that includes Apple.
|
| I think Apple is smart enough to know how to spin it if
| Facebook or Google left the App Store because of privacy
| issues. Some users would be annoyed at Apple, sure, but I would
| bet many users would see it as a Facebook/Google problem. I
| didn't hear people blame Apple for requiring listing what data
| is being collected when Google started not updating their apps
| and warnings started appearing.
| Mc_Big_G wrote:
| I'd be thrilled.
| taf2 wrote:
| I like this idea, but I imagine it could be seen as anti
| competitive for Google to do this... I know it would motive me
| to use an Android phone, but that might not help Google case of
| being a none monopoly player... Also I could see Apple firing
| back by removing Google as their primary search engine
| inversely impacting Google search ads revenue... So definitely
| I think Apple has the upper hand. Although I do not believe
| Apple is honest in their privacy stance... Native apps IMO are
| far far less private then a browser application...
| qvrjuec wrote:
| Google is the default search engine on iOS because they pay
| Apple $7 billion annually for the privilege, I don't think
| they're going to be strongly motivated to pull the plug on
| that
| hikerclimber wrote:
| hopefully we have 17,000% inflation in the U.S. so even rich
| people can't afford food. hopefully we have the dust bowl again
| this year and worse so all produce made in the us fails.
| dleslie wrote:
| I wish journalists wouldn't refer to Apple's app store cut as
| "tax" ; it's a service fee.
|
| That is the price Apple charges for providing payment-related
| services on its platform. It is not a tax.
| smilliken wrote:
| Apple also insists that you must use their payment services,
| you can't use a competitor's. the policies are designed so that
| they get a cut of all revenue in the ecosystem, that's
| effectively a tax.
| multiplegeorges wrote:
| > Apple also insists that you must use their payment
| services, you can't use a competitor's.
|
| Yes, you can. Put your app on Android. Done.
| Daho0n wrote:
| "Microsoft wasn't abusing it's monopoly. You could just use
| Linux!"
|
| BS.
| sjm wrote:
| This isn't strictly true. Plenty of iOS apps use e.g. Stripe
| for payment processing, including the last company I worked
| for. The App Store billing/subscriptions requirement is only
| for apps providing strictly digital goods/services. Google
| has the same policy on the Play store.
| jonfw wrote:
| Is my income tax a price the government charges for providing
| roads, schools, and protection? Just because there are services
| rendered doesn't mean it's not a tax.
|
| There is no opt out, and price is a function of earnings rather
| than value added.
| buzzerbetrayed wrote:
| Regardless of how hard you try to justify it as being similar
| to government tax (which you go to jail for not paying), the
| fact is that calling it the "Apple Tax" is an editorial
| decision used to paint it negatively. Now, you may support
| calling it that (or not) depending on how you feel about
| Apple. But let's not pretend it is the appropriate, unbiased
| name for it.
| multiplegeorges wrote:
| There is an opt out. You might not _like_ the opt out, but it
| remains a choice. You don 't have to use Apple's platform or
| services.
|
| Taxes imposed by a government are compulsory.
|
| Words still have meaning and using tax to refer to Apple's
| fees is completely incorrect.
| tobib wrote:
| > Taxes imposed by a government are compulsory.
|
| You can opt out by moving out of the country. /s
|
| In that sense, I don't think you can opt out of the "Apple
| tax" because there are exactly 2 platforms both of which
| you have to be present on, otherwise you're not gonna reach
| your users.
| Spivak wrote:
| But that's exactly the point. You pay it because they
| have something you want. You can say they shouldn't be
| allowed to gatekeep their markets but that's a separate
| thing. Taxes you have to pay even if you don't want the
| services.
| jonfw wrote:
| I can not do business in the US, or I can not do business
| with iPhone users. My only 'opt out' is to quit doing
| business in their market. I continue to see similarities
| here
| bhupy wrote:
| You're right that it's more of a difference in degree and
| not kind. That said, the difference in degree is so vast
| as to be consequential. It's trivially easy to switch
| phone platforms (in the last 7 years, I've flip flopped
| between Android and iOS twice). In contrast, it's
| extremely difficult and disruptive to uproot your life
| and move countries; and that also presupposes that the
| destination country is willing to accept you.
| jonfw wrote:
| In business terms, however, it's much easier to target
| consumers of a different country than of a different App
| Store. Even if you blacklist the top two countries, US
| and China, you still have a lot of consumers largely in
| India and Europe to buy your product. If you blacklist
| two major app stores it's effectively impossible to make
| money developing apps.
|
| This isn't bad for consumers, it's bad for producers.
| phabora wrote:
| We all agree about what taxes are. Some just attach more
| libertarian sensibilities/fears/paranoia to that word.
| ska wrote:
| > and price is a function
|
| There are tons of things that are paid for on a percentage
| basis, and the "is this value added or not" line is pretty
| difficult to define clearly.
|
| It doesn't make sense to think of it as a tax, really, sure
| taxes can be used to provide services (or other things) but
| the fee being paid here is directly tied to the service you
| are receiving. If you want to draw parallels with government,
| it would better match a toll road or bridge; you can still
| argue the total collected toll doesn't fairly match the cost
| of providing the service, but the mechanism is at least
| clear.
| jonfw wrote:
| I can opt out of a toll road by taking the long way. If I
| was forced to take a toll road to get to my office, I would
| consider that a tax.
| 5cott0 wrote:
| devs also pay $100 - $300 a year for the privilege
| reaperducer wrote:
| Not all devs do.
|
| If you are someone who can't afford 30C/ a day to use Apple's
| App Store, you can get the fee reduced or waived.
| newbie578 wrote:
| Hmm I do find it interesting in the article that Facebook stated
| the reason Apple doing this is to push towards paid apps, i.e.
| subscriptions instead of ads, since Apple takes it's mafia 30%
| tax cut on subscriptions, but not on ads.
|
| That actually does make some sense, I do enjoy this infighting
| between Big Tech, since the user will ultimately benefit by
| seeing each companies true colors (and that includes the "Cult"
| Inc., not just Facebook)
| tailrecursion wrote:
| My guess is over time most free apps that depend on tracking will
| refuse to work unless allowed to track. And most users will
| acquiesce, just so they can use an app that they want to use.
|
| Even the Facebook app itself could refuse to work unless tracking
| is turned on.
|
| It's still a positive change overall, and still affects Facebook
| but it appears to me the effect will be minor, even temporary.
| davidjade wrote:
| I wonder though, could they and still get approved by Apple?
| Apps have to have some level of minimum functionality to pass
| review. You can require a sign in but I wonder if you could
| require tracking.
| Jonanin wrote:
| You are right, and not only that: personalized ads are better
| for users and for small businesses. I'm ready for the
| downvotes, but this is very much true.
| jdj627jsh wrote:
| Can you elaborate on how targeted ads are better for users?
| Do those benefits outweigh the documented harms and abuses,
| the risk of further harms and abuses?
| Jonanin wrote:
| Can you elaborate on what the documented harms and abuses
| are, and what the further risks are?
|
| People prefer seeing ads that are relevant to them compared
| to random ads. This is not controversial, it's very much
| established.
|
| Of course, the benefits to the businesses, especially those
| businesses without existing brand recognition, are quite
| obvious.
| paulmd wrote:
| The Apple demographic is far more willing to pay for an app
| than an Android demographic, so the free app model is much less
| significant.
|
| I'd happily pay five bucks once to never be tracked on some
| dumb app, and that pretty much is the Apple demographic at this
| point.
| fmakunbound wrote:
| Sure, but then the App Store rules will be changed to target
| such app behavior.
| xuhu wrote:
| Won't this get handled by apps asking users to choose between all
| tracking, or multi-page-collapsible-ambiguous-form-for-selective-
| tracking ? Nobody spends minutes to deselect every category in
| those forms.
| RL_Quine wrote:
| The option is OS provided, yes or no.
| vikas-kumar wrote:
| I am really not sure why is it only fb whose name pops up in
| media. IMO, this update will affect entire advertising industry.
| Be it giants like Google, Tradedesk, Amazon etc. In the end it is
| loss to the advertisers as lack of data will be hampering their
| measurements and targeting. Not sure if for internet platforms it
| matters. Will this be good for businesses in streaming TV like
| roku, apple, firetv?
| alonsonic wrote:
| Because Facebook is the most vocal opposition. There is a bit
| of media bias too because a headline with Facebook gets more
| attention, but there is no doubt that they are putting
| themselves in the spotlight by publishing big pieces in the NYT
| etc.
| thenewwazoo wrote:
| Fuckin' let 'em. I'll pick Apple over Facebook eight days a week,
| and if Facebook takes their ball and goes home, well, even better
| since it'll finally get me to completely pull the plug on their
| platform.
| ddtaylor wrote:
| What's stopping you from quitting Facebook right now and how
| does this change that?
| jackjeff wrote:
| The problem with Facebook tracking is that even if (like me)
| you don't use Facebook / don't have it installed random apps
| on the App Store will push your data to King Zuck.
|
| This is what the data sharing is about. If you're a regular
| user a Facebook that ad from the Charleston SC burger joint
| will still reach you. They don't share that data with anyone
| else.
|
| It's the random game or app you install that will no longer
| push their data to Facebook.
|
| Edit. Fixed typo.
| warmfuzzykitten wrote:
| Agreed. Though it's fairly simple to opt out now, just delete
| the Facebook app. The browser still works just fine.
| narrator wrote:
| I will agree to the tracking. I like the ads on facebook. I have
| found out about a lot of interesting niche products from them.
| cecja wrote:
| Well shit isn't it nice that other people who don't like it
| have a choice now and for you nothing changes.
| Sebb767 wrote:
| User can still easily opt-in to tracking - so saying this is
| bankrupting small businesses is really admitting that they need
| users to be tracked _without their knowledge and /or against
| their will_.
|
| I mean, it was always kinda obvious, but seeing them confirm it
| out right is interesting, to say the least.
| gameman144 wrote:
| I could be wrong, but I think the argument is against the
| framing of "do you want this app to track you" being one-sided,
| rather than against an opt-in interstitial in general.
|
| E.g. if anti-vaxxers started pushing a campaign saying "doctors
| want to stab your arms with needles", I'd expect a similar
| pushback from the medical community about the perception-
| coloring of this phrasing (even if it's technically true). In
| both cases, it seems like the argument is more of "Yes people
| can opt in to that, but the opt-in process shouldn't bias you
| against opting in"
|
| Whether that's a fair argument or not, I'll leave to society.
| jackson1442 wrote:
| I think the prompt's phrasing is completely fair, especially
| since facebook can make their case in their pre-consent
| screen and in the string in the system popup.
| gameman144 wrote:
| This is a fair point. I hold that there are still scenarios
| in which opt-in text could sway users one way or another,
| but given that individual apps can make their case before
| the user sees the interstitial here, I don't personally see
| anything wrong with the phrasing of "Can this app track
| you?"
| tomjen3 wrote:
| I would love to read the article, but I can't unless I agree to
| their stupid cookie prompt.
|
| The insanity of the modern web.
| [deleted]
| christiansakai wrote:
| I'm wondering if there are people on HN that supports Facebook
| (aside from FB employees, or FB stock holders of course). Seems
| every time this topic gets rehashed FB seems to gain 100% of
| hate. Not saying anything about FB or Apple, but I just want to
| see if there exists people here that support FB.
| maxwellito wrote:
| Can Facebook block access to users refusing the tracking consent?
| Nextgrid wrote:
| Officially, no. That's against the Apple developer guidelines.
|
| Whether Apple will have the courage to enforce them is another
| matter. We've already seen evidence that their new "privacy
| nutrition labels" are sometimes inaccurate with no consequences
| for the app developers.
| maxwellito wrote:
| Thanks!
|
| I was wondering due to the recent changes of Reddit T&Cs
| vmception wrote:
| Let us choose which contacts to share too!
|
| I'm boycotting all or nothing now that it's been made better for
| photos.
| blovescoffee wrote:
| "Ninety percent of our customers are finding us because of
| Facebook, because of those personalized ads, so if something was
| to disrupt that, it's going to be a problem,"
|
| Why is it so hard for people to understand that if your business
| relies on unethical practices, they're the problem - not those
| who pursue privacy. If your business relied on breaking into
| people's homes and reading through their personal file cabinet,
| it wouldn't even be a question whether or not that business
| should exist. Taking people's digital data without consent is
| okay though? Plenty of small and large businesses thrived just
| fine before Facebook. Sorry/not sorry that not everyone buys into
| surveillance capitalism.
| uneekname wrote:
| As an Android user, how much of this should I be worried about? I
| assume Google won't be pushing for this as much as Apple is? What
| can I do to reduce app tracking on my phone?
| breakfastduck wrote:
| Enraging facebook higher ups to this extent is a pretty sure fire
| way of proving you're doing the right thing.
|
| Good on Apple. I fear if it was any other company Facebook would
| be able to persuade them to change.
| system16 wrote:
| > Facebook says Apple is attempting to push free apps, which
| often sweep data up and feed it to advertisers, to move to
| subscription models.
|
| And I think most users will see no problem with this.
|
| If I value the service enough, I'll pay for it. That Apple gets
| 30% is another discussion and as a user, not my problem.
|
| If I don't value the service that much, I now get to be informed
| and can decide whether I value using it more than my privacy.
| Facebook's all out propaganda campaign shows which choice they
| think most users will make in this instance.
| bozzcl wrote:
| In fact, I would say apps would get a lot more revenue by
| switching to a paid model. I don't know the exact numbers, but
| I think I've heard monthly revenue from tracking is less than a
| cent per user.
|
| Now imagine they charge $1 monthly for their app subscription.
| Hell, even a couple of cents would be an improvement. Or even
| better: they charge a one-time payment to buy the app.
| ssijak wrote:
| Imagine a world with 0 tracking on any website/app. It would be
| horrendous. Advertising would not stop, it would just be so bad
| that we as users will be in even worse situation than today.
|
| Now, current situation is also not good, with the amount of
| tracking/ers not only affecting privacy, but also the look, speed
| and size of the web pages in a very bad way.
|
| Also no advertising on the web at all, as much as people say they
| would want it, I think they would even less want the effect of no
| advertising at all. So many services would be not be feasible,
| and everything else would be pay per month to access kind of
| thing. And you can only pay so much.
|
| There should be a middle ground. But me personally would rather
| prefer _some_ (where that amount is less than today) targeted
| advertising to the alternatives. Even though I almost never click
| on ads, on any platform.
| ytwySXpMbS wrote:
| Why would you want effective advertising? The sole purpose of
| advertising is making you buy something you otherwise wouldn't
| buy. Call me old fashioned but if I want to buy something I
| look up reviews, I don't just scroll Facebook until a good
| advert pops up.
| move-on-by wrote:
| I don't have Facebook and I'm generally skeptical of Apple's pro-
| privacy messaging. However, seeing this response from Facebook
| has gotten me very excited for this update. There must be more to
| it then Apple's generic 'Most Advanced Update Ever' marketing.
| I'm still skeptical of Apple's commitment to privacy, but I'm
| certainly happy to get this update. Apple should thank Facebook
| for the free marketing.
| TACIXAT wrote:
| I was a long time Android user (and former Google employee) and
| this was the feature that got me to buy an iPhone.
| kml wrote:
| It's one giant fighting another. Apple wants to destroy ad
| revenue and shift everyone to a paid App model because Apple
| can get its 30%. I bet you if Apple loses control of the
| AppStore for anti trust reasons, they would be all for ads.
| lstamour wrote:
| That's Facebook's claim, yes. And when it comes to Apple News
| and even the App Store, Apple also serves advertising on
| behalf of its partners. It's also true that Apple themselves
| runs a lot of ads, and benefit from ad networks through the
| services they've integrated in the past. In fact, Apple
| justifies their 15-30% cut by suggesting that the App Store
| is itself a platform that promotes apps, and has featured
| apps in its own advertising on billboards and television.
|
| So it's hard to come to a conclusion that Apple hates ads.
| It's easier to say that Apple dislikes advertiser networks,
| since their own attempt at a generic network (iAds) failed
| miserably. It's not even clear to me that blocking tracking
| is going to kill ads as a revenue stream, all it will do is
| make ads more expensive because they're slightly less
| targeted on iOS?
|
| Also, Apple runs their own seemingly successful ad market
| within the App Store app -- something I'm reminded of each
| time I search for an app and see a competitor's app I don't
| want at the top of my search results, filling my screen with
| the new design. So it's hard to say that Apple does this for
| the best user experience. Showing extra popups isn't great
| UX. And Apple likes free apps, it makes their phone and
| platform more valuable, so they can charge more for the
| hardware knowing folks can get great apps inexpensively or
| free.
|
| While I'm in favour of Apple losing its complete monopoly
| over App Stores and apps that compete with its own, I
| actually am in favour of Apple enforcing these policies on
| apps from its own App Store and platform. And while I would
| say that third-party stores could have different stances on
| permissions, the idea that a third-party app store could
| prevent a popup asking to share a phone's identifier, for
| example, is frankly a security bypass. The same is true if
| apps want to communicate with other apps without the
| operating system knowing.
|
| Personally, I'd love it if Apple went a step farther and used
| the network layer and code signing to identify which apps
| actively use which trackers and tracking networks the same
| way they currently identify apps that use the microphone and
| camera. It'd be fascinating to see an operating system
| feature that says 50% of my network traffic in Application X
| was telemetry being sent to Facebook, for example.
| noizejoy wrote:
| > Personally, I'd love it if Apple went a step farther and
| used the network layer and code signing to identify which
| apps actively use which trackers and tracking networks the
| same way they currently identify apps that use the
| microphone and camera. It'd be fascinating to see an
| operating system feature that says 50% of my network
| traffic in Application X was telemetry being sent to
| Facebook, for example.
|
| If you had broken this paragraph out into a separate post,
| it might get more and highly deserved attention.
| dgreensp wrote:
| This is Facebook's narrative, but if Facebook makes a bit
| less money, how exactly does that "shift everyone to a paid
| App model"? Facebook's annual net profit is an 11-digit
| number. Apple's move is bad for Facebook's stock price and
| good for users, and that's probably all the noticeable
| impact.
|
| Even if Apple's motives are somehow nefarious, Facebook is
| being scummy in the first place, so it's a fair move for
| Apple to take advantage of that, IMO.
| knodi wrote:
| Yes, lets think about the role of Facebook in 2016
| elections.
| TedDoesntTalk wrote:
| > how exactly does that "shift everyone to a paid App model
|
| You nailed it. Facebook wants to confuse and distract.
| There's absolutely no reason why Apple's push for user
| permission on tracking would cause the Facebook app to
| become subscription-based. WTF?
| ASalazarMX wrote:
| > I'm generally skeptical of Apple's pro-privacy messaging
|
| That's a very healthy attitude towards Apple's claims. They
| developed all these APIs that allow app makers to spy on their
| users, and then blame the app makers for spying.
|
| For example, why does any app need to know which other apps I
| have installed, and how long I use them? This permission should
| very sparingly pass the review process, and only for apps in
| specific categories.
| buzzerbetrayed wrote:
| > why does any app need to know which other apps I have
| installed, and how long I use them
|
| What are you referring to? As far as I know, one app can't
| query the list and usage time of other installed apps on iOS.
| This stackoverflow question[1] seems to confirm this. But
| please enlighten me if I'm misunderstanding what you're
| referring to.
|
| [1] https://stackoverflow.com/questions/51634436/how-to-get-
| a-li...
| amznthrwaway wrote:
| Android allows apps to list other apps installed.
|
| IOS does not allow this.
|
| The premise of your post is incorrect, and you should issue a
| correction and an apology to the HN community for posting
| ignorant horseshit.
| ogre_codes wrote:
| Why does an app need to know which other apps you have
| installed? Because it might want to interface with those apps
| obviously. Apple has actually ratcheted down permissions on
| that API because it was abused.
|
| People want apps to be able to do things and those things can
| often allow tracking in addition to being useful to the user.
| There is pretty much one API Apple devised specifically for
| tracking users and this very issue is Apple attempting to
| shut down.
|
| Clarification: Just to be clear, Apple isn't shutting down
| the API entirely, they are changing it from opt-out to opt-
| in.
| [deleted]
| ajsnigrutin wrote:
| APIs are great.. i want an app to be able to list all the
| apps installed. I just don't want facebook app to do it,
| because it really doesn't need that data, and I don't want to
| give it to them.
|
| This should be done the same as with location and microphone
| access... ie. "ask the user". "Flashlight 2000 DX app wants
| to access list of apps installed - allow once, allow always,
| deny now, deny always". Facebook wants to track 50 different
| things? Well.. ask the user 50 different times and try to
| explain why you want access to their call history and
| calendar data (adding calendar entries could also be a write-
| only option, with optional unique ids to change/remove
| entries).... and give your UX team a headache. Also, "deny"
| should be the "bolded" default. Maybe even give the user a
| list of unchecked permission the app wants, with explanations
| why it needs them, and have the user check the ones they want
| to give to the app (default state is unchecked (deny)).
|
| Also granularity is key... giving location access for
| bluetooth connections, giving "manage calls" access to stop
| playing music when you get a call, etc. is just stupid.
| xGrill wrote:
| I can think of a few. An app might need to know if Twitter is
| installed so it can show a button to open a link in twitter
| or a web browser (This was before App Deeplinking was a
| thing). Maybe if an app company had multiple apps that it
| wanted to cross sell and see if they have both apps installed
| to enable certain functionality.
| m463 wrote:
| Not only do they develop these technologies (wifi location
| db, ibeacon, deep linking, findmy, etc)
|
| They don't give you the ability to block them.
|
| and of course, you can't find out what is going in and out of
| your phone over the network, and you definitely can't
| firewall it. ("content blockers" are nerfed)
| ogre_codes wrote:
| You can disable almost all of those things in one way or
| another.
|
| The problem is all of these things you mention are also
| useful for things users want. Often they are useful for
| things users want inside their applications. Nobody wants a
| neutered OS.
| m463 wrote:
| To disable ibeacon you turn off bluetooth and/or location
| services. I don't know about find my - it may locate
| other people's stuff no matter what you do. You can't
| really disable deep linking. If you get a text message
| with an amazon link, the amazon app will see it.
|
| It is not apple's way to advertise this capability is
| available, and give you granular control.
| buzzerbetrayed wrote:
| For some reason I have a bad feeling about this update actually
| getting released. I'm worried that FB is going to convince some
| judge to tell Apple they can't do this, and delay it for months
| or years. Maybe (hopefully) this is an irrational worry, but
| you never know the extent to which people will go when billions
| of dollars are on the line.
| arrosenberg wrote:
| Unless FB is preparing an incredibly ironic antitrust/market
| competition case against Apple, I'm not sure what they'd have
| standing on.
| zonethundery wrote:
| They are almost certainly doing this; question is whether
| they will file it.
|
| FB's noise around this feels very out of character, even
| for something that's devolved into a personal conflict.
| They may be truly scared of the update.
| throwawayboise wrote:
| FB undoubtedly knows enough about powerful judges and
| politicians to get what they want. J. Edgar Hoover's
| wildest dreams didn't contemplate what Facebook can do.
| move-on-by wrote:
| I know nothing about legal system, but it seems like Apple
| could make an argument that they are helping their apps be
| GDPR and CCPA compliant? That could explain the strange
| wording "Ask app not to track" - apps can still track, just
| not as much as before, so perhaps more of a compliance
| permission. Just speculation.
| Someone wrote:
| I think they say "Ask app not to track" because, if they
| say "Make app not track you" or something similar, they
| open themselves to huge lawsuits if (much more likely
| _when_ ) any app turns out to keep tracking users.
| rchaud wrote:
| I think what's more likely than any kind of legal injunction
| is that FB and Apple will come to a "mutual understanding".
| Maybe Facebook will license Apple Maps (for a princely sum)
| and make some symbolic compromise on data collection that
| lets Apple water down the permission dialogs.
| stingraycharles wrote:
| I'd argue that Apple executives realize that privacy is one
| of the unique USPs of Apple compared to their main
| competitor, since the value exchange between Apple and
| their customers is simpler (customer pays Apple money,
| Apple delivers hardware/software).
|
| Now that so much news has spread about these privacy
| additions, Apple selling out will actively hurt this image
| they have spent a lot of time building. It's going to have
| to be an extremely lucrative agreement between them and
| Facebook for it to be worth it.
| purpmint008 wrote:
| > (customer pays Apple money, Apple delivers
| hardware/software).
|
| Pretty soon, this'll turn into: customer has to keep
| paying Apple because of vendor lock-in.
| rorykoehler wrote:
| I thought that until I realised Apple also have a billion
| dollar ads business
| nicoburns wrote:
| Does Apple's ad business track users though? It seems to
| me that an ad business shouldn't need to in order to be
| effective.
| mektrik wrote:
| It does - it provides advertisers data on which users
| have downloaded their app after seeing specific adverts.
| singhrac wrote:
| I see what you mean, but iPhone says are something like
| 150x that. If privacy concerns weaken even 1%, that
| wouldn't be worth it. Maybe that's unlikely, I'm not
| sure.
| sodality2 wrote:
| The problem is Apple relies on hardware sales. FB's
| _entire business_ from the top down is ad money. And
| source for a billion dollar ad business? That sounds way
| higher than my initial impression. (And google paying to
| be the default SE is not advertising imo)
| rorykoehler wrote:
| https://9to5mac.com/2019/11/15/apple-ad-revenue/
| whynaut wrote:
| Well..
|
| > Apple's most recent earnings report revealed that it
| earned $12.51B from Services in calendar Q3/fiscal Q4,
| though there is no breakdown on how much of this comes
| from ad revenue.
|
| Notice the 'could's:
|
| > Samik Chatterjee argued the company could leverage the
| millions of users who search its App Store and Safari
| browser daily to generate the stellar growth seen by
| Facebook and Google in recent years.
|
| > he launch of Apple TV+, coupled with Apple Inc's foray
| into digital services, could help the company increase
| its income from advertising by more than five fold to $11
| billion annually
|
| This article is literally just speculation. Actually,
| it's quoting someone's speculation.
|
| > The report seems highly speculative...
| kergonath wrote:
| There's a lot of guesswork there. It's even worse than
| that actually, they assume that their advertising
| operation will grow as Facebook's. It is extremely
| implausible under current conditions (no tracking and ads
| limited to the stores). So yeah, if Apple were Facebook,
| ads would be important to them.
|
| And even the wildest estimates put it far short on the
| actual money maker, which is hardware sales. When push
| comes to shove, if they have to choose between ad and
| devices, they won't hesitate long.
| rorykoehler wrote:
| I saw a few articles when I searched from the previous
| year which also projected growth to the $2b number the
| next year but as Apple bundles it all in services who
| knows?
| tbrock wrote:
| I don't think Apple would bat an eye if Facebook decided to
| not publish their software on their platform.
| brokencode wrote:
| I think they would. Facebook products are a huge part of
| any app ecosystem, and without them, Apple customers
| would be pissed.
|
| Ecosystem concerns aren't as relevant today, since both
| Android and iOS have everything you'd want, but in the
| olden days of Blackberry, Microsoft, and many other
| mobile operating system vendors trying to compete, they
| were always seriously hampered by their lack of
| ecosystem.
| aaroninsf wrote:
| I would be _delighted_ to have that sh-t gone from
| everyone 's iPhone,
|
| because it would create an obvious a compelling
| opportunity for someone to finally break the stranglehold
| of FB's monopoly.
|
| I miss my friend and family connections, but most people
| in my community won't go near that ecosystem with a
| flaming 10' pole any longer, and many friends like me,
| despair that our loved ones' reaction to e.g. the Social
| Dilemma and ongoing revelation after revelation of
| sociopathic corporate amorality is "yes that is sad but I
| have choice" because "all my friends are only insta" or
| "my cottage business depends entirely on my pages" etc
| etc.
|
| I cannot wait for them to go down in flames.
|
| Bring it Apple.
| sebasvisser wrote:
| You'd be surprised how many fb users (mostly less
| technical) just use a browser to access fb.. They don't
| need an app in the App Store to do so.. So this might
| actually be a fight against the strange people working at
| Facebook that will get them to rethink what it is they do
| everyday..
| r00fus wrote:
| I tell my mom she needs to use FF containers for FB. I
| set it up so she can't do anything else. She's happy &
| gets to see her extended family pics/updates.
| Hallucinaut wrote:
| Isn't this done automatically now in Firefox? As in, you
| don't need to even install the containers add-on as
| Facebook and related properties are automatically opened
| in a default Facebook container?
| r00fus wrote:
| Wow that'd be great news - when did that happen?
| artificial wrote:
| I think this is a good case for what Apps bring to the
| table and highlighting what the cost is privacy wise. As
| a developer I think apps are cool, the way they're
| leaking data is awful. This is something the platforms
| need to step up control over and I think that because
| this isn't the case there's an incentive to keep things
| as they are. Like automotive and the iterative
| improvements.
| sircastor wrote:
| This is me - and Facebook does not miss an opportunity to
| ask me to download messenger.
| lozaning wrote:
| I use the low bandwidth option if I need to get on there.
| mbasic.facebook.com no nagging about apps and you can
| actually use the messenger web interface.
| rorykoehler wrote:
| I'd be delighted as it would give me an excuse to not use
| WhatsApp
| lostlogin wrote:
| The looks people give you when you say you don't have
| WhatsApp are gold. In France in particular.
|
| Utterly baffled.
| specialp wrote:
| Facebook could not afford not to as they would lose a
| huge amount of users. Apple is just doing to them what FB
| does to people: Accept these terms, be tracked
| everywhere, or miss out on all the people providing us
| free content on our platform. Many people accept that
| because they don't want to be unable to communicate or
| view things in their garden. That is leveraging their
| huge scope to push less favorable terms.
|
| So FB has Apple with some leverage over them saying
| accept this or else. FB is in a weak position because it
| would be hard to tell your users hey leave Apple because
| they won't let us take all your data without permission.
| I don't feel for them at all.
| balls187 wrote:
| What would be Facebook's legal argument in the US?
| zonethundery wrote:
| That Apple is unfairly privileging its own ads business.
| It's a tough cookie though; the offending behavior is
| simply Apple's truthful (if arguably hyperbolic) notice and
| consent popup.
| kml wrote:
| iAds will definitely be privileged. If you read the
| documentation on what is available to Apple vs. others,
| you will see Apple's own ad business will definitely
| benefit from this.
| kergonath wrote:
| It could work if they demonstrate that Apple does track
| its user across apps for advertising purposes without
| showing consent dialogs. I am more than a bit skeptical,
| but you never know.
| jb775 wrote:
| I'm skeptical as well considering Apple selectively leaves
| gaping holes depending on levels of public knowledge (e.g. talk
| a big game on encryption, but don't encrypt iCloud backups
| while using dark patterns nudging users towards using iCloud
| backups).
|
| This is definitely good for privacy in the short term, but long
| term will depend on if Apple decides to monetize this data
| themselves.
| purpmint008 wrote:
| The only big-data company that I've seen so far that has abused
| its position is vanilla Facebook.
|
| They're just milking the boomers that are still left on their
| horrid platform.
|
| No ethical considerations whatsoever.
| king_magic wrote:
| No sympathy for Facebook here. Extremely happy to see Apple
| crushing Facebook's unethical tracking practices.
| spoonjim wrote:
| Well, looks like NPR is fake news now. "That gives [Facebook]
| reams of personal data on who we are and what we are doing, which
| it then vacuums up, packages and sells."
|
| Even the most cursory investigation will reveal that Facebook
| does not sell this data as it is too valuable, they just rent out
| access to your eyeballs.
| uneekname wrote:
| I see what you're getting at, and NPR definitely could have
| worded that better, but I think they're getting the point
| across fairly well. From a layman's perspective, ad tracking is
| the packaging and selling of user data.
| spoonjim wrote:
| But that is wrong... they do not sell the data. It is a bald
| faced lie.
| tomekjapan wrote:
| Apple some time ago recognized that they won't be able to compete
| on software with other BigTech giants so they are building an
| environment where certain software advancements are crippled.
| User activity data will be important to tune algorithms for
| maximum utility and by restricting access to user data for
| others, Apple wants to give itself the best shot to stay in the
| game.
|
| In the long run this will be a net loss for the Apple customers
| whose experiences will likely suffer compared to Android and
| other players. Already in my subjective opinion Android on Pixel
| phones provides a much richer and engaging environment than iOS
| and the difference will only become even more pronounced.
|
| Now it's a race. Will Apple superior hardware and privacy focus
| draw the majority of users before Google and others deliver
| clearly better software experiences, or whether the difference in
| software smarts will cause users to gravitate away from the
| walled garden of iOS and towards more permissive ecosystems.
| robteix wrote:
| > Apple some time ago recognized that they won't be able to
| compete on software with other BigTech giants so they are
| building an environment where certain software advancements are
| crippled. User activity data will be important to tune
| algorithms for maximum utility and by restricting access to
| user data for others, Apple wants to give itself the best shot
| to stay in the game.
|
| That seems off to me. Apple isn't crippling anything, they're
| giving their users the choice of opting in/out of tracking. If,
| as you say, choosing not being tracked makes the users'
| experiences so bad, they can simply opt-in and all will be good
| again. What am I missing?
| tomekjapan wrote:
| Getting users to opt-in will be very hard given the current
| partially justifiable negative vibe, so that will likely not
| happen at scale unless opting in results in a clearly better
| experience. However, if the majority of users jump into the
| Apple ecosystem before those clearly better experiences are
| materialized, there will be few remaining alternatives for
| Apple users to compare to and change their mind regarding
| tracking. Consequently there will also be little incentive to
| improve the software using user data.
| shoulderfake wrote:
| I'm contemplating buying an iphone after 10 years just because of
| this.
| icedistilled wrote:
| Facebook friend suggestions are such garbage. Half of them are
| legitimate acquaintances. Half of them are random women from
| south america.
|
| I've never interacted with anything that should bring those up
| and I've never clicked on that sort of suggestion. The only
| reason I can think they'd show me them is my demographic, 30
| something male. I haven't clicked on anything on FB or elsewhere
| on the web that should be getting me random foreign women as
| friend suggestions.
|
| Facebook is terrible quality and has no idea what it's doing.
| bromuro wrote:
| My guess: given your set of data and browser history, to
| contact south american women is their best way to keep you
| engaged.
|
| It could also be _you_ are the target for keep these ladies
| engaged. Who knows how many creepy psychological-mechanisms are
| behind their algorithms.
| icedistilled wrote:
| >My guess: given your set of data and browser history, to
| contact south american women is their best way to keep you
| engaged.
|
| Let me re-iterate. Because I'm male and on the internet I
| knew people would question my premise.
|
| I haven't clicked on anything on FB or *elsewhere* on the web
| that should be getting me random foreign women as friend
| suggestions. I'm not naive. And even if I were clicking on
| correlated things elsewhere, which I'm not, I have never
| clicked on one of these suggestions in FB. That's two layers
| of ridiculously bad targeting that just annoys their users.
| samstave wrote:
| Just remember that the facebook phone was an absolute disaster
| and they are trying to scrub it from peoples memory.
|
| FB is a product designers nightmare. Its a horrible product
| trying to force its way into every aspect of your life to slurp
| cash from the massive stupidity of humans.
| arusahni wrote:
| Question: does Apple do the same for their apps on iOS?
| S53Vflnr4n wrote:
| Good for iOS users. Rest of the developing world use cheap phones
| loaded with obsolete Androids. Facebook & Google can now leech on
| them.
|
| Re: Indian full newspaper AD about Whatsapp privacy.
|
| https://www.fastcompany.com/90593913/whatsapp-facebook-priva...
| really3452 wrote:
| I'm still confused on why facebook needs to be an app at all.
| They should just make the mobile browser version of their website
| the best way to experience facebook and then have people add the
| facebook mobile website to their home screen.
| alexfromapex wrote:
| Thank you Apple for being one of the few protecting privacy
| menacingly wrote:
| Apple would be a hero for threatening _its own_ significant
| revenue streams with a pro-privacy decision, not someone
| else's.
| cde-v wrote:
| No companies are "heroes".
| BoorishBears wrote:
| ... what?
|
| A doctor giving someone a new lease on life with an arm
| transplant isn't a hero unless they're threatening _their
| own_ arm by volunteering it.
|
| -
|
| In what world do things work like that?
| reedjosh wrote:
| I would say that's a false equivalency. In the Apple case,
| it's possibly gaining via marketing and driving people to
| paid apps that Apple gains revenue from.
|
| Please don't misread me though--I'm glad Apple is doing
| this, I just don't think they're heroes for it.
| User23 wrote:
| Hero has become something of a joke word these days. It's
| used to describe acts as mundane as getting out of bed in
| the morning and going to a salaried job. It's too bad,
| because it's nice to have a word to describe people of
| near godlike achievement. Chuck Yeager would be an
| example of what I consider a bona-fide modern hero.
| Alexander would be an example from antiquity.
| BoorishBears wrote:
| What people consider heroic is a personal choice. I had
| no issue with someone saying what Apple did isn't heroic,
| what I was against was the _specific reason_.
|
| After all, to me Chuck Yeager is less of a hero than
| someone who helps out at a soup kitchen every weekend.
| One was doing their job (and a questionable person
| honestly) and the other is taking their own time to help
| others.
| BoorishBears wrote:
| I like how you say it's false equivalency but then kind
| of fail to actually show that... maybe because it's not?
|
| In the real world there are few "heroic" deeds that don't
| benefit the entity doing them.
|
| The doctor doing the transplant gets professional acclaim
| that is not worthless, would you say the doctor did it to
| market themselves?
|
| Turns out doing good things can be profitable, it's not
| an either or.
|
| This tired cynicism any time a company does something
| good and people admire them for it (ie consider the
| action _heroic_ ) is not novel or useful. Companies at
| the size of Apple and co are never going to be pure
| forces of good with no bad deeds, but they are still
| capable of being heroes in a specific context. Right now
| Apple is being a hero of their customer's right to
| privacy
| tokamak-teapot wrote:
| One reason that people buy and use Apple devices is because
| they want to use Facebook. If this ended in a situation where
| Facebook was no longer on Apple devices, or somehow crippled
| on them, Apple could significantly damage their own revenue.
| buzzerbetrayed wrote:
| Apple positioned themselves to not need to violate privacy in
| order to bring in revenue. They should indeed be praised for
| this.
| zepto wrote:
| They have done.
|
| Apple _could_ have also built a business around tracking
| their users and selling targeted ads etc.
|
| They have forgone all the revenues associated with such
| practices because in the long term, they think society won't
| accept them.
| Infinitesimus wrote:
| For reference, they tried:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/IAd
| elicash wrote:
| FB advertiser here.
|
| I had to change some of my Business Manager settings this week in
| preparation for the iOS changes before my new ads would run. They
| specifically mentioned "Aggregated Event Measurement" for anybody
| who wants to look into it.
|
| https://www.facebook.com/business/help/721422165168355
| mlthoughts2018 wrote:
| There is just absolutely no good-faith way anyone can disagree
| with requiring user consent to be tracked. It is as close to
| "pure evil" as you can get for Facebook to campaign against it.
| siilats wrote:
| So the whole point is you don't have IDFA, but each app still has
| its own persistent ID. Before when you used the FB app and
| another app they both got same IDFA so FB could link them (the FB
| SDK in the other app posts the IDFA). However, even with Apple
| change, the apps can still make network connections. All FB needs
| to do is make its SDK ping a server with the app specific ID and
| correlate with IP addresses. FB app sends IDFA1 with IP1 and
| MyAPP sends IDFA2 with IP1, they both have same IP therefore
| IDFA2 is the same user as IDFA1. Statistically you can get 95%+
| matching very quickly. If you never use a wifi and are always on
| the same mobile network in the same city, then FB cannot
| distinguish you from other people who never use Wifi and are on
| the same city as you, but even then, the mobile phone network
| traffic has 10+ external IP-s so a few days of traffic will
| correlate quickly. Even worse, when before FB could get away
| without beacons in the SDK, just sent IDFA once and then just
| request ads, no need to store IP address every 10 minutes. Now it
| needs to ping every 10min to get the correlations. Apples next
| step is then a universal VPN/Proxy that all apps need to use so
| all traffic goes through Apple servers in the name of privacy.
| Then FB would see the same IP address on all requests, until that
| happens though, this is just a smokescreen.
| paulmd wrote:
| If Facebook exploits its software ecosystem to try and unmask
| users I think you'll see Apple pull the plug on any apps using
| those SDKs (including facebook itself) if necessary.
| [deleted]
| mokus wrote:
| The fact that Facebook appears to consider user consent an
| existential threat to their business model tells me everything I
| need to know about them right now.
| api wrote:
| This is new to you? Facebook has been one of the most privacy-
| hostile companies since day one.
|
| (It's debatable whether or not Google is any better. At least
| they're a lot less overt about their contempt for user privacy
| and data sovereignty.)
| squarefoot wrote:
| This, and the fact that (EFF and a few others aside) they're
| fought against only by an entity whose core business has
| nothing to do with mining users personal data, speaks loudly
| about pretty much every other corporation out there.
|
| Do I qualify as too much alarmist when I'm horrified from
| seeing doctors and lawyers happily exchanging photos of clients
| sensitive documents using Whatsapp? (read: forgetting them in
| their phone gallery, ready to be exfiltrated by any malicious
| software or repair technician). The sad part is that people is
| slowly adapting to not give a damn about their and others
| privacy because today's electronic gadgets and services are
| designed in a way so they're almost unusable by privacy
| conscious users.
| gigatexal wrote:
| +1 this. People don't want to be tracked. Don't track me. I
| will decline tracking when this comes up.
| helsinkiandrew wrote:
| I can forgive them for fighting to try and save their business
| model. But I can't forgive them for dragging Grace Jones into
| the fight.
| hyperbovine wrote:
| If by "drag" you mean "pay a shitload of money for a single
| afternoon's work" then ... sure.
| Voloskaya wrote:
| Grace Jones is a fully functioning adult person and made her
| own choice. No one dragged her.
| beervirus wrote:
| >dragging
|
| No, probably more like this:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vWRlxSGf_ns
| ryandrake wrote:
| Facebook is one of the worst, but to be fair, lots of software
| companies seem to have difficulty grasping the concept of
| consent. How many times have you been asked to install or turn
| on something you didn't want, where the options are "Yes" and
| "Ask me later"? What happened to "No"? Why can't software
| companies accept a no from the user and treat it respectfully?
| No means no, right?
| SergeAx wrote:
| Devil advocating attempt: they obviously did a measure how much
| of their userbase will allow the app to serve personalized ads
| and how it will impact their revenue. Even if it is in a
| ballpark of 10%, it is still a ton of money and, as a
| commercial enterprise acting in the interests of its
| shareholders, FB should do it's best to avoid or reduce
| potential damage.
| reaperducer wrote:
| _should do it 's best to avoid or reduce potential damage._
|
| The way to reduce potential damage is to evolve, adapt,
| pivot, and diversify. Not to kick and scream.
|
| Facebook has enough money and enough smart people to do and
| be anything it wants. It chooses to be the neighborhood creep
| in the bushes watching your daughter through your windows.
| edmundsauto wrote:
| Facebook is sufficiently loathed on HN that I would caution
| against using absurd emotion inducing analogies like
| "watching your daughter through your windows". Not only is
| this needlessly gendered (would I not be upset by someone
| watching my son?), but it's also a call to rally base and
| pure emotion. It almost feels as if you want to whip up a
| mob of digital citizens.
|
| It is enough to highlight the policies and products of
| Facebook that you disapprove of.
| ummonk wrote:
| I recall reading the percent of people refusing consent was
| something like 95%. No idea how much that will impact revenue
| though.
| rkangel wrote:
| > The fact that Facebook appears to consider user consent an
| existential threat to their business model tells me everything
| I need to know about them right now.
|
| They see it as the beginning of a slippery slope. And I hope
| they're right!
|
| The concept of social media and living our lives on the
| internet is new, in the scale of things. The last ~10 years
| have been like the period of time where the sun goes in but the
| thermostat hasn't noticed yet. Now people have decided they
| don't like being cold (having their data harvested) and are
| pushing back.
| ParanoidShroom wrote:
| So do most news websites, anyone that sells targeted ads. Is
| this really a surprise from people here that companies that
| sell ads earn most of it with targeted advertisements?
| Joeri wrote:
| I removed the facebook app years ago. If people insist on using
| facebook they should use it from the browser, in private
| browsing mode.
| antattack wrote:
| Apple just wants to be exclusive gateway to Apple customers. We
| are a product to both companies, even if Apple appears the
| lesser evil.
| mhoad wrote:
| You know it really isn't that obvious to me at all and I
| think Facebook is a genuine cancer on society.
|
| But everyone seems to conveniently forget about the absolute
| moral nightmare that is Apple's supply chain.
|
| Remember when they had to put up nets to stop people from
| killing themselves? [1]
|
| What about when they were accused of using literal slave
| labour? [2]
|
| Or the time they actively lobbied Congress when a vote came
| up to restrict American companies using slave labour [3]
|
| I don't say this as a shit post, I mean it, it's really not
| at all clear to me that Apple are somehow morally less
| reprehensible.
|
| [1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/the-human-cost-of-
| an-...
|
| [2] https://www.aspi.org.au/report/uyghurs-sale
|
| [3] https://www.axios.com/apple-lobbied-congress-uyghur-
| slave-la...
|
| For the record... this posted from an iPhone. I got rid of
| the MacBook already but it's a process.
| reaperducer wrote:
| _everyone seems to conveniently forget about the absolute
| moral nightmare that is Apple's supply chain_
|
| No, everyone hasn't. Apple has its problems, too, and
| nobody denies that. But arguments like yours amount to no
| more than "Hey, look over there! Don't look at Facebook,
| look at this other thing!"
|
| Deflection. Whataboutism. Call it what you will.
| mhoad wrote:
| What are you talking about?
|
| I am responding to someone calling Apple a hero. I did
| nothing other than to point out the fact that like many
| things in life, it's not that simple.
|
| There is no attempt to help Facebook or whatever you had
| in mind, that was your own projection. We can talk about
| 2 issues at the same time.
| cmorgan31 wrote:
| Where did they mention Apple being a hero? They said
| lesser of two evils unless it's an edit.
| simonh wrote:
| If you cared about ethical treatment of labour in China,
| presumably you'd prefer to buy products from a company that
| rigorously audited its supply chain, excluded suppliers
| they caught violating it, ensured workers were paid above
| average industry wages and had below average suicide rates
| in their suppliers, right?
|
| Presumably if you were going to criticise companies using
| Chinese suppliers, a company like that wouldn't be top of
| your list. Or is there something else going on here?
| mhoad wrote:
| I don't know why people are like this. You can be pro
| human rights and also not dedicate your entire life to
| supply chain audits.
|
| I'm making a point that the largest company in the world
| not only does so but actively took steps to ensure they
| wouldn't be legally prevented from doing so in the
| future.
| simonh wrote:
| This is not correct, I've seen it said here several times
| so I looked into it. Apple lobbied for some amendments to
| the act on the grounds of practicality but did not oppose
| it and said they thought it should become law.
| musha68k wrote:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism
| mhoad wrote:
| I don't know how to label this other than lazy shit post
| response. This isn't Whataboutism in the sense that I am
| trying to justify the otherwise guilty party here. I
| literally opened saying Facebook is terrible and made no
| effort to defend them.
|
| I am pointing out that there is more than one dimension
| (privacy) on which we should think about these companies
| and the moment you do it's interesting to note how only
| one of them has a bad public image and the other is a
| hero.
| simonh wrote:
| If Apple genuinely though that, you'd expect them to be
| selling access to their customer data to the highest bidder,
| but they aren't.
|
| In fact they were offered billions of dollars in revenue by
| Google for customer location data in Google Maps. Apple
| turned it down and instead spent billions of dollars and
| several years building Apple Maps instead.
| executive wrote:
| But they'll gladly take ~$12 Bn/year to have Google as
| Safari default search provider.
| coldcode wrote:
| For now. Building their own search provider is not beyond
| them.
| simonh wrote:
| Well, they still need a search provider, a lot of people
| would change it to Google anyway. Arguably locking down
| the browser to limit tracking as much as possible is
| reasonable even though it potentially makes that Google
| deal less lucrative.
|
| If they were intent on monetising users data, you'd
| expect them to make a deal with Google to allow tracking
| in Safari in exchange for a higher fee for default
| search.
|
| In other words they don't seem to be doing any of the
| things We would expect to see if this theory was correct.
| mgreg wrote:
| But apple (and Android) allowing search providers to
| bid/buy that default spot is a barrier to entry for new
| search providers and only makes the dominant search
| provider stronger. How could a new Google emerge today
| when people lazily accept the default? When Google
| started there was not built in browser default - users
| had to manually type in altavista.com or google.com.
| simonh wrote:
| A big company like Coca Cola being able to buy huge
| advertising campaigns is a barrier to entry for new Cola
| makers. I suppose there are cases where buying or selling
| placement might be unethical, but I don't see it here.
| For example for a long time Google funded Firefox by
| buying a place as the search default. Was that unethical
| by Mozilla?
| shawnz wrote:
| In this case the incentives led to an action with a positive
| impact for the user, so we should keep up those incentives
| regardless of which corporation ends up capitalizing on them.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| Apple's incentives appear aligned with their customers.
| Facebook's are completely opposed.
| jpmattia wrote:
| > _Apple 's incentives appear aligned with their
| customers._
|
| ... which is really no mystery, because Apple users are
| customers, and Facebook users are product.
| megaman821 wrote:
| Facebook users (at least a portion) seem to be incentivized
| by having a large, free social network. It is the
| advertisements which make it free to consumers. Facebook's
| monetization strategy may not align with your tastes, but
| most people have not problem using free services with ads.
| That said their customers over time are going to want to
| preserve more of their privacy and advertisers are going to
| expect the same effectiveness, Facebook is going to have to
| figure out how to please all parties.
| [deleted]
| drewvolpe wrote:
| "You're Apple's customer and Facebook's product" is often
| repeated but completely true in this case. It's all about
| incentives.
|
| Apple makes money by selling more products which means they
| innovate by making Watches, Earpods, M1, etc. Facebook
| makes money by selling your attention and data, which
| meants they innovate by extracting data from every
| experience they can (Oculus, Whatsapp, ...), using more
| complex technologies (Facebook AI), and encouraging
| whatever behaviors create more ad spend (hint: outrage).
|
| Add in the fact that Apple has made privacy a core part of
| their brand promise and it means that Apple has strong
| incentives to protect their customers in a way that most
| companies, especially Facebook, do not.
| paulgb wrote:
| Also, you literally are Apple's product to their iOS
| developer ecosystem, in the sense that developers fork
| over 30% of their revenue to Apple for access to you.
| zepto wrote:
| If this is true about Apple, it is true in _any retail
| situation_.
|
| It's not what people mean when they say 'you are the
| product'.
|
| What they mean is that if you aren't paying, then the
| company is only interested in retaining you as a user so
| that they can satisfy their actual customers.
|
| When you _are_ paying, you are the customer
|
| It's also true that iOS developers are customers of
| Apple's distribution service.
|
| Buy Apple's users are not a product in the sense that
| anyone uses this phrase.
| nicky0 wrote:
| No, that's not right. The app is the product, the
| customer is the buyer of the app, and the split of
| revenue is 70/30 (or 85/15 for small devs).
|
| Saying that developers are "buying" users makes no sense.
| Devs are not a customer of apple. If anything, devs are a
| supplier _to_ apple. Since the net money flow is from
| Apple to Dev.
|
| As always, just follow the money.
| paulgb wrote:
| Whether you consider the developers a customer of Apple
| paying for distribution, or a supplier to Apple who takes
| a cut, is ultimately a semantic distinction. But the
| conflict of interest it creates -- that Apple retains a
| monopoly on how software is distributed to a device that
| you ostensibly "own" and sets rates to optimize for their
| own gain - is the case regardless of the semantics we
| use.
|
| (I'm not entirely opposed to this arrangement; I'm typing
| this on my iPhone. But I bought it knowing and accepting
| that I'm partly the product)
| judge2020 wrote:
| On the other hand, devs wouldn't be able to sell to
| iPhone users if there was no iPhone, or no App Store, or
| the appleid.apple.com identity verification system, or
| iOS 14, or anything else that is paramount to devs even
| having those users as customers in the first place. In
| this scenario, the iPhone is the product and the App
| Store is a feature of the iPhone, and the fact that it
| moves money around (or doesn't, most of the time) is
| irrelevant.
|
| Now, the legal view of Apple's ecosystem is being
| litigated right now. What I posted above might be how the
| court sees it, or what you posted might be how the court
| sees it. We won't get a definitive answer until either
| Epic or Apple go home with the key to processing payments
| on iOS and all of the other systems that are effectively
| an iPhone with a different form factor (eg PS5, xbox
| series).
| kergonath wrote:
| The product in this case is the platform more than
| individuals.
| Spivak wrote:
| This is absolutely true. Both companies play the game of
| selling customer acquisition. But we seem to be generally
| more okay with middlemen squeezing a two sided market.
| Sometimes. If it's DoorDash or Amazon then public opinion
| seems to go the other way.
|
| But regardless it's not Facebook's value prop to business
| that people have an issue with but ya know, how they
| actually deliver it.
| nicky0 wrote:
| No, devs don't buy customers from apple. Customers buy
| apps, and Apple takes a commission. No money flows from
| Developer to Apple (apart from to 100$ annual fee if you
| want to be anal about it).
| Spivak wrote:
| No they buy access to customers. You can't sell to
| Apple's customer base unless you give them 30% of gross.
| The world where Apple charges that 30% commission to the
| devs after the sale or collects it from the customer
| during the sale is irrelevant. We fork over a lot of
| money to Apple for the privilege of selling to their
| customers.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| I think that nowadays most profitable software is cross-
| platform and is also available on other platforms, thus
| their developers see access to the iOS market as added
| value rather than their primary customer acquisition
| channel.
| landryraccoon wrote:
| On one hand, it's argued that Apple has an incentive to
| act against their customers because they want to sell
| apps on the app store.
|
| On the other hand, it's argued that Apple doesn't care
| about their developers because they enforce draconian
| regulations on what iOS developers are allowed and not
| allowed to do, and don't hesitate even to shut down
| billion dollar apps (i.e., Fortnite).
|
| I have mixed feelings about Apple's walled garden, both
| as a developer and a user, but when it comes to user
| privacy, I'm firmly in Apple's camp. I can't think of a
| single other large tech company that has a strong stand
| in favor of user privacy and acted on that. Basically, if
| Privacy is a killer feature for a consumer, then Apple is
| literally the only game in town.
| judge2020 wrote:
| > and don't hesitate even to shut down billion dollar
| apps (i.e., Fortnite).
|
| It's fairly obvious that, given Epic was saying "you can
| pay $2 less to get the same amount of vbucks" that Apple
| was going to lose a huge portion of revenue from the App
| if they didn't pull it, and if they actually left it up,
| they'd have to allow every other app to institute third-
| party payment processors as well to not appear like
| they're playing favorites and the PR nightmare that would
| come from that.
| zepto wrote:
| Given that vbucks are just made up and have no marginal
| cost, Epic can say whatever they like about how much less
| they can charge for them.
|
| It doesn't mean anything at all.
| judge2020 wrote:
| I'm saying that Apple was going to get shafted on
| payments and making money from Epic anyways if they left
| it up because Epic was charging $2 less when paying
| directly via a card and bypassing in-app purchases.
|
| https://www.epicgames.com/fortnite/en-US/news/the-
| fortnite-m...
| zepto wrote:
| Apple would have been shafted if they left it up because
| then _all_ enforcement of their rules would be up for
| grabs.
|
| Anyone who wanted to flout any rule could claim Apple was
| playing favorites with Epic.
|
| It has nothing to do with being screwed out of $2 per
| purchase of in-game currency.
| random5634 wrote:
| We just need to look at how they handled the San
| Bernadino shooting and requests for a phone unlock to
| find a supposed "lying dormant cyber pathogen".
|
| Every other company would have been falling over
| themselves to unlock a terrorists iPhone.
|
| Apple said no, hired Ted Olsen, and litigated (along with
| lots of other less well known cases).
|
| This may have even hurt them in some consumers eyes (hard
| to understand them protecting someone who killed a bunch
| of people). So the PR risk was very significant.
|
| So they do seem to have a pretty committed consumer focus
| (and now make money because of that).
|
| It is virtually inevitable though that someone will go
| after them (anti-trust etc) because this is a game of
| billions and folks who for example do in-game loot boxes
| (fortnite) and marketing (facebook) etc are going to be
| in regulators ears and in ny times ads and op-eds calling
| for this horrible situation to be broken up.
| jb775 wrote:
| That's true for the time being, but considering Apple has a
| stranglehold on the app store and are therefore facing
| anti-competitive questions, they are maneuvering from an
| entirely different anchor point.
|
| It's in Apple's short-term best interest to win over public
| opinion. It not only cools down anti-competitive rhetoric,
| but it also helps sell phones.
| eek04_ wrote:
| I disagree. Apple's incentives is to make everybody that
| has an iPhone pay for apps instead of using advertising
| supported apps, essentially making things more expensive
| for the customers.
|
| You can think of it as a common. Blocking tracking
| essentially is a destruction of a bit of commons; the app
| developer will get less revenue. By systematically
| encouraging this block, Apple is making it comparatively
| less worthwhile to have an ad-supported app instead of a
| paid app, thus moving revenue to the app store (where Apple
| can tax it) instead of the advertising side (where it is
| monetarily free for the user.)
|
| If we really wanted to find out what is right for the
| user[1], the correct thing is to see if users want to buy
| their way out of tracking. Offer the apps with advertising
| with tracking, with advertising without tracking, and
| without advertising - at different prices, representing the
| value of the advertising and tracking. My bet is that a
| majority of users would not want to pay the cost of non-
| tracked advertising - either they'll want to buy away
| advertising (and that will only be a small fraction) or
| they'll want the free variant. Basically, all data I've
| seen indicate that most people _don 't_ want to buy their
| way out of advertising - it's too expensive. I expect the
| same applies to tracking.
|
| [1] Under the assumption that we've got an efficient market
| and will see an equilibrium of development that correspond
| to value created.
| auggierose wrote:
| It seems people can do just that now on the new iOS. The
| app is free to switch off / charge for features if the
| user is not allowing tracking. Don't know how this works
| together with GDPR though.
| [deleted]
| texasbigdata wrote:
| "Customer" is the small business that actually pays them
| revenue. So not true.
| nicky0 wrote:
| That's a wrong view. Customer in app market is the buyer
| of the app. Both Apple and devs are suppliers who each
| take a split. (Devs supply app itself, Apple supplies
| infrastructure and supporting services.)
| texasbigdata wrote:
| Tell me more. So what would the nomenclature for the
| actual revenue generating side. I guess more generally,
| in a two sided marketplace is there specific verbiage for
| each "customer"?
| minsc__and__boo wrote:
| >Apple's incentives appear aligned with their customers
|
| Not in China:
|
| https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2018/03/apple-
| privacy...
| kube-system wrote:
| That's not due to Apple's business model or their own
| choice. They were forced to hand over iCloud by Chinese
| regulators.
| minsc__and__boo wrote:
| It is absolutely a choice made by Apple. Google said no
| to giving their user data to the Chinese government.
| kube-system wrote:
| Google had the advantage that their service was separable
| from the physical devices using it.
|
| I doubt you would be arguing that, if Apple bricked
| basically every iPhone in China, it would be evidence
| that their "incentives are aligned with their customers".
| minsc__and__boo wrote:
| Hyperbole.
|
| Being a separate device, as you said, means the phones
| would still work independent of Apple.
|
| The Chinese government would block updates and sales,
| hencecustomers would blame them, not Apple, because Apple
| was incentivized with customers instead of the government
| moving forward.
| kube-system wrote:
| Basically everyone with an iPhone uses an Apple ID. It is
| certainly not hyperbole that the devices usability would
| be _very severely_ impacted without access to Apple 's
| servers.
| ParanoidShroom wrote:
| Like Google in China?
| Nextgrid wrote:
| That is indeed a major problem, but it's still better
| than Facebook, whose incentives are _never_ aligned with
| their users.
| dillondoyle wrote:
| Apple has its own ad network, not collecting and using as
| much user data, but it does see to retarget and have
| conversion tracking.
|
| Will they put the consent pop up on App Store and News?
| lexicality wrote:
| Apple makes money by you being trapped in the Apple
| ecosystem.
|
| Everything in it is structured around forcing you to pay
| Apple for access to things you want. Microtransactions,
| apps etc. All of it must go through Apple and they must
| have a cut of everything.
|
| You can say they're more honest because they're taking your
| money up front as opposed to facebook selling you to
| advertisers, but I don't think it's in Apple's customers'
| best interests to be milked like cows
| dimitrios1 wrote:
| Except Apple doesn't track you all across the internet at
| every possible opportunity without you knowing about it.
| williesleg wrote:
| That's funny I just shot coffee out my nose!
| lisper wrote:
| Not yet. But they could start any time they wanted to. Who
| would save you then?
| S_A_P wrote:
| Facebook is a problem now. Apple is not that we know of.
| Why deflect with hypothetical scenarios?
| GeekyBear wrote:
| Just as Facebook and Google could openly start selling
| all the information they have collected at any time?
|
| I mean, it goes against the business model they operate
| under, but they could, right?
| robflynn wrote:
| Okay, but so could anyone. I'm not sure your point here?
|
| They're clearly at least trying to move in the opposite
| direction and have been making those moves for some time
| now.
|
| Maybe they won't always go that way. Maybe they will.
|
| No one is saying they're our savior, though. No one is
| begging Apple to please save us.
| user-the-name wrote:
| See, it's a bit more persuasive if you criticise
| companies for things they are actually doing, rather than
| for things you imagine they could do.
| tw04 wrote:
| >Who would save you then?
|
| Why would I need to be saved? I'll just buy a device from
| a different manufacturer. If there are literally no
| privacy-respecting options, and a majority of people
| think there should be one, either a company will form on
| its own, or constituents will make enough noise that the
| government will step in.
|
| If not in the US, the EU still seems to have some basic
| respect for the rights of their citizens.
| sonotathrowaway wrote:
| This is the literal definition of a strawman argument,
| isn't it?
| lisper wrote:
| No. A straw-man is arguing against a position other than
| the one that your interlocutor is actually taking. This
| is a hypothetical, not a straw man.
| hobs wrote:
| Not Facebook so what's your point? The enemy of my enemy
| isnt my friend, but I might smile as they land a good
| punch.
| fogihujy wrote:
| Normally, I'd ignore any marketing touting new privacy features
| in iOS, but Facebook's response has convinced me this isn't
| just an empty gesture from Apple.
| czbond wrote:
| I wholly internalized that there was a real problem when I
| started taking my phone to other parts of the house, placing
| it in a drawer before returning and shutting the door to have
| an in person conversation with someone.
| blowski wrote:
| If I were that worried, I'd just get rid of the phone!
| svachalek wrote:
| I've started using the mobile sites for companies like
| Facebook that I kind of need to use occasionally but really
| don't want their horrifying app on my phone.
|
| It's kind of fascinating how hard they (not just Facebook)
| push you to use their "so much better" app even when their
| HTML version seems just as good if not better. It's just so
| much better _for them_. If you try the app and it 's not
| better then you know what it's really about.
| jwalton wrote:
| My daughter uses Messenger Kids to interact with her
| friends, now that COVID means she can't see any of them
| in real life. (It wouldn't have been my first choice, but
| it's what all the other kids are on, so we have no real
| choice.)
|
| If she adds a friend, it'll send me a messenger message
| telling me I have to approve it, with a link. If I try to
| follow that link, it will tell me that my desktop browser
| can't be used to manage Messenger Kids and that I have to
| install the app on my phone. Although it seems like in
| most cases you can open up Messenger Kids in the panel on
| the left, and then there will be an approve/deny button,
| so it's mostly lies that you can't do this on desktop.
| boring_twenties wrote:
| If you're on Android I recommend Frost:
| https://f-droid.org/en/packages/com.pitchedapps.frost/
| tcoff91 wrote:
| Apps cannot use the microphone on iOS 14 without your
| awareness. There is a little dot that will show up at the
| top of the screen if an app has recently used microphone or
| camera. Hopefully this can assuage your paranoia.
| zarq wrote:
| The dot seems to not be interactive, i.e. I won't be able
| to find out _which_ app it was, and what it did. But it
| 's a start!
| hackmiester wrote:
| The dot is just for the foreground app. If a background
| app uses the mic, your clock turns red (for recording) or
| green (for a phone call) in an even more obvious way, and
| tapping it takes you to the app that is doing so.
| asadlionpk wrote:
| If you drag open the control center it tells you which
| app used it recently.
| judge2020 wrote:
| Open control center. At the top it'll say what app was
| using the mic or video.
|
| https://i.judge.sh/frank/Derpy/chrome_0aklMR0vP4.png
|
| https://i.judge.sh/careless/Flutter/chrome_Vm3HAfRnaQ.png
| rising-sky wrote:
| I'm not sure why this is getting down-voted, but I think
| the point here is the _fact_ that you have been put in a
| situation where, as an individual, you are concerned enough
| to do this is telling, crazy or not
| that_guy_iain wrote:
| This logic could be used to say there is a problem that
| some people believe they need to wear tinfoil hats to
| stop mind-reading. No, we should help them seek medical
| help. It's easily verifiable to check if your phone is
| sending data, so if they're concerned, they can check
| that like many people do and find out what data is being
| sent. But stopping a conversation midway through to hide
| your phone to continue to talk while not being a major
| underworld criminal is a worrying level of paranoia. If
| you are an underworld criminal, what are you doing with a
| phone? Didn't you see what happened to encrochat?
| czbond wrote:
| Ha - nothing subversive or illegitimate! I'm an engineer
| ha. The effort cost is minimal (walking to another room)
| - the downside cost if I was wrong (data mining by a
| social app for ads) was worth it.
|
| Insurance companies analyze purchase records for modeling
| lifestyle risk.... if I were discussing a family member
| who had a health scare how do I know that info isn't
| 'surfaced' to insurers, etc?
| czbond wrote:
| You are right on - the fact that I even needed to think
| about whether I should have to be concerned with it is
| where I was headed.
|
| Devices do listen to all sounds to listen for their
| "prompt" - how do I know what is actually discarded? And
| with precedence, I don't think it is 'crazy'.
|
| Example: https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-
| way/2018/05/25/614470096...
| DataWorker wrote:
| Anybody that doesn't know the code their device is
| running is a fool to trust it by default. Even knowing
| the code well, devices are compromised all the time.
| Yours seems like the lone sane opinion here.
| judge2020 wrote:
| We don't know the code of HN but we trust it because we
| can see the inputs, outputs, and trust the admins running
| it. A lot of people trust Google/Apple for the same
| reason to keep their devices secure but are aware that
| they might need to stay up-to-date and give up freedom
| [to install unverified apps] to achieve that security.
| specialp wrote:
| HN also does not have a microphone sitting here for me
| constantly listening for me to say "OK HN, post
| response". It is running as a pull HTTP connection in a
| sandboxed browser. I do not need to imply any trust in
| them provided they don't have some zero day exploit
| running to escape my browser and hijack my system.
|
| Just as if my location/microphone were able to be
| physically turned off on my phone I would not have to
| trust that someone isn't always listening in on me. If I
| can't do that it is not unreasonable not to trust it.
| There have been plenty of instances of these things being
| abused.
| mayneack wrote:
| I didn't downvote, but "It doesn't matter if it's true,
| It's bad that I'm concerned" is used to justify all sorts
| of alarmist policies. Right now that's what's being used
| to restrict voting rights across the US and has been used
| for a long time to justify NIMBY and tough on crime
| policies regardless of evidence.
| czbond wrote:
| I do have precedence in logic, right? Alexa/Siri/etc must
| listen for their voice cue prompts to activate, and
| discarding all other discussion. So I must trust that
| corporation would discard if not applicable. Without a
| hardware cutoff switch for a mic - it is blind trust,
| isn't it?
| II2II wrote:
| There are differences between these scenarios. In one
| case we have an individual who made a personal decision
| that does not affect anyone else. The contrary examples
| are of people imposing their will upon others to restrict
| the rights of others. There is very little one should do
| about the beliefs of others, regardless of what the
| evidence supports, unless it affects the rights of
| others.
| [deleted]
| cactus2093 wrote:
| This is really, really bad reasoning. Basically you're
| saying that there's no point in countering wildly untrue
| conspiracies with facts or evidence, the mere fact that
| people believe the conspiracies means they might as well
| be true?
|
| (I'm not making a claim either way on whether or not in
| this case it's true that devices are spying on us, just
| that this line or thinking is absurd that it doesn't
| really matter if a given thing is true)
| czbond wrote:
| Is it absurd? My leap seems smaller and more logical than
| the alternative. The technical fact is that each of these
| features exist, and are used daily.
|
| A device which does not have a hardware cutoff switch,
| which you've allowed to listen for it's own prompts ("Hey
| Siri, etc") can listen to you. So far we're all speaking
| "current knowns". Nothing about that is conspiracy.
|
| The trust part is "storage of data received" and "use of
| that data". Sure it probably does not today - but will
| the terms of service change tomorrow?
|
| An example parallel are Alexa devices listening, and
| accidentally storing whole convos.
| titzer wrote:
| I remember back in 2002 when I took a college course on
| Computer Security and the prof told story after harrowing
| story of the lengths to which spy agencies went to get
| the information they were after. I remember thinking,
| "Well if the NSA really wanted to track everyone and
| record everything that was ever transmitted over the
| internet, I suppose they could. But nah, that's crazy."
|
| Fast forward to 2013 and Snowden.
|
| Our defaults for "they wouldn't do that" when it comes to
| your privacy are all wrong.
|
| If that's a "conspiracy theory" that you need to dismiss
| so that you can go about your life, fine. But the truth
| is, these people are constantly up to no good and you
| can't trust closed software nor hardware. The technical
| capability for draconian mass surveillance exists.
| judge2020 wrote:
| The poster you're replying to did not say that
| AMZN/GOOG/AAPL wouldn't spy on you, they simply stated
| that evidence should be considered to justify claims,
| especially if you're trying to spread those claims to
| other people. Your argument "we should sound alarms
| without evidence because tomorrow we'll have evidence" is
| classic conspiracy theory reasoning, which is why people
| will classify you as one. In essence, we shouldn't throw
| people in jail for crimes they haven't committed yet.
| whynaut wrote:
| The leap you make to punish someone is much further than
| the one you take to protect yourself, i.e. locking your
| own device away for a moment.
| titzer wrote:
| That's a pretty big leap. The OP was talking about
| putting their phone in a drawer, not throwing people in
| jail without a trial. I, for one, don't blame them one
| bit.
| johannes1234321 wrote:
| The issue is: We can't prove it either way. We can make
| law which increases the risk if they are uncovered and
| hope they abide to it (see GDPR and California Law for
| attempts in that direction) but a prove is hard.
|
| At the same time we see the incentives, and the
| incentives are to collect and analyze things.
| fartcannon wrote:
| I believe the post in question believes they have enough
| evidence to justify the actions and is speaking from a
| position of surprise/resignation at the state of things.
|
| Kind if like, 'I cant believe it's come to this, but
| given all the evidence, it's justified."
| nojito wrote:
| It's not just them. Anyone who still has the wrong assumption
| that targeted advertising even works is in for a massive
| revelation.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| I think it's less to do with targeting and more to do with a
| noxious business model. When your business model literally
| relies on wasting people's time and/or compromising their
| privacy, it shouldn't be surprising that people eventually
| develop workarounds (ad blocking) or provide a business
| incentive for a third-party company (like Apple) to implement
| countermeasures.
| tudelo wrote:
| Are you suggesting there is no difference between targeted
| and non-targeted advertisement?
| notyourday wrote:
| At scale? Margin of error at best. I will tell you what my
| interests are by vising web properties that cater to them
| in that specific time. You deciding to keep showing me ads
| for a Nespresso machine when I'm reading about circular
| saws is idiotic.
| edmundsauto wrote:
| That doesn't pass the sniff test. Would you say that in
| general, you wouldn't expect a difference in results if
| you sold Taylor swift albums to white suburban women in
| Iowa, versus black urban men in Atlanta?
| notyourday wrote:
| You know what would blow both of those out of the water?
| Selling it to those that have _indicated that they are
| interested in Taylor Swift_ as white suburban women in
| Iowa do not buy Taylor Swift albums. They buy mom jeans.
| Instead they are getting ads for Taylor Swift.
| nojito wrote:
| Yup. Ebay for example gained revenue when they stopped
| buying targeted ads.
|
| More information here.
| https://freakonomics.com/podcast/advertising-part-2/
| RHSeeger wrote:
| Given that ebay is a worldwide company that is relevant
| to pretty much everyone on the plant, it seems like they
| are exactly the case for targeted ads being least useful.
|
| Nearly every company in the world does not fit that
| description, and I would bet that the vast majority of
| them would benefit from targeted advertising. One example
| being local stores targeted only to local people.
| chillacy wrote:
| Ebay didn't stop buying targeted ads, afaik they stopped
| buying a specific type of ad in google search that had
| the keyword 'ebay' in it. Most companies bid up their own
| searches with the theory that they have to or else their
| competitor would, but ebay showed that people who search
| 'ebay magic cards' would most likely skip the search ads
| and go straight to ebay.
| nojito wrote:
| No they completely stopped buying ads. The brand keyword
| experiment gave them the confidence to run an experiment
| to completely turn everything off.
|
| >TADELIS: Yes. So, for non-branded search, we actually
| had no idea what the results are going to be. Because
| here, if I am searching for, example, a studio microphone
| I'm sure that on eBay I might find a variety of used
| ones. But if I'm not thinking about eBay, and I just
| search for "studio microphone," if eBay doesn't pay an
| ad, they might not even show up on the first page. And by
| the way, the automated machines at eBay that were doing
| the online bidding, they had a basic library of close to
| 100 million different combinations of keywords, because
| eBay has practically everything you could imagine for
| sale on the site. So, we really had no idea what the
| returns for the non-branded searches would be.
|
| >TADELIS: And we took a third of these D.M.A.'s, and we
| turned off all paid-search advertising. This was an
| extremely blunt experiment where we're saying, "What
| would happen if we didn't advertise at all?" And to our
| surprise the impact on average was pretty much zero.
| CodesInChaos wrote:
| Some level of targeting is necessary, for example it clearly
| makes no sense for a typical restaurant to advertise
| globally.
|
| The interesting question is much _tracking_ adds on top of
| simpler targeting based on location and context.
| harrisonjackson wrote:
| Facebook should just make a user's location required - not
| the ios permission to constantly track a user all over...
| but just a field on a user - city/state/country.
|
| Or make it optional and just show that ad to users that
| have set their location field.
| esrauch wrote:
| I don't think that's relevant here: the new prompts
| aren't about collecting gps data but correlating your
| identity across contexts. If you manually chose a city in
| Facebook, I think the ad in the other random app which
| used fb ad network would only be able to use it if the
| user said "yes" to the prompt.
| runarberg wrote:
| Be careful not to conflate _necessary_ with _convenient_.
| Static ads can still be local, e.g. in the local newspaper,
| on the radio station, on a sign post, or websites for local
| businesses /communities.
| CodesInChaos wrote:
| I consider these targeting based on context or location.
| I'm fine with that, since it doesn't require invading the
| privacy of the user.
| runarberg wrote:
| Agree. The spying part is what is wrong (and should be
| illegal without a consent and paid compensation). Ad
| agencies should not be allowed to track and model my
| behavior, and then use these models to sell me stuff. Or
| if they do they should pay me for it.
| nojito wrote:
| That's not targeting. That's simply location based
| advertising.
|
| Facebook and others have convinced people that they can do
| better than simple location based advertising.
| esrauch wrote:
| I think theres a spectrum of techniques and no bright
| line. If you are temporarily in NY but live in LA, is it
| location based advertising to show the user an ad
| targeted to LA? What if you're at a regional airport and
| the only flights today are to LA? What if the ad network
| knows you have a flight booked to LA today? What if you
| have a lot of friends in LA so there's a good chance you
| will be there soon?
|
| People would call the last one personalized and not
| "location targeted", but it's pretty hard to see where
| that flips.
| Razengan wrote:
| It's an insidious racket at worst, and at best a case of an
| emperor with no clothes.
|
| Mass advertising needs to die off already. Just hold better
| search and filtering tools and empower people to discover
| what they want instead of telling them what they should want.
| helsinkiandrew wrote:
| Why do you say this? What evidence?
|
| There are hundreds of thousands of businesses that happily
| pay for ads on Facebook over other platforms and see improved
| results after tweaking the targeting.
|
| The issue is the privacy loss we get, not the efficacy of
| targeting.
| [deleted]
| runarberg wrote:
| I'm also skeptical of the claim that targeted ads don't
| work better then static ads. However I think the default
| assumption should be that they _don't_ until we find
| evidence that they do. That is the burden of proof should
| be on the targeted ads.
|
| All that said, I am not an authority on if any evidence
| exists, I have never looked into the literature my self, so
| perhaps this evidence already exists and I just don't know
| about it.
| nojito wrote:
| No...targeted advertising only enriches ad platforms not
| the buyers of the ads.
|
| https://freakonomics.com/podcast/advertising-part-2/
| notriddle wrote:
| > No...targeted advertising only enriches ad platforms
| not the buyers of the ads.
|
| No... ~targeted~ advertising only enriches ad platforms
| not the buyers of the ads.
|
| > In our previous episode, we learned that TV advertising
| is much less effective than the industry says.
|
| Sounds like almost all advertising is just a zero-sum
| game.
| twobitshifter wrote:
| It is clear that an ad on a search page for a product works
| much better than something that is not relevant. What I've
| seen from my wife's Facebook is that Facebook heavily
| promotes ads based on your search activity elsewhere. If they
| know that you are more likely to buy a product than a random
| person, it would definitely improve the ad effectiveness. In
| other words they're skimming intent based on google searches.
| jonathanstrange wrote:
| The problem is that it works very well in certain areas.
| dfgdghdf wrote:
| Targeted advertising works extremely well. I actually stopped
| using Instagram because the adverts were so accurate that it
| scared me.
| HDMI_Cable wrote:
| to be fair, that could in part be the Baader-Meinhoff
| effect [1], where you'll only remember the ones that were
| scarily accurate (though I do agree with you).
|
| --- [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frequency_illusion
| dfgdghdf wrote:
| I don't know what the hit rate was, because as you
| suggest I likely ignored the irrelevant ads. However, the
| ads that were relevant were so eerily accurate (including
| things many of my friends and acquaintances wouldn't know
| about me) that I didn't want anything more to do with the
| platform.
| runarberg wrote:
| Targeted ads don't work any better then static ads. This is
| new for me. Actually now that I think about it, all evidence
| I remember at the moment is anecdotal. So perhaps you are
| right.
|
| Regardless of its efficacy, the legality should be out of the
| question.
| nullserver wrote:
| Was in adtech for awhile.
|
| Targeted ads work really well for many scenarios, b2b
| software.
| runarberg wrote:
| Like I said, all evidence I know of is anecdotal. Which--
| for sure--is indicative, but by no means conclusive.
| edmundsauto wrote:
| I'm not sure it makes sense to speak this broadly about
| efficacy, since there are probably variations in returns
| amongst different targeting groups and value props.
| Execution matters.
|
| I'm also not sure if it matters whether they are actually
| effective. At least for the short term. If people believe
| they are effective, is there any difference in the
| dynamic?
| dillondoyle wrote:
| Yes they do. It really bugs me all these HN threads state
| this and rely on their own personal experience not as an ad
| buyer but as a consumer. It's not true.
|
| One can directly measure ROI and prove the value of this
| advertising. Especially FB provides for my business
| (political marketing) at least 10X better direct response
| value and that is mostly using 1:1 targeting and lookalike
| modeling.
| runarberg wrote:
| Cool. Just as I thought. It seemed wrong that such an
| easily measurable thing would never have been tested and
| a whole industry (arguable the biggest industry in the
| western world at the moment) had never measured it (or
| they had and found no effect).
|
| What I like about the HN discourse is that if someone
| slings out a statement which is demonstrably false,
| someone that knows better might respond with a
| correction. That is why I left this comment, as I all my
| knowledge with the targeted ad business was anecdotal,
| and I desperately needed a correction.
| arrosenberg wrote:
| FB has also lied consistently about the performance of
| their ad products, so who knows if you are really getting
| that ROI.
| reaperducer wrote:
| _an existential threat to their business model_
|
| Nothing existential about it at all. It's an actual threat to
| Facebook's business model. And I'm OK with that.
| 23iofj wrote:
| _> Nothing existential about it at all. It 's an actual
| threat to Facebook's business model._
|
| "Existential threat" means a threat to the very existence of
| a thing, so a thing that is an "existential threat" is a very
| big actual threat. I think maybe you're confusing
| "Existential" with "Hypothetical"?
| reaperducer wrote:
| "Existential threat" means an implied, or perceived threat.
|
| Politicians started using that phrase en masse about a year
| ago, and the internet has latched onto it and now misuses
| it all the time.
| jandrese wrote:
| Please do not let this become a repeat of the "literally
| now means figuratively" situation...
| 23iofj wrote:
| _> ...and the internet has latched onto it and now
| misuses it all the time. _
|
| I can't decide if this comment is very clever ironic
| satire or... not ;-)
|
| _> Politicians started using that phrase en masse about
| a year ago_
|
| "Existential threat" has been in wide-spread use for a
| really long time. The first time I heard the phrase used
| was probably some time in the late 90s. And that's more a
| function of my age than of how long the term has been
| used. The cliche is at least half a century old and has
| been used by politicians for at least decades.
|
| For example, the phrase was commonly used in anti-
| proliferation and denuclearization advocacy during the
| last quarter of the 20th century, when nuclear weapons
| were characterized as an "existential threat" to
| humanity. This use persists today; see, for example,
| https://www.start.umd.edu/publication/nuclear-weapons-
| and-ex...
|
| But the term isn't particularly partisan or limited to
| extinction-level threats. it's also been used throughout
| modern history by right-wing populists to refer to one
| group or another being an "existential threat to our way
| of life". See for example https://www.bbc.com/news/world-
| us-canada-44498438
|
| The point is, the phrase has been used for a long time,
| always with the same meaning, and its use hasn't been
| particularly partisan as far as I can ever remember. Both
| sides use the phrase for various things. But they all
| definitely mean the same thing -- a threat to the
| existence of something (humanity, dominant cultural
| norms, the country, etc.). _Not_ a "perceived" threat.
|
| I'm genuinely and sincerely curious where you got the
| idea that "Existential threat means an implied, or
| perceived threat" rather than "a threat to the existence
| of a thing". The former has never been anywhere close to
| the dominant accepted meaning. Possibly you heard a
| politician or pundit use the term in a sarcastic way and
| misunderstood their sarcasm as literal? Or you heard
| someone use the phrase in a hyperbolic way?
|
| Can you share one or more sources where people are using
| the phrase in the way you describe?
| ogre_codes wrote:
| "I do not think that word means what you think it means"
|
| "Existential threat" means something so devastating it
| threatens the subjects very existence.
|
| It's meant that for as long as the phrase has been in
| use.
| kstrauser wrote:
| Merriam-Webster says (ref: https://www.merriam-
| webster.com/news-trend-watch/existential...)
|
| > an existential threat is a threat to the existence of
| something.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| It's really weird.
|
| I don't think the "threat" is the obvious one... Nobody trusts
| Facebook -- many, if not most, people honestly believe they
| listen to their conversations already. The real message is how
| emotional and immature the leadership is to a perceived slight.
|
| A message that said "Cigarettes will kill you" didn't stop
| smokers, and some label won't stop Facebook users or
| meaningfully impact Facebook. Hell, when Microsoft faced anti-
| trust breakup, the company didn't sit and whine. They fought
| the threat and sold billions of dollars of software and
| solutions to their antagonist.
| Clubber wrote:
| >A message that said "Cigarettes will kill you" didn't stop
| smokers
|
| Nicotine is as hard to quit as heroin. The fact that we still
| punished smokers through public shaming, exclusion and
| excessive fines just shows how unsympathetic our culture is
| to perceived "moral failings."
|
| https://www.heart.org/en/news/2018/10/17/why-its-so-hard-
| to-...
| SMAAART wrote:
| Ex-smoker here.
|
| So, what do you advocate? Reward smokers? Encourage
| smoking?
| Veen wrote:
| Perhaps we should advocate consistency. Either shaming
| and punishment works to discourage unwanted behaviour or
| it doesn't. If it does, then perhaps we should start
| shaming obese people and crack addicts.
|
| P.S. Before the downvotes come, I'm rather fat and a
| mostly ex-smoker, so I'm not attacking obese people, just
| wondering at the inconsistency.
| rstupek wrote:
| Don't we already shame obese people?
| SMAAART wrote:
| We can all agree that "shaming" is not good; but at the
| same time we should not promote/encourage behaviors that
| leads to negative outcomes.
|
| So, generic "smoke is bad for you", "overeating is bad
| for you", "junk food is bad for you"; and positive
| reinforcements like "say no to smoke", "say no to junk
| food" would be a good start.
|
| And if some groups comes out and state that those
| messages are "shaming" well, those people are idiots.
|
| P.S.: ex-smoker and ex-fat person here
| Clubber wrote:
| >and positive reinforcements like "say no to smoke", "say
| no to junk food" would be a good start.
|
| I mean why do people feel it's their duty to get into
| someone else's life? How about assume fat people and
| people who smoke know it's bad for them and just leave
| them alone. I think people in society would be much
| better off of they worried themselves with their own
| lives. I guess that's a lot harder than pointing out
| other people's problems though.
| smichel17 wrote:
| I think the two are not quite equivalent. Smoking is the
| action, while obesity is the condition. The equivalent
| would be shaming smokers _for getting cancer_ or shaming
| obese people for overeating (to nitpickers: yes, this is
| a simplification).
|
| The main difference seems to be that smoking in public
| inflicts secondhand smoke on others, while obesity
| inflicts... taking up more room on public transit? IF
| shaming is effective at curbing public smoking, _and_
| there is no shaming for smoking in private, then I think
| you could have a logically consistent position.
|
| I don't know if the first of those is true, and the
| second definitely isn't (although maybe a different level
| of intensity), so I'm not saying there _is_ consistency,
| just that it 's possible.
| zepto wrote:
| > we should start shaming obese people and crack addicts
|
| Where do you live where obese people and crack addicts
| are not shamed?
| Clubber wrote:
| Maybe as a society we should quit our Spanish Inquisition
| style moral crusades.
| jjgreen wrote:
| I wasn't expecting that ...
| ficklepickle wrote:
| Well I've kicked heroin but not nicotine. Not because the
| nicotine is more addictive, but because its harms are
| orders of magnitude less. I've tried both and I would
| rather go cold-turkey off nicotine than a strong opiate.
|
| I agree 100% with the "perceived moral failings" part.
| Shaming people does not help. I couldn't kick the H until I
| stopped shaming myself. The guilt made my usage worse. It
| was caused by complex mental health issues, dealing with
| those got me healthy.
|
| The whole ordeal has made me a much more understanding,
| compassionate person. I'm extremely grateful to be one of
| the few that made it out.
| Veen wrote:
| Yes, it is odd that many who deem shaming an effective
| strategy where smoking is concerned deem it ineffective and
| counter-productive for obesity, narcotic addition, and
| other undesirable behaviors.
| parsimo2010 wrote:
| It won't cause Facebook to go bankrupt (less well-targeted
| ads can still be sold but aren't worth as much), but it will
| meaningfully impact them. Most high level Facebook employees
| have significant amounts of Facebook stock. Even the
| implication that Facebook's ad revenue will decrease is going
| to lower their stock price. So of course they are going to
| try to prevent this change- if it becomes permanent they are
| taking a hit to their retirement savings.
|
| If Android follows suit (not guaranteed but iOS and Android
| often converge on features within a few versions of each
| other), then they are going to take another hit. Executives
| want to prevent this change in the interest of their personal
| wealth.
|
| While I welcome the change as an iOS user (for privacy with
| my other apps, I don't even have a Facebook account) I can
| understand why Facebook is coming out hard against the
| change.
| spideymans wrote:
| >If Android follows suit (not guaranteed but iOS and
| Android often converge on features within a few versions of
| each other), then they are going to take another hit.
| Executives want to prevent this change in the interest of
| their personal wealth.
|
| Google might be incentivized to do it, as doing so would
| harm the effectiveness of other ad networks without
| affecting their own (as long as the user has a Google
| account)
| krrrh wrote:
| Facebook's attempts to legally challenge Apples UX
| changes seem fruitless, but they would definitely have a
| case against Google if they tried to pull this to benefit
| their ad network and data collection efforts over
| Facebook's.
| dylan604 wrote:
| > if it becomes permanent they are taking a hit to their
| retirement savings.
|
| poor little snow flakes. i have zero sympathy
| bumbada wrote:
| >if it becomes permanent they are taking a hit to their
| retirement savings.
|
| This would be amazing. Imagine all the talent that would be
| freed into real problems.
|
| BTW: I remember while working in the financial sector, in
| the financial bubble, how terrified they were if markets
| were to be corrected, like they did.
| jf wrote:
| (I think you meant antagonist?)
| Spooky23 wrote:
| Thank you!
| samstave wrote:
| Given the fact that the 5 C-suite execs have escape hatches
| from their bullet proof offices to SUVs below, and the
| remainder of the 3,000 engineers are in an open space just
| tells you what those people value.
| edoceo wrote:
| Really? Escape hatches?
|
| Edit: Ok. Maybe https://news.yahoo.com/mark-zuckerberg-
| reportedly-escape-hat...
| worker767424 wrote:
| Calling it now: for all the hate Zuckerberg gets now,
| he's going to be Bill Gates in 25 years, and they only
| people who won't trust him are the vaccine mind control
| nuts.
| [deleted]
| dylan604 wrote:
| I don't see this happening, unless The Zuck has some sort
| of Scrooge moment. He just doesn't seem the type.
| samstave wrote:
| I was on the design team of MPW.... yes they have escape
| hatches.
|
| and more.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| > The real message is how emotional and immature the
| leadership is to a perceived slight.
|
| I don't agree with this. It seems less of an emotional
| response than a business one: the changes from iOS will have
| a large, material impact on Facebook's business, and it will
| get even worse if other gatekeepers follow suit (not likely,
| as Google's model is pretty close to Facebook's).
|
| I think the real takeaway is how much money is riding on
| surveillance capitalism, and how these business models take a
| real hit when you just explain clearly to the user what's
| going on and give them a choice.
| Waterluvian wrote:
| I'm not sure "Cigarettes will kill you" was ever meant to
| stop smokers from smoking. It was part of a generations long
| campaign to change the entire perception and culture behind
| smoking. And it seems to be working very well.
|
| I think there are parallels here. I see a focus on getting
| _current_ users to stop tolerating naked privacy. I think
| that ship has sailed. But in time the entire culture can
| shift where future generations do not accept naked privacy.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| Totally, but look at how smart (and evil) the tobacco
| companies were. They pivoted between strategies in smart
| ways.
|
| Once reality started setting in and denial didn't cut it,
| they acted to protect the shareholders. Phillip Morris
| bought things like Kraft that they could spin-out later.
| They settled claims and paid states billions of dollars for
| healthcare costs a few years before healthcare started
| going up 30% a year... which capped their liability AND
| made it politically impossible to put them out of business.
|
| Google seems to at least attempt to do something similar by
| entering and investing billions into businesses like Cloud,
| cars, etc. I don't see that with Facebook... Facebook digs
| in and spouts some nonsense about connecting people, like
| the capitalist version of Soviet PR people.
| indigochill wrote:
| Well, I'm by no means defending Facebook's business, but
| they did open-source a couple little projects called
| React, GraphQL, and PyTorch (and a bunch of other lesser-
| known stuff), so technically it's not _all_ bad. :P
| Arainach wrote:
| The point isn't doing good, the point is having multiple
| viable lines of business. No one does that better than
| Microsoft - they have, what, a dozen billion dollar
| products now? Google is trying but has this far been less
| successful, and Facebook isn't even really trying at all.
| The closest they have is Oculus, but hardware isn't going
| to cut it.
| ryandrake wrote:
| I think people forget how ubiquitous smoking was. I
| remember back in the 80s, you basically couldn't go
| anywhere without ending up stinking like an ashtray. And it
| was even worse decades earlier before I was born. Everyone
| bellyached as anti-smoking laws kicked in, but slowly,
| attitudes changed, and now, it's not such a big deal. I bet
| if you got rid of anti-smoking laws, you wouldn't even see
| a huge uptake in public smoking or smoking in workplaces
| these days, because people's minds have been changed and
| there are a lot fewer smokers.
| reaperducer wrote:
| _I remember back in the 80s, you basically couldn 't go
| anywhere without ending up stinking like an ashtray._
|
| Can confirm. I visited many a windowless office in
| Manhattan where everyone smoked, and air circulation was
| nil.
|
| Fixing electronics in those days always started with
| swabbing a thick layer of tar off the circuit boards.
| technofiend wrote:
| It's probably hard to fathom now but while working at
| Chevron in 1990 / 1991 the two smokers in my group _got
| their own office_ so no one else had to share with them
| while they smoked at their respective desks. Thankfully
| they kept the door closed, but any time you had to go in
| there everything - the walls, the ceiling, their
| keyboards and monitors, their books - everything had an
| odiferous brown patina. It was like walking into a bar.
| The fact that last comparison no longer really works
| tells me how much the world has changed for the better.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| I had to do some work at a customer datacenter, which was
| a converted print/mainframe room in a 70s high-rise with
| lots of windows.
|
| The customer had built a wall blocking all of the windows
| in the late 80s (this was circa 2000), we had to go in
| the the area inbetween.... 10-15 years of no interior
| cleaning and high temps resulted in these weird
| formations of tar drips. It almost looked like a cave
| formation. Absolutely vile.
|
| The story from the site staff was that the print and
| mainframe operators back in the day would essentially sit
| and continuously smoke, all day, all night. IIRC, we
| found a half dozen defunct cigarette machines.
| technofiend wrote:
| Hahahhaah. That's cool and disgusting at the same time. A
| former coworker shared with me he was tasked to
| investigate why the mainframe was throwing errors only at
| night. He discovered a couple of operators were rolling a
| couple and then disconnecting the air ducting to the
| mainframe to use as a covert way to vent their own
| exhaust.
| gilrain wrote:
| > A message that said "Cigarettes will kill you" didn't stop
| smokers
|
| That's the opposite of true. It didn't stop _every_ smoker,
| but research has established that anti-smoking marketing and
| labeling has a massive impact on how many people smoke
| overall.
| reaperducer wrote:
| _The real message is how emotional and immature the
| leadership is to a perceived slight_
|
| It's very telling that personal privacy has Facebook's
| leadership fudging its collective Huggies, while every other
| company -- even Google -- is going along with it.
| svachalek wrote:
| Google has avoid updating their iOS apps for months to
| avoid putting privacy labels on them.
| zepto wrote:
| To be fair, they _have_ now started to do it.
|
| One unexplored possibility is that they actually needed
| to do quite a bit of analysis to determine all the uses
| the data is put to within their organization and doing a
| legal review so that they didn't end up making a false
| statement.
| misiti3780 wrote:
| Completely agree -- How people don't look at this and delete
| their accounts immediately is crazy to me.
| darksaints wrote:
| Apple taking on this issue is worthy of respect, but let's not
| pretend that Apple respects all user consent. They're
| constantly forcing things on their users with thinly veiled
| justifications like "security".
| btbuilder wrote:
| could you provide some examples beyond the "walled garden" of
| the iOS platform?
| executive wrote:
| Every time you turn iPhone on it prompts to sign in to who
| knows what min 4x in a row.
| lovegoblin wrote:
| I have never experienced this. Care to be more specific?
| executive wrote:
| Just tested.
|
| > Power cycle device.
|
| 'Apple Verification. Enter the password for "<email>" in
| Settings.'
|
| > Tap 'Not Now'
|
| 'Apple Verification. Enter the password for "<email>" in
| Settings.'
|
| > Tap 'Not Now'
|
| 'Apple Verification. Enter the password for "<email>" in
| Settings.'
|
| > Tap 'Not Now'
|
| 'Apple Verification. Enter the password for "<email>" in
| Settings.'
|
| > Tap 'Not Now'
| Karunamon wrote:
| What happens when you actually enter it? Sounds like your
| iCloud password was changed.
| darksaints wrote:
| https://9to5mac.com/2020/11/15/apple-explains-addresses-
| mac-...
| meepmorp wrote:
| It'd be helpful if you would explain your point, then use
| the link as a support, rather than expecting others to
| deduce your argument.
| pmontra wrote:
| I wonder if Apple is in a sort of competition with Facebook.
|
| Probably they are competing for engineers, Messenger /
| WhatsApp vs iMessage, time spent on Facebook content vs on
| Apple content and other things I'm missing.
|
| On the other side they benefitted from the popularity of
| Facebook (and many other internet properties companies)
| because they gave an extra reason to people to buy
| smartphones and using them a lot.
| jka wrote:
| Your description "a sort of competition" seems an accurate
| way to describe it, in my opinion.
|
| They're both huge companies whose largest risk of
| disruption comes not from the marketplace (they can
| monitor, acquire and influence challengers), but from
| regulators. The appearance of competition helps both
| companies to reduce that risk.
| sjg007 wrote:
| Apple could do a privacy focused social network if they
| wanted to. It won't look like a social network at first
| whatever it is.
| jahlove wrote:
| > Some apps, like Facebook, allow for some data tracking to be
| manually disabled. But by default, it is turned on. That gives
| the company reams of personal data on who we are and what we are
| doing, which it then vacuums up, packages and sells.
|
| My understanding is that Facebook does not sell this data, but
| rather lets advertisers create hyper-targeted ads, which are only
| possible because of this data.
|
| Edit: Certainly not trying to defend Facebook here (in the
| slightest). Just trying to correct an inaccuracy in the article.
| beervirus wrote:
| I don't care if they sell it. I don't want their business
| partners to have my data, but I'm not any more ok with Facebook
| having it in the first place.
| ttt0 wrote:
| > My understanding is that Facebook does not sell this data
|
| Even if they don't, Facebook is not the only app in the world.
| Tracking being disabled by default is a good thing, no matter
| what Facebook does with it.
| fumar wrote:
| It is not that simple. Facebook can also customer data from a
| variety of sources and parties. In addition, it will share
| measurement data to outside parties. Even if the data shared
| outside its walls is translated to a new ID, you still end up
| with an open loop where a user ID is used for targeting,
| measured, and potentially shared. That user ID is based on
| their iOS device ID and we know those are unique.
| tgv wrote:
| Didn't they have a deal with Cambridge Analytica, rebranded as
| Palantir?
| reaperducer wrote:
| _My understanding is that Facebook does not sell this data_
|
| Selling the actual data and selling access to use the data is a
| meaningless distinction.
|
| Money changes hands. The data is used.
|
| Perhaps we should say "renting" the data. Just the way a hotel
| rents you a room, but you use it on the hotel's premises.
| dwaite wrote:
| Data does not change hands. Facebook is selling services that
| internally operate because of processing on that data. Even
| then they do not sell the processed data or access to read
| the processed data.
| ForHackernews wrote:
| No, no, we're not selling murdered puppies! How could you think
| that!
|
| We only sell the finest artisanal sausages rendered from
| gently-euthanised young canines.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| "We never sell your data" is a meaningless statement. It's the
| online service equivalent of saying that a bottle of water is
| "fat free". It is consistently and prominently written because
| it is a definitive statement. Facebook used to feature it on
| the signup screen with some other statements that sound
| principled like "We don't charge for Facebook, and we never
| will", etc.
|
| But when you parse out what it means you are left with
| something more accurately stated as: "<Company> will not sell
| its proprietary assets."
|
| It sort of like the operator of a hotel saying "I don't sell
| rooms".
| elefanten wrote:
| Maybe it doesn't sell it directly, but it certainly sells it in
| the sense that it turns it into a product that people can pay
| for.
| KineticLensman wrote:
| The often-quoted statement 'if you aren't paying, you are the
| product' is closer to the truth but is actually misleading. As
| per the book on Surveillance Capitalism, our interactions with
| Facebook (or Google) are the raw material from which they
| create their products, which are sold to advertisers, namely
| the ability to target ads at specific groups of people.
| skeeter2020 wrote:
| I would attribute this to the "packaging" the article
| references. As you correctly point out advertisers don't want
| "the data" they want the hyper-targeted ads that it allows.
| That's the FB value-add.
| albntomat0 wrote:
| I agree, with the addition that Facebook wants to keep
| control of their user data and repeatedly sell it via ads,
| rather than directly sell it to some third party org to
| repackage.
| albntomat0 wrote:
| I agree that the original wording could be better.
|
| I'd phrase it more along the lines of Facebook indirectly
| selling the data as hypertargeted ads, while keeping control of
| the data themselves.
| whoisburbansky wrote:
| It's a nice bit of semantic ju-jitsu to say "they take this
| data and sell a service that wouldn't be possible without it"
| isn't the same as "selling this data," isn't it? Especially
| given that the targeting mechanisms don't have any k-anonymity
| guarantees, and I'm aware of at least one paper showing
| information leaks through the ad portal [1]
|
| https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/documents/public_events/122...
| ChrisKnott wrote:
| Seems to me like you're more playing "semantic ju-jitsu" than
| OP.
|
| Facebook collect data to sell targetted adspace, they do not
| sell data. This is a plain fact.
| r00fus wrote:
| No they just have surprise leaks of data through API usage
| like for Cambridge Analytica then say they were hacked,
| when it's all above-board.
|
| Until/unless personal data becomes a liability for
| corporations they will continue to mine it and let us
| mortals deal with the fallout.
| tmccrary55 wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook%E2%80%93Cambridge_An
| a...
| tmccrary55 wrote:
| It's funny how a link to Facebook's recent data selling
| scandal, in a discussion about whether Facebook sells
| data, gets voted down.
| goatsi wrote:
| Because that wasn't a data _selling_ scandal? Cambridge
| Analytica didn 't buy data on millions of people from
| Facebook, they harvested it for free due to lax
| permissions.
| firephreek wrote:
| "I didn't pay for sex your honor, I simply left money on
| the nightstand."
| cm2012 wrote:
| "Recent" "2013"
| cutthegrass2 wrote:
| They may not "sell" access to user data, but they certainly
| allow access to it:
|
| "In total, it said the social network had special
| arrangements with more than 150 companies to share its
| members' personal data. Most of these, it said, were other
| tech firms, but the list also included online retailers,
| car-makers and media organisations, including the NYT
| itself, among others."
|
| source: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-46618582
| saddlerustle wrote:
| What that article is describing is just that the Facebook
| Graph API existed, which always required user consent.
| prepend wrote:
| Right, I mean prostitutes don't sell sex right, they just
| sell access to their private parts temporarily.
|
| From a user privacy perspective, I'm skeeved out that
| Facebook sells access to data rather than giving out
| copies. The only difference is that Facebook makes more
| money.
|
| It's like those asshole companies that say they don't sell
| data, but only rent it. That's not the point that I care
| about.
| atonse wrote:
| They actually buy a ton of data from others. So they are
| encouraging a market that thrives by selling our data
| without our informed consent.
| zepto wrote:
| Very true, and very bad, but not the same thing as
| selling the data themselves.
| calciphus wrote:
| I hadn't heard of this recently. Where could I read more
| about it?
| mattkevan wrote:
| Facebook don't sell data, they rent out their users.
|
| The more info they have, the more accurate they can be
| about renting out the right ones.
| mewpmewp2 wrote:
| Renting also doesn't make any sense in this context.
| Facebook sells ad space, stop making up nonsensical
| analogies.
| mbesto wrote:
| > This is a plain fact.
|
| A plain fact that requires looking realistically at how
| colloquialisms are used combined with a little bit of
| technical know how. How many businesses do you know
| actually "sell data"? The only market I can think of are
| companies like Zoominfo. Outside of that there really
| aren't that many companies that "sell your data". However,
| you'll see a ton of social justice campaigns against "stop
| companies selling your data". They aren't going after
| Zoominfo, they're going after Facebook.
|
| Does facebook capture data? Yes.
|
| Do they literally take that data and sell it byte for byte
| to other people? No.
|
| Is that data absolutely necessary to sell their products or
| services? Yes.
|
| So, in effect, its easier to say to the common person
| "they're selling your data" than "they're harvesting their
| data so they can sell products and services". Facebook is
| trying to defend itself in the public eye by responding to
| this slogan - not by the real factor that matters.
| ohgodplsno wrote:
| And Facebook can absolutely go fuck itself. Whether they're
| collecting data for their own usage, to resell to other
| directly or indirectly, or for any other usage, they can
| get royally fucked. Especially when they are still tracking
| me even after deleting my account.
| fallingknife wrote:
| It isn't the same. At least only FB has my data instead of
| thousands of advertisers who paid for a copy. Leaks may be an
| issue, but it still isn't the same as selling the data to
| anyone who will pay.
| [deleted]
| mewpmewp2 wrote:
| Selling data implies to me that in exchange for money they
| give actual data row by row to third parties.
| madeofpalk wrote:
| Well I guess there's a distinction required between what
| Facebook does and actual adtech/data broker companies that do
| outright sell .csvs of user data.
| easytiger wrote:
| The thing is, localised advertising is the sweet spot that
| i've identified in advertising value. If you forget all other
| data, this is one piece of information that can provide value
| to both consumer and small businesses.
|
| Facebook, if you know any small business that have a specific
| region of operation (e.g. one city) derive significant
| benefit and growth from Facebook's targeted advertising that
| they just were not seeing before.
|
| Of course, if anyone logs in and fetches their data from
| facebook as a download and go through it, it is really rather
| unbelievable how much data there is beyond geographical data.
| Some of it pretty scary.
|
| What intrigues me further, after i tried to do the same with
| google, i don't believe google are nearly as open to how much
| data they hold on a person. There doesn't seem to be any
| takeaway service that indicates the same depth of
| information. But of course we know for a fact they do hold
| some of it.
|
| Anyway, the long and short of it is advertising is all we
| have to support enormous social networks and I feel some
| level of personalised data provides mutual benefit. It should
| of course all be opt in with no exceptions.
|
| I'm actually conceptualising a service/product around this
| concept right now.
| zepto wrote:
| They really don't sell it.
|
| You certainly say they exploit it on behalf of their
| customers, but we need to maintain the distinction between
| this, and the companies that _actually do_ sell the data they
| collect, because once sold, you can never trace who is using
| the data, whereas with Facebook and Google's model, you can.
|
| It's also worth pointing out that it's not in Facebook's
| interest to sell the data. If they did, they would lose their
| advantage quite quickly.
| lazzlazzlazz wrote:
| Huge mental gymnastics to pretend "sell the data" and "use
| the data to sell something else" are the same. Baffling.
| collaborative wrote:
| Pros: great news for value app developers. Unfair competition
| won't be as big of a worry and users will finally have to start
| valuing their apps (with money!)
|
| Cons: small retail sellers will find it hard to advertise and
| won't be able to compete with big ad spenders that use more
| wholesale ad strategies
| tobib wrote:
| > small retail sellers will find it hard to advertise and won't
| be able to compete with big ad spenders that use more wholesale
| ad strategies
|
| I wonder how much of an issue this is in the real world, i.e.
| outside of the valley or where ever people change their buying
| behavior based on targeted advertising. I buy peanut butter
| when I need peanut butter and not based on any kind of
| advertising. I'm running low on socks, I'll go buy socks
| wherever I bought socks last time. Why would I buy something
| just because an algorithm shows it to me, that idea is so weird
| to me. I wonder if I'm the exception or if I'm missing
| something.
| [deleted]
| sbazerque wrote:
| I wonder how much of the tracking would still be necessary if
| Facebook didn't limit the organic reach of local business pages,
| as I understand they do in order to boost their ad offerings, and
| allowed them some space in the feed based purely on the
| likes/fans/comments they have as they did in the early years.
| johnwards wrote:
| Isn't this just going to drive all the tracking serverside?
|
| Hash up the tracking data in the app, send it back to the app's
| servers, send it to whoever you like? Same is happening with
| browsers and 3rd party cookies.
| viktorcode wrote:
| Sort of. I was thinking how tracking will respond now. And the
| answer is known: device fingerprinting, i.e. collecting all
| accessible device details to uniquely identify it. But since
| Apple fights fingerprinting too to certain extent, this sort of
| tracking will not be as accurate as the current identifier
| tracking. Also, it is significantly harder to implement. So,
| some monetary losses for the likes of Facebook are given.
| m3kw9 wrote:
| You forgot the ? in the title, and made it click bait
| frouge wrote:
| What a fascinating story about an ALL-OUT WAR guys! You'll
| learn so much about cyber plots, tanks, politics, maneuvers and
| constant bombing between Apple and Facebook, actually even Mr.
| Zuck and Mr. Cook themselves taking massive risks in this sick
| conflict, a really crazy read! I felt like I was a soldier
| during WW2, no...even WW4? The title is so well chosen!
| pwinnski wrote:
| Hacker News automatically strips question-words and question-
| punctuation from titles, to avoid click-bait.
| menacingly wrote:
| It's the "why is" in the original title that makes it not
| substantively different from the headline here. Both make the
| assumption facebook is in fact going to war
| artembugara wrote:
| So interesting to see how more and more businesses realize they
| have a single point of failure for a billion dollars streams.
|
| What's even more interesting is that I don't think many
| considered those as threats 10 years ago.
| Firebrand wrote:
| I was thinking about that the other day when Snap reached $100B
| in market cap. That's a mobile app whose continued success
| rides entirely on the good graces of Apple and Google.
| underseacables wrote:
| It's even more interesting when you consider that most people
| block ads, or they block them in their vision. How many of us
| actually look at ads anymore? I would say that very few people
| even pay attention to them, and we sort of block them out of
| our attention. Online advertising does not work, and the
| metrics are inflated. I would love to see a major company stop
| spending on Facebook advertising, and doing analysis to see if
| their sales actually drop.
| ridaj wrote:
| We might soon learn what users prefer, a break from Facebook or a
| break from their iPhone... If I were Facebook, this wouldn't be a
| fight I'd pick.
| lwhi wrote:
| This tracking needs to be reduced, I applaud Apple for helping
| progress this.
|
| Next order of business is removing the Apple's marketplace
| monopolisation; the App Store should not be the only marketplace
| available.
| dnh44 wrote:
| >the App Store should not be the only marketplace available.
|
| Wouldn't Facebook then simply stop distributing it's app
| through the Apple App Store and then create it's own app store
| that doesn't have any of the anti-tracking restrictions?
| celsoazevedo wrote:
| Is the permission popup that asks users to allow/block access
| to the location, tracking, etc, tied to the App Store?
|
| On Android, it doesn't matter the source of the app. If the
| app wants to access your location, camera, files, etc, you
| need to give it access. I don't see why this new iOS feature
| to "ask apps not to track" has to be different, isn't it all
| part of what the "app sandbox" lets them do?
|
| Apple can't control what's in the 3rd party stores, but they
| control iOS and what apps are allowed to do.
| dnh44 wrote:
| That would work for things like accessing a user's address
| book or location but some of the quality control occurs at
| the App Store review level.
|
| I don't think iOS would be capable of protecting against,
| for example, the running of hidden cryptocurrency software.
|
| Also iOS has private api's but their use is prevented by
| the review process.
| quenix wrote:
| You can block access to private APIs at the kernel level
| without any manual review--in fact, blocking private APIs
| is about the easiest thing to automate.
| paulmd wrote:
| Yes, but if they didn't have to justify to Apple (because
| it's not Apple's app store) a reason they needed a specific
| permission, Facebook would just demand all permissions.
| jackson1442 wrote:
| It's an iOS thing, but in the App Store you're not allowed
| to restrict functionality for users who don't consent to
| tracking, while elsewhere they can restrict whatever they
| like to bully you into accepting tracking.
| lwhi wrote:
| I think the issue is there two funding models at play.
|
| Advertising vs. paid content.
|
| Apple wants the tide to switch to paid content, and want to
| encourage people to do so through their own merchant
| gateways.
|
| In my opinion, this feel reasonable _only_ if consumers have
| real choice. Telling users they can use a different platform
| if they're not happy, is not real choice.
| dnh44 wrote:
| You're not wrong with your first three lines but do you
| really think consumers will actually have any meaningful
| choice if all the trendy but privacy invading apps have
| their own app store with software free to run rampant on
| users devices?
|
| With iOS, Apple was able to create a mass market of easy to
| use device for regular people that didn't get infested by
| various adware and malware. I think that's a really
| significant and impressive achievement. People choose to
| buy into Apple's ecosystem partially for this reason. When
| the next "must have" social/communication app is only
| available on a future Facebook AdStore we'll have the
| choice between installing some form of adware or not
| participating. That's even less of a real choice than
| having the freedom to switch platforms.
|
| If app stores get regulated I fear we'll end up where
| windows PCs were in the late 90's. I don't know about you
| but I quite enjoy not having to remove spyware from the
| mobile phones of friends and family on a regular basis.
|
| Also, slightly tongue in cheek, if Epic is able to force
| Apple to allow an Epic App Store on iOS will that mean that
| Epic will be forced to allow alternative cosmetics stores
| in Fortnite? How far should app store regulation go?
|
| >Telling users they can use a different platform if they're
| not happy, is not real choice.
|
| Finally why is this argument always made on behalf of
| users? I've never heard a user that wasn't also a developer
| complain about the lack of app stores where they can more
| easily download crapware.
|
| I think this is a lot more about developer rights
| masquerading as user rights. I think it's self evident that
| in a lot of cases that the interests of developers are
| totally at odds with the interests of users.
| lwhi wrote:
| > If app stores get regulated I fear we'll end up where
| windows PCs were in the late 90's. I don't know about you
| but I quite enjoy not having to remove spyware from the
| mobile phones of friends and family on a regular basis.
|
| What's stopping an alternative market place being hot on
| screening for bad apps and crapware too?
|
| > I think this is a lot more about developer rights
| masquerading as user rights.
|
| I disagree it's about the rights of everyone _accept_
| Apple.
|
| I was trying to think of a good metaphor for these
| sanctioned app marketplaces.
|
| To me it feels like living in a city where you're forced
| to buy from one city sanctioned shopping mall.
|
| Every shop in the mall has to provide thirty percent of
| their takings to the city gov.
|
| If you're not happy with the setup you need to move to
| another city.
|
| Can you think of anyone who would think this represents a
| positive model?
| joejohnson wrote:
| The Grace Jones ad is discussed in more detail here:
| https://adage.com/article/media/facebooks-new-commercial-nar...
| navbaker wrote:
| Not sure why the interstitial blocking my access to the website
| about ads and nagging me to disable my ad blocker brought me
| such joy.
| jk7tarYZAQNpTQa wrote:
| I don't like the wording at all. _" Ask app not to track"_ means
| an app can ignore a user's request, just like with _" Do not
| track"_ on the web. The button should read "Deny", and the denial
| should be strictly enforced.
| kjakm wrote:
| You're jumping to conclusions about the technical
| implementation based on the button text? It is enforced. If the
| users chooses the 'don't track' option in the dialogue the app
| does not get access to the IDFA.
| CodesInChaos wrote:
| There is no way for apple to prevent apps from tracking, since
| many apps require persistent storage. At best Apple can throw
| apps out of the appstore after they become aware of an
| infraction.
|
| I believe this dialog _does_ control access to apple 's
| advertiser-id (IDFA), so apple did implement some technical
| measures. Unfortunately that's not the only way for an app to
| track a user, so giving the impression that Apple enforces this
| denial would be misleading. People already blame Apple for apps
| lying on their privacy labels.
| user-the-name wrote:
| It is a combination of both. Clicking this will deny the app
| access to the very useful IDFA identifier, so this part is
| strictly enforced.
|
| However, when phrased like this, it does not JUST represent the
| access to the IDFA, it is a direct request from the user to not
| track you in any OTHER way either. And yes, the app can ignore
| that, but then Apple is free to deny it access to the App
| Store.
| jackson1442 wrote:
| exactly this. Facebook can still tie your actions in the app
| to your Facebook account, nothing's changing there and Apple
| couldn't possibly control that. They won't, however, get that
| IDFA, which _is_ something Apple can control.
| croes wrote:
| "which is increasingly going to move to a paid experience" We
| already pay but with data instead of money. But we neither know
| the real cost nor the real consequences.
| blfr wrote:
| In the future, you'll get to choose whether your phone vendor
| sells your data or censors what content you can access on it.
| It's gonna be great.
| avaldeso wrote:
| In the future you'll get paid for your personal data.
| [deleted]
| d3ntb3ev1l wrote:
| Have their been any data studies to show exactly how much data is
| "enough" to adequately target ads?
|
| There appears to be a point of diminished returns.
|
| Overall though, it's amazing Facebook/Google have made "targeted
| ads" a thing.
| cube00 wrote:
| I suspect its like datasets for machine learning, you want
| every last drop to ensure you have the edge, no matter how
| slim, over your competitors.
| varispeed wrote:
| I think the Facebook case shouldn't be left to the market to
| "sort itself out", but instead this type of business model should
| be banned in its entirety, just like people cannot run ponzi
| schemes, they shouldn't also run "free" services in exchange for
| processing personal data.
| apersonmatt wrote:
| Allowing AD tracking in the first place is on Apple. They opened
| the door for bad actors like Facebook. I won't praise them for
| fixing this hole; I'm upset they put it in and even more upset
| it's taken this long to consider removing it.
| marshmallow_12 wrote:
| you could see this as a case of apple using their monopoly powers
| to drive another company out of business. This whole thing seems
| quite deliberate on the part of Apple. They have taken the
| applaudable step of prioritising user privacy, and i'm not a
| conspiracy theorist... BUT i assume that apple will never do
| something if it won't ultimately help the bottom line. I'm going
| to invest in some popcorn and see how this plays out.
| yawaworht1978 wrote:
| Apple should be applauded for this. Their revenue does not depend
| on software to clandestinely steal and sell users data. One day,
| we will look back at history and see facebook similar as to how
| people view myspace now (junkyard of software). Good on Apple not
| selling devices with a facebook backdoor in them.
|
| I know apple probably has deals with malicious governments
| regarding data access, but at least they are standing up to FB
| and exposing their vulnerable points where it hurts badly,
| Zuckerberg has no clothes.
| elwell wrote:
| > [FB revenue model] depend[s] on software to clandestinely
| steal and sell users data
|
| Isn't it opt-in by using their platform? Or is your argument
| that targeted ads are not common knowledge to Facebook users? I
| likely wouldn't use Facebook or Google etc. if I had to pay
| cash; fine with paying with personal data; but for people who
| aren't fine with that, they shouldn't use it.
|
| I realize that any attempt to discuss this is inviting
| downvotes, but I just ask for a quick comment if you do choose
| to downvote. I try to be very open minded.
| gpm wrote:
| Opt in can be reasonably be interpreted to mean opt in not
| bundled with other services in the gdpr day and age.
|
| Separately, opt in implies _informed_ consent. Most users
| have no clue what data Facebook is capturing. It 's not
| informed.
| ska wrote:
| > Isn't it opt-in by using their platform?
|
| I don't think this is an entirely fair argument unless it is
| exceedingly clear what you are opting in to. The fact that FB
| (and others) are so resistant to being more transparent about
| this is in itself informative.
| bozzcl wrote:
| The real problem here, and what Apple is getting at, is lack
| of consent. The willingness or not to "pay" with personal
| data is meaningless if there's no awareness. Sure, tech-savvy
| people are aware and can make informed decisions... but my
| grandma is not aware that Facebook is tracking her. And most
| non-techy people are like that: I closed all my Facebook
| accounts last year and people were surprised. I had to
| explain it to them! I can't wait to see their reaction when I
| tell them I closed my Google account as well.
|
| The iPhone update doesn't even immediately forbid tracking,
| it just requests apps to ask for permission. That simple
| change pushed Facebook to buy newspaper, radio and TV ads to
| try to get people to reject the update. Think about it: they
| feel threatened by user _awareness_.
| landryraccoon wrote:
| In that case, Apple's pending change would have no effect on
| you.
|
| The dialog pops up and you give your consent for the FB app
| to track whatever it wants, because you're fine with that.
|
| Other users similarly are allowed to make their own choice as
| to whether they accept that trade off.
| coldpie wrote:
| Between this privacy fight and the form factor of the iPhone
| Mini, there's a 90% chance my next phone will be an iPhone
| after more than a decade on Android. I'm done with this ad-
| sponsored trash ecosystem.
| simplerman wrote:
| Yeah because of exactly these two reasons, I switched to
| iPhone Mini. Love it so far. Now working on removing Google
| and Facebook dependencies from rest of my life.
| Wingman4l7 wrote:
| ...so you want to move to an ecosystem where Apple gets to
| decide what you can and cannot run on your own device?
|
| Having to jailbreak to side-load apps that aren't on an
| approved storefront is not acceptable.
| coldpie wrote:
| Sure, I don't have a problem with that. I don't sideload on
| Android either.
| reedjosh wrote:
| Not that I blame you if you want a premium experience out of
| the box, but I've gone to Graphene and am quite happy.
|
| https://grapheneos.org/faq
|
| Even my SSO works well enough. Some notifications rely on
| Google Play Services though, but I find I don't really miss
| those apps anyway.
| eldaisfish wrote:
| the problem here is that every single one of these
| alternate OSs requires advanced knowledge. Granted, it's
| not difficult to flash your phone via a USB cable + web
| interface but consider that the average smartphone user
| isn't even interested in removing bloatware like facebook.
|
| The advanced knowledge i'm referring to is to first know
| that GrapheneOS exists, know how to enable OEM unlocking,
| know how to select the correct factory image and so on.
|
| People don't care and cannot be expected to care. Apple, as
| much as i dislike several of their practices, provide a
| phone that works when you need it to. AFAIK, the iphone's
| primary purpose as a phone - has never had an incident
| where a software bug prevented someone from placing a call.
| solarkraft wrote:
| Apple are also assholes to users in places (no own software,
| no simple customization, absurd seeming prices, extremely
| limited and proprietary connectivity) ... but they also
| protect them like nobody else and are unusually reasonable in
| places, like with their software update policy.
|
| It's a reason I keep thinking about replacing my current
| phone with a used iPhone X, though the 12 mini would be nicer
| for the screen size.
| Zelphyr wrote:
| Apple isn't perfect, I'll admit that all day long. But,
| frankly, the "absurd prices" argument just doesn't hold
| water to me. I paid almost $3000 for the MacBook Pro I'm
| typing this on--eight years ago. Meanwhile, everyone I know
| that has had PC's have gone through at least two
| replacements during that time. A little over $300/year for
| a computer is a bargain. I pay three times more for
| Internet access!
| philliphaydon wrote:
| I think you will find most people with PCs replace them
| because they think they need to. My friend just replaced
| his 12yo asus laptop which he had to keep plugged in to
| work as the battery no longer held a charge.
|
| People with apple products tend to keep better care of
| the products than the latter too.
| prepend wrote:
| > most people with PCs replace them because they think
| they need to
|
| Why is this important. Are you saying that PC users are
| stupider than Mac users or something? The end result is
| that PC users go through more hardware than Macs. I
| consider myself pretty decent with computers and use
| both. My five year old MacBook Air runs fine, I've gone
| through two PC laptops (that were always bigger) and they
| don't tend to survive windows updates. I've even churned
| through yearly chrome books that seem to be made out of
| paper mache or something.
|
| Perhaps people are trainable to do the right thing. But
| it's been decades, maybe we think about why this training
| fails on aggregate.
|
| In the meantime, my personal experience of cost/year
| being cheaper with Mac vs PC stands for me.
| dkdbejwi383 wrote:
| > no simple customization
|
| What do you mean by this, exactly? Not being funny, just
| don't understand this as a con.
|
| What would you like to customise, and why? How is being
| unable to do so harmful to users?
|
| Genuine questions, because I can't think of much I'd like
| to customise. Personally, I like not having options because
| it keeps things simple.
| Toine wrote:
| Anecdotal, but i just bought the iPhone 12 mini, and i
| absolutely love it.
| specialp wrote:
| I'm moving to Apple after being a long time iPhone hater.
| With how insidious Google is getting with Android they should
| be paying me to use my flagship phone, not me paying roughly
| the same amount of an iPhone. I do everything I can to not
| feed into the (free*) services with the cost being sucking
| down more data about me than I know about myself.
| xirbeosbwo1234 wrote:
| I hate Android, too, but there's no way I'm going to pay
| iPhone prices. Smartphones don't matter. They exist to tide
| me over until I can get to a proper computer. Even then I
| leave mine on airplane mode 90% of the time.
|
| And the 'mini' is still huge.
| rchaud wrote:
| There are ads all over the App Store FYI
| sabellito wrote:
| Yeah that's a no from me, mate:
|
| https://www.timetoplayfair.com/timeline/
|
| https://www.forbes.com/sites/robpegoraro/2020/10/15/apple-
| to...
|
| And so many others. Apple phone users weren't allowed by
| Apple to have Spotify as their default music program until
| recently.
| katbyte wrote:
| I've never used anything but spotify on my iphones for
| years and this has never been an issue for me - i wouldn't
| have known or cared until reading these links.
| dmlittle wrote:
| This is true, but in practice on an iPhone the "default"
| music app didn't make a difference for me. I always had
| Spotify running (not necessarily playing, just the app open
| in the background) so when I pressed play it always played
| Spotify rather than Apple Music.
| rthomas6 wrote:
| Then Apple is bad and Android is bad too. So the ethical
| choice is to buy neither. I'm not being facetious. I'm
| considering moving to pure AOSP based, Linux based, or just
| foregoing a smartphone entirely.
| cddotdotslash wrote:
| I've been on Android for a decade as well but just got an
| iPad mini. The one thing I still cannot figure out how to do
| on iOS is block ads at the system level. Android has lots of
| apps that act as a VPN that block ads/trackers via DNS. It
| blocks ads in the browser, but also in apps.
|
| I can't find the equivalent on iOS. All my searches lead to
| ad blockers using Safari's content blocking, but the VPN-
| style ad blockers appear to violate Apple's terms, and so
| aren't in the app store. I've also seen recommendations to
| use Pi hole on my network, which is fine until I leave the
| house.
|
| If anyone has recommendations for system-wide VPN/DNS-based
| blockers for iOS, please share. That's the last real thing
| keeping me on Android.
| GeekyBear wrote:
| You could set your DNS server IP address to one of
| AdGuard's public DNS servers that are configured to operate
| like a PiHole without installing anything.
|
| https://adguard.com/en/adguard-dns/overview.html
|
| DNScloak and an ad blocking hosts file, such as the one
| here: https://github.com/BlackJack8/iOSAdblockList would be
| another option.
| lorenzhs wrote:
| I use https://apps.apple.com/app/apple-store/id691121579
| but the UI is very basic - it doesn't come with any filter
| lists, you need to point it at a hosts list like https://ra
| w.githubusercontent.com/BlackJack8/iOSAdblockList/...
| manually. It's not compatible with other VPNs at the same
| time and it displays as a VPN in the top bar. Not ideal but
| dkdbejwi383 wrote:
| I'm worried the iPhone mini will be canned next update cycle.
| I wish I was in a position to buy one, but I only got an
| iPhone X in Jan 2020 to replace my dying iPhone SE with great
| reluctance. It's too soon for me to replace, as it works
| perfectly and I can't justify the cost or the waste. I just
| hope there's a mini iPhone in 2 or 3 years when I need to
| upgrade.
|
| I waited a long time for a new small iPhone and eventually
| got to the point where I had to buy a new phone, because my
| SE lasted about 15 minutes & I needed to carry around battery
| packs just to use it.
| sircastor wrote:
| I got an iPhone 12 mini (my first iPhone since the
| original) I'm also worried they won't keep the form factor
| around. It hasn't performed well in the market. I like the
| size, but apparently most people prefer the larger size and
| battery life.
| yborg wrote:
| The pricing is killing it, and Apple probably knew it
| would, but they don't want to cannibalize margins here.
| There really isn't a competitive product, so they have no
| incentive to lower prices.
| katbyte wrote:
| Seems like people think it will, and there will be a mini
| 13: https://www.macrumors.com/2021/02/15/iphone-13-mini-
| expected...
| Jtsummers wrote:
| My hope is that Apple realizes they created the apparent
| scarce demand by not having the mini format for so long.
| They need to keep the format over several years so the
| demand can materialize as people finally upgrade their
| old 5S and SE devices now that there's a viable iPhone
| for them. But those same people are clearly patient and
| are not in a collective rush to go out and buy new
| phones, it will take several years of availability and
| their old devices succumbing to age or physical damage.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Apple released a $400 to $550 iPhone SE in Apr 2020 after
| years of not having an updated small phone option, so I
| imagine many who really wanted a smaller phone jumped on
| that. And then 6 months later they came out with 12 mini,
| so I wouldn't expect a size able amount of demand for the
| 12 mini would have been sucked up by the new SE.
| prepend wrote:
| The SE is fantastic as it's much cheaper and works well.
| I switched from an XS and years of latest models and
| forgot how much I love thumb reader over face.
|
| Apple Pay in particular is better with thumb reader
| instead of the tap, look at, tap again buggy process.
| r00fus wrote:
| FaceID is great for me (and my aging parents), but not
| for some use cases (wearing masks, or starting usage
| while in pocket).
|
| I could really get behind having both (esp if I could
| combined).
| joshstrange wrote:
| I know there have been reports of low sales of the mini but
| I'm hoping that Apple continues to make new ones for at
| least 1-2 more cycles before giving up. The mini isn't for
| me (I use a Max) but with the recent release of the SE2 I
| have to assume some people just weren't ready to upgrade
| (like you). One thing Apple needs to understand is just
| because a product line isn't a smashing success doesn't
| mean it's not needed to provide options for all their
| customers.
|
| Similar to how they let the Mac line languish for a while
| because it wasn't their top seller without realizing if
| they sleep on that segment it will hurt the iPhone in the
| long run.
| e40 wrote:
| I moved to iOS for the specific reason of getting the Apple
| watch because of some heart issues I was having. Did it a
| year ago. I wasn't thrilled, but I was sick of the Android
| adware/malware problem (every time I installed an ad-
| supported app I got malware within a week or two).
|
| How do I feel now? I absolutely love this ecosystem. I don't
| fear OS updates like I used to with Android. I don't fear my
| device will be stranded without updates. The UI is clean. The
| 11 is as fast today as when I got it. It seamlessly works the
| watch and my Bose headphones. BT was always finicky with the
| Android phones I had.
|
| And there's the privacy angle.
| MeinBlutIstBlau wrote:
| The m1 is honestly selling me to move back to apple stuff
| again. Also I'm sick of trash process handling on Android
| where apps just stop running because some other one is
| sucking down the ram in the background. I could have every
| app opened on my iphone even on 1gb with an SE and no
| issues noticed whatsoever. I really think apple is
| delivering an upswing they need to after the whole trash 12
| in macbooks and butterfly switches.
| MildlySerious wrote:
| > Apple should be applauded for this.
|
| Sadly there is some truth to that. In a better world it would
| be regarded as the absolute, bare minimum.
| tmccrary55 wrote:
| This seems like it might be a perfect time for some company or
| startup with a different business model to swoop in and
| displace facebook.
| srcreigh wrote:
| Don't forget that ~5% of Apple's revenue is a payment from
| Google to be default search engine.
|
| I still haven't heard anything about a privacy consent screen
| regarding the default Google search box.
|
| Can't fix the whole world all at once, but Apple is not
| uncompromising in their privacy stance by any means.
| prepend wrote:
| I don't think this is applicable. While Google is the default
| search, safari blocks tracking from Google like all other
| sites.
|
| Now if Apple exempted Google from Adblock and cross site
| cookies that would be a different story.
|
| A Google search on an iPhone and a Google search on an
| android produces very different data gathered by Google.
| gen220 wrote:
| One of my coworkers shared an interesting thought with me the
| other day.
|
| Apple is positioning itself as The Privacy Company today, but
| they've benefited immensely from the attention economy over the
| last 15 years.
|
| They would not have sold as many millions of iPhones, iPods
| (heck, even Macbooks) in the last decade, if Instagram &
| Facebook weren't there to suck people in to their platform
| (clearly, the same is true for Android). Now that the iDevices
| are a self-sustaining status symbol with mass adoption and
| institutionally-ingrained utility outside of social media,
| Apple no longer needs to trade user privacy to build their
| moat, and they can pretend that they've been on the user's side
| all along.
|
| Don't get me wrong, Apple's motions here are very good. But the
| entire mobile computing industry was bootstrapped with
| addiction. Facebook and its ilk might have been the
| perpetrators, but they were not the only beneficiaries.
| xiphias2 wrote:
| Instagram was created by 10 people, and it was already good
| enough at that stage to get hypergrowth.
|
| The truth is that all the huge advertising revenue is just a
| plus for the investors, the apps would have been created
| anyways, and then network effects take care of the content.
| Mc_Big_G wrote:
| I doubt the iPhone's long-term success was dictated by
| Facebook et al whoring out user data. There are plenty of
| useful apps that don't hinge on violating the privacy of
| users.
| rehitman wrote:
| I think there is also another part to it. The smart phone
| market has so many options for users, and there is a limit to
| camera improvements they can make. For many people (including
| me) privacy can be another reason to chose IPhone over Pixel.
| With so many options differences like this matter.
| prepend wrote:
| I think it's really the only true difference they can have
| with Android.
|
| Google can't provide privacy that users want as it would
| bankrupt them. Apple can. Other than that, they can both do
| the same hardware, software, apps, etc.
|
| I'm surprised it took them this long to really start
| driving it home. I think they were either trying to figure
| out if monetarily they wanted to start selling data. Or the
| buying public finally started caring.
| icedistilled wrote:
| It's already like myspace. Facebook is giving me super trashy
| friend suggestions of random foreign women with slightly
| suggestive pictures, and aside from my demographic I can't
| think of anything I've personally done on or off the internet
| which would make them good friend suggestions.
| the-dude wrote:
| Have you tried?
| prepend wrote:
| Sometimes I wonder if maybe Facebook's algorithm is amazing
| and these people could become best friends. But I tried this
| a few times and they all sucked.
|
| I suspect it's as stupid as ranking all members based on some
| dumb algorithm like "25 year olds like females, this is a
| female" and just shoveling garbage.
|
| Years ago Facebook just kept recommending people I hated over
| and over. I wish they would have a mode of "you're good, we
| can't think of anyone else you like."
|
| It's like going into a store and the salesperson says "this
| is perfect for you" and they are just showing you every item
| in their store.
| isoskeles wrote:
| Instagram would do this to my discovery feeds. Every month or
| so I'd mark the photos with sexy women as something I don't
| want to see, but they'd inevitably come back. I figure I
| lingered too long at a photo that featured an attractive
| woman. Deleted Instagram after this annoyed me too much.
| ridaj wrote:
| > I can't think of anything I've personally done on or off
| the internet which would make them good friend suggestions.
|
| Being born a male a few decades ago
| Firebrand wrote:
| I wonder if it's intentional that Facebook products were
| omitted from Apple's list of apps to download for new iPhone
| users:
|
| https://m.imgur.com/yT14ZVS
| viktorcode wrote:
| > I know apple probably has deals with malicious governments
| regarding data access
|
| Would love to see some evidence of that. That's quite an
| accusation and it should be taken seriously.
| RamblingCTO wrote:
| I remember that years ago they had a page like "we will
| delete this page if we are forced to give out data under the
| so and so act of the USA because we can't tell you
| explicitly". Does anyone remember more details?
| svachalek wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warrant_canary
| RamblingCTO wrote:
| Very nice, thanks! So Apple's disappeared in Sept. 2014.
| I also found their privacy report for anyone who's
| interested:
| https://www.apple.com/legal/transparency/report-pdf.html
| Dma54rhs wrote:
| It's common sense they wouldn't be able to do business in
| China without it?
| katbyte wrote:
| they dropped plans to e2e encrypt icloud backups because of
| the FBI: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-apple-fbi-icloud-
| exclusiv...
| ridaj wrote:
| Yes. Apple has its own problems though. The only reason it can
| do this is that it has a generally authoritarian behavior wrt
| app access (see Fortnite), as with closed standards for
| accessory connection, etc. This is a company that uses
| platform-exclusive APIs as a cudgel for compliance.
|
| I applaud the fight in that it hopefully makes Facebook weaker
| but I'm not cheering for Apple having this power either. I'd
| rather wish for their greed to cause these two to destroy each
| other.
| LocalH wrote:
| A lot of people would rather have Myspace be the dominant
| social network it once was.
| rchaud wrote:
| If it was dominant, the ads would come sooner or later.
| MySpace is only thought of sympathetically today because News
| Corp acquired it early and let it rot. Facebook didn't start
| out with ads, it introduced them in 2008 or later. By that
| time MySpace was well into its death throes.
| xfz wrote:
| Ick. 30% Apple tax vs. you are the product. We need a happy
| medium. We need better regulation.
| segmondy wrote:
| The enemy of my enemy is not necessarily my friend. Facebook has
| a lot of issues and we might applaud Apple on their push for
| "privacy" but we can't forget that Apple is no angel either.
| alonsonic wrote:
| Definition of looking at the glass half empty. Nothing is a
| zero sum game, we need to learn to reward good actions and
| punish bad ones. Here we need to support this decision by Apple
| instead of deviating attention to other issues. We will never
| get anything done if we always go back to the "but what about
| that..." mentality.
| segmondy wrote:
| Nah, not a fan of Facebook, not a fan of Apple either with
| their closed system. This is how we cheered Google with their
| "don't be evil" mantra while they got evil. Who taught
| Facebook how to invade privacy? Google. Who taught Google
| about closed systems? Apple.
| iscrewyou wrote:
| It's so hard to feel bad for Facebook. They've made shadow
| profiles for non-Facebook users for crying out loud! But they are
| really going out of their way to oppose Apple on this move.
|
| The burger restaurant clip in the audio...couldn't they still
| target users just based on interests? And not actually linking
| those interests to a specific person?
|
| And on the other hand, I don't hear much from Google.
| chrisjarvis wrote:
| Google is in a much less exposed position because they are the
| default search engine on iOS devices (a privilege they pay alot
| of $ for).
| elliekelly wrote:
| Does Google's tracking rely on iOS to the extent facebook's
| does? I don't use either but I would assume nearly _all_
| iPhones accessing fb are via app while a ton of iPhones
| accessing Google are via Safari, mail, and even iMessage now
| that you can play a linked YouTube video directly in the
| Messages app.
| Loughla wrote:
| I heard the burger lady on npr this morning.
|
| I can't get that article to load, so I'm hoping they address
| how she knows that 90% of her business comes from facebook, and
| how hyper targeted ads are more effective than just geo-located
| tags.
|
| It seems like ads for her business would be good for users
| within 'x' number of miles/blocks/whatever of her business, and
| not necessarily based on their interests, correct?
| meetups323 wrote:
| Helps to target appropriate income level and past food habits
| (i.e. don't waste money showing ads to folks that cook at
| home 95% of the time)
| saddlerustle wrote:
| There aren't shadow profiles for non-facebook users. That's a
| myth.
| the-dude wrote:
| Sources please.
| tyingq wrote:
| Coming soon, crazy cheap Facebook subsidized Android phones with
| "Facebook Browser"...
|
| I'm only somewhat kidding. I imagine a flood of super cheap, but
| decent spec Androids would be pretty disruptive, despite sending
| everything to the FB mother ship.
| 5etho wrote:
| i'd buy that
| stefan_ wrote:
| They can just never update their app again, like Google. Let's be
| real, their ADHD like update schedule isn't exactly improving
| anything regardless.
| jakelazaroff wrote:
| I believe this impacts _all_ apps using Facebook 's SDK.
| stefan_ wrote:
| There are apps left using this after Facebook hard broke them
| _REMOTELY_ twice?
|
| I think they got it coming.
| user-the-name wrote:
| Yup. The only way to implement Facebook login is through
| the SDK, so unless you are willing to give up all your
| users that use Facebook login, you are stuck with the
| invasive, crashing SDK.
| chris_wot wrote:
| No developer should tie themselves to Facebook. I
| sympathize with the existing developers, but no new
| developer should be insane enough to rely on Facebook.
| [deleted]
| kerng wrote:
| I think I might become an Apple fan. Writing this on Android
| device to be replaced with the new iPhone mini.
|
| Facebook's behavior becomes more and more disgusting with their
| continued push against privacy and transparency. although I think
| a 30% cut by apple in app store is too much I prefer apples way
| of building something users actually want to buy.
|
| There is 0 drawback for users to ask for their consent before
| tracking them and sharing that data with who knows whom.
| soheil wrote:
| It probably has a much wider impact on FB than what is currently
| known. If anyone uses FB ads, in almost every field of the
| campaign there is now a new warning icon that says this feature
| may not work for users on the latest iOS version.
| lovelyviking wrote:
| >Two titans of Silicon Valley, Facebook and Apple, are in a
| bitter fight that centers on the iPhone data of millions of
| people and whether companies should be able to track that data as
| easily as they do now.
|
| While two titans of Silicon Valley are fighting for control over
| our data my question is how we protect our data from both of
| them.
| SMAAART wrote:
| Are we at the dawn of an all out war of the titans?
|
| AAPL vs FB vs GOOG?
|
| I'd like to see that!
| reedjosh wrote:
| What spin. "This will hurt small businesses in TV and Radio."
| Really!? That's the best argument they can come up with?
| fairity wrote:
| The actual quote: Facebook has also launched a website and
| taken out full-page advertisements in newspapers, in addition
| to a recent TV and radio ad push, to put a spotlight on how
| many small business owners depend on targeted ads.
|
| This is definitely a true statement. The vast majority of small
| businesses who advertise on FB will be hurt by this change. The
| best estimate to date is a 20-30% drop in marketing efficiency
| due to worse targeting capabilities. Some of these small
| businesses will inevitably go out of business due to this
| change (for better or worse).
| wzdd wrote:
| > This is definitely a true statement. The vast majority of
| small businesses who advertise on FB will be hurt by this
| change.
|
| I don't think I've ever seen a source for this. Could you
| post one, ideally one which is not subject to conflicts of
| interest (e.g. funded by the advertising industry)?
| fairity wrote:
| Imo, the conclusion around "worse marketing efficiency" is
| a logical extension from how Facebook's ad ecosystem works.
|
| That is, Facebook is a behemoth in advertising because of
| its capabilities to predict which users will convert from
| an ad unit. By predicting conversion rate accurately, FB
| empower small businesses to get more conversions out of
| fewer ad impressions and spend.
|
| FB's ability to predict conversion rate is driven by a ML
| algorithm that takes as inputs: all the user data it tracks
| via the Facebook Pixel, all the user data it collects
| through its own domains, and data sent via server API's
| from advertisers.
|
| Apple's tracking change reduces the amount of available
| user data to its ML algo by a large percentage.
|
| As a result, prediction power will decrease. And therefore,
| marketing efficiency.
|
| The actual 20-30% estimate is just that, an estimate. But,
| directionally, there's no question efficiency will
| decrease.
| enumjorge wrote:
| You're making some assumptions along the way though.
| There's been multiple articles published about how the
| data that FB shows to advertisers is not accurate:
|
| [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26193544
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26179162
| reedjosh wrote:
| I'm just biased. I hate advertising and I hate tracking even
| more. I'm sure some companies will be slightly hurt, but I
| believe it will be a net gain for society.
|
| I worked at a small hardware store as a kid and we got all
| our business from word of mouth. IDK what the best argument
| here is, so I suppose I'm just admitting my feelings with
| this comment.
| taylodl wrote:
| I don't see why we need to compromise our privacy to
| support advertising for small business. If I want to opt-in
| in order to get ads for services that would likely be
| relevant to me then sure, let me do that. But to be
| _forced_ to opt-in and then create a moral hazard claiming
| I "don't support small business" - yeah, screw that! I
| don't see why Zuckerberg et. al.'s failed business model
| should be my problem.
| josho wrote:
| Oh the irony that one of the most profitable and largest
| companies (facebook) is making the claim that small
| businesses will be impacted.
|
| I think the honest answer is, yes if facebook protects
| their profit margins then it will impact small business
| as they pay more to get the same results. OR Facebook
| could reduce their margins since Apple's change will
| reduce their product effectiveness.
|
| Once we frame it that way it is clear what the battle is
| about. Facebook is fighting apple to protect their own
| profitability and is using a sympathetic actor (small
| business) as a shield.
| kjax wrote:
| The assumption that small businesses would see a drop in
| marketing efficiency might assume that advertising costs on
| Facebook remain constant. In a perfect world, I would think
| that a reduction in ROAS on Facebook would precipitate a
| decrease in ad costs, as businesses would be less willing to
| pay a premium for Facebook ads.
|
| In the long term, I think Facebook is the biggest loser in
| this scenario, not the small businesses.
| fairity wrote:
| I think you're definitely right that Facebook stands to
| lose the most.
|
| And, I also agree that most businesses will be willing to
| pay less of a premium for FB ads after this change. But,
| even for the businesses that adapt their spend accordingly,
| their final marketing budget will be smaller, and
| therefore, their net income/profit from ads.
| submeta wrote:
| Facebook is evil. It harms societies for various reasons, for
| instance by enabling spread of misinformation, and it hurts
| individuals alike.
|
| Every measure that weakens platforms like FB is to be welcomed.
|
| Apple is big enough to confront FB and harm them. That alone
| makes Apple even more valuable in my eyes and makes me keep
| buying their products although I dislike their walled-garden-
| approach and their philosophy that is against open systems.
|
| Edit:
|
| A couple of years ago my impression was that FB is so big that
| it's futile to fight them. Recently more and more people seem to
| realize how harmful these kind of platforms are, and it seems
| there is hope in confronting them.
| yalogin wrote:
| "We want to keep tracking the user without their knowledge and
| that entity is not allowing us - and its bad for us if we can't
| do it".
|
| This is most stupidest hill to die on for a business. I am
| continuously amazed at how shortsighted Zuckerbeg is.
| pyrophane wrote:
| > Apple says in the coming weeks, it will update its iOS software
| for iPhones to require apps to get explicit consent to track what
| people are doing on their phones for the purposes of sharing it
| with third-parties.
|
| That's all they are doing. They aren't preventing companies from
| tracking users in this way. They are just requiring them to get
| permission.
|
| Says a lot about Facebook's business model that this is a cause
| for "all-out war," and that they'd rather try to stop the feature
| than convince their users to enable it. I guess they know that at
| the end of they day if they can't do this behind their users'
| backs, they probably aren't going to be able to do it at all.
| hef19898 wrote:
| Honest question here, as this story almost got me to buy an
| iPhone. And really don't like them, just a personal taste
| thing. If I don't install apps, say facebook, it can't collect
| this data right? So by being careful of what I install, and
| staying clear of facebook, which I am already, using an Android
| should have a similar effect, right? Or am I getting this
| wrong?
| fairity wrote:
| Not entirely, Facebook collects a lot of information about
| you when you're browsing third-party sites. This tracking is
| done through the Facebook Pixel, which is loaded via
| javascript on ~15% of sites you visit.
| bob33212 wrote:
| What is to stop Facebook from making a picture show up all
| fuzzy and then tell the user that they should opt-in to
| tracking to get the highest resolution pictures.
| gpm wrote:
| Apart from Apple's tos... That sounds like it would be a
| pretty explicit, in your face, and eat to prosecute gdpr
| violation in Europe.
| ogre_codes wrote:
| Facebook isn't concerned with what happens within the
| Facebook App itself. Everything there is already tracked and
| filtered. What they are most concerned about is that a huge
| pile of outside apps which are feeding them data by including
| their APIs will opt out of including Facebook's APIs because
| the indie apps don't want to display this warning.
| fairity wrote:
| Apple's TOS surrounding this change prevent any sort of
| content-gating of this sort. Infractions may result in
| removal from the app store.
| nerbert wrote:
| I'd be curious to see whether apple has the balls to remove
| fb from the app store
| mikestew wrote:
| Apple pulled FB's enterprise cert a while back, basically
| pulling FB's internal apps offline. I don't think it's a
| huge leap to pulling the app from the App Store if it
| comes down to it. In fact, I'd argue that pulling the
| cert was a shot across FB's bow: "oh, you think we don't
| have the balls, do you? Anything _else_ you think we don
| 't have the testicular fortitude for?"
|
| https://blog.malwarebytes.com/security-
| world/2019/01/apple-p...
| Karunamon wrote:
| Without a doubt. They nuked Fortnite from orbit, and had
| to be stopped by a judge from nuking Epic's developer
| cert, which would have killed any app using the unreal
| engine.
| wyattpeak wrote:
| I don't know how it was received (if at all) in the rest
| of the world, but in Australia at least Facebook is still
| reeling from their news ban, I suspect the populace would
| support Apple for a few days, and that's realistically as
| long as the ban would last if implemented.
| runako wrote:
| Obviously not as big, but they kicked Fortnite out of the
| App Store. So there is precedent for them holding the
| line.
| jackson1442 wrote:
| They definitely do, Apple has revoked their developer
| certificate before[1], and this is really the next
| logical step if Facebook keeps fucking around
|
| https://finance.yahoo.com/news/apple-hits-back-facebook-
| revo...
| unionpivo wrote:
| Honestly If apple can't afford to stand up to FB who can
| ?
|
| I dislike Apples closed ecosystem (anf google trying to
| do the same), but if it can weaken FB's grip on people,
| it might bring some benefit even to non apple customers.
| omk wrote:
| I appreciate this kind of a view. You may disagree with a
| few policies of a company and remain in favor of some.
| Works for people, brands, governments equally.
| virgil_disgr4ce wrote:
| Well, once they launch Applebook, they won't need fb
| anymore
| juuular wrote:
| The world would be a better place if they did.
| bluthru wrote:
| Probably not. The YouTube app restricts Picture in
| Picture (a standard OS feature) behind a paywall.
| dallamaneni wrote:
| They may not remove FB but they may just stop accepting
| updates if Facebook does not comply
| ricardobayes wrote:
| What a great day. Next to prepare: Youtube with it's super creepy
| listening recommendation algorithm. If you say something out loud
| it will appear in your feed.
| dhdhhdd wrote:
| How can an app track activities in other apps? Is it only
| possible if those other apps use the same tracking networks, or
| can the app track activities in _any_ other app? How does this
| work? What can facebook extract today?
|
| (I'm surprised a bit, i thought phones offer app isolation).
|
| The only things that comes to mind is to correlate device ids
| from different apps if the apps use the same
| analytics/advertising networks.
|
| Pls enlighten me...
| pfortuny wrote:
| "which includes which apps are being used and for how long,
| which websites are visited, and data about a user's location"
|
| This is probaly in the "/tmp" or similar directory and probably
| useful for the system as a whole to be readable (or probably
| /dev or /proc). It is not a big deal unless you are facebook
| and, for instance, want to know if your user watches foxnews or
| has the cnn app or whatever.
|
| AFAIK just doing "ps" gives you a LOT of info on any unix env.
| quenix wrote:
| I may be wrong, but I don't think the iOS sandbox allows apps
| to poke around that much.
| kstrauser wrote:
| > The only things that comes to mind is to correlate device ids
| from different apps if the apps use the same
| analytics/advertising networks.
|
| This, and also anything that uses "Sign in with Facebook".
| (That's one of several reasons I have for never using anything
| that _requires_ signing in with Facebook or Google; if I can 't
| create a username or enter an email address, I generally don't
| want to use it.)
| LMYahooTFY wrote:
| I'd also like insight into this. Are apps still not isolated
| enough for this?
|
| Is this more due to FB dragnet network analytics that they can
| put enough data together that it doesn't matter if you isolate
| the app?
| ogre_codes wrote:
| Facebook, Google, and other aggregators entice developers into
| using their APIs (or even their ad platforms). The developers
| get use of a nice analytics package, authentication, or other
| features, and in exchange Facebook and Google use those APIs to
| exfiltrate data from your device.
|
| They can tie all of this data neatly together using an
| identifier which Apple has to date provided as an opt-out
| service. Apple is now changing this to opt-in, so all these
| developers who have included APIs which are sneaking data out
| to the Google and Facebook will need to include a pop-up to get
| permissions to tie their data to the rest of Google and
| Facebook's acquired knowledge about you.
| move-on-by wrote:
| My understanding is that, by default, Apple devices have an
| IDFA (Identifier for Advertisers) that apps can use to
| correlate usage to a specific device. That identifier is going
| to be the same regardless of app, so it can easily be shared
| between data aggregators. You've been able to turn this off for
| ages deep in your apple settings - but of course most people
| don't bother with that (70% is the number I found). This update
| brings that feature front-and-center by making it a popup. I
| suppose that it also makes it app-specific instead of the
| previous system wide setting? Not sure on that one. At least
| that is my understanding, if someone knows better please inform
| me.
| darepublic wrote:
| Not a fan of a lot of things Apple but this is damn amusing. Hope
| Facebook's efforts fall flat on their face
| jdmoreira wrote:
| and we (iOS devs) are just the little men being gassed in the
| trenches.
| underseacables wrote:
| Seems like crying over spilled milk. Facebook essentially created
| the problem, now they are complaining about the solution.
| ryeguy_24 wrote:
| Does anyone support Facebook with this? Does their point below
| make any sense? I'm supporting Apple now but any merit to the
| opposing side? Curious to get some informed viewpoints.
|
| _" This discouragement, this is going to have a real impact on
| the Internet as we know it, which is increasingly going to move
| to a paid experience, which again, benefits Apple's bottom
| line..."_
| acomjean wrote:
| If you know people who don't make a lot of money (just getting
| by), being able to exchange your privacy for a service might be
| an option they're willing to do.
|
| I think transparency and allowing people to make the choice is
| fair. I don't suspect a lot of people give the "free" aspect
| much thought, and I'm glad this is getting the news out there.
|
| I really wish companies would give you the option to pay to not
| be tracked, or exchange your information for tracked ads. I
| don't love that even though I subscribe to some online
| publication they still have ads.
|
| Jaron Lanier a good set of videos on the problem and has a
| proposal to get you paid for your information (videos).
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/09/23/opinion/data-...
| chrisjarvis wrote:
| I am certainly on the Apple side of this spat but Stratechery
| wrote a rather compelling pro-Facebook article about this:
| https://stratechery.com/2020/privacy-labels-and-lookalike-au...
|
| The gist of the argument being that, regardless of what you
| think about Facebook, hyper-targeted "lookalike audience"
| models to target ads against actually do level the playing
| field for small businesses who do not the resources to produce
| large scale ad campaigns. Highly recommended reading.
| bozzcl wrote:
| While that might be true, it does not change the fact that
| modern tracking practices are intrusive and anti-consumer.
| Frankly, I can't sympathize with any business, no matter how
| small, that is dependent on tracking to thrive.
| svachalek wrote:
| It's an old "ends justify the means" argument. By stealing
| your kidneys we can give them to starving orphans.
| yazaddaruvala wrote:
| For "ends justify the means" argument to work, we all
| have to understand and agree to what the "ends" are.
|
| Typically, the "ends" is to "maximize aggregate utility
| across all actors" i.e. also often described as "the
| greater good". As shown by your example: "By stealing
| your kidneys we can give them to starving orphans."
|
| However, when it comes to targeted advertising, the
| "ends" is "maximize aggregate utility for small and large
| capitalists". As such the example should be: "By stealing
| kidneys from starving orphans, we can sell them to
| temporarily[0] sustain capitalists". Which frankly is a
| very poor "ends" from my (and hopefully the majority of
| consumer's) perspective.
|
| [0] Why "temporarily"?: Because the capitalist growth
| mindset will require more kidneys soon. Arguably, this
| implies there is no "ends" and therefore it might be
| incorrect to use any "ends justify the means" argument in
| this context.
| paulmd wrote:
| One need only look back at the previous threads on the App
| Store to find people arguing that Apple should be legally
| forced to open their platform up to competitors, which would
| pretty much gut these kinds of privacy-protecting moves.
| Facebook will immediately move exclusively to a separate app
| store that doesn't ask developers to justify user-relevant
| reasons for the permissions it requests, and immediately start
| demanding full permissions or else you don't get to use the
| app.
|
| So essentially, people here tend to agree in principle with
| Apple protecting user privacy and think Facebook is overbearing
| and infringing on user privacy, but think Apple should be
| legally stripped of any tools to actually protect users'
| privacy, because muh sideloading is more important than
| people's privacy.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26165966
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26276238
| hamilyon2 wrote:
| If you are starting a startup and plan to monetize it by
| selling data of your users, you have one more problem to solve
| now.
|
| If you are starting a company with a very specific market, you
| might pay for your first customers more.
| omk wrote:
| The first point falls flat. It is as good as saying, earlier
| you could steal data, now you have to ask and respect
| consent.
|
| Second may have some ground. But does seem shallow once you
| consider that in order to support small business you are
| opting to take away privacy controls from individuals. What
| ethical model favors the ability of small sized businesses to
| spend less on marketing over individual's right to privacy?
| xuhu wrote:
| If your feed reader app was collecting the websites people
| visited and selling that data to others, you might have to
| ask users for permission now.
| NoodleIncident wrote:
| > Some apps, like Facebook, allow for some data tracking to be
| manually disabled. But by default, it is turned on. That gives
| the company reams of personal data on who we are and what we are
| doing, which it then vacuums up, packages and sells.
|
| Facebook would be giving away money if they ever actually sold
| your data. As everyone here knows, they use that data to target
| the ads that they sell.
|
| Do journalists phrase it this way out of ignorance, or is it an
| intentional lie to make Facebook look even worse than it is?
| michaelbuckbee wrote:
| I think there's room to be charitable and that most people
| don't see a meaningful distinction between "sell ads based on
| your data" and "sell your data to people to use in ads".
| NoodleIncident wrote:
| That's a circular argument. If journalists actually
| understood the distinction and explained it, more people
| would see the distinction after reading their articles.
| judge2020 wrote:
| This is often the problem of journalists not consulting
| experts on topics like these (although, a case could be made
| that the scale they had to adapt to with the Internet forced
| them to churn out news stories too quickly to get an expert
| for every story). They can still write an article about this
| problem (because targeted advertising is considered a problem
| to most people and/or NPR wants to make more people aware of
| it) but nuance is important and saying they 'sell your data'
| isn't misinformation I would want spread.
| villasv wrote:
| I agree that the most used phrasing of "selling your data" is
| factually wrong. On the other hand, I think it is approximately
| true enough for the general public.
|
| I don't expect the usual reader to understand how that data is
| commoditized inside Facebook to serve better ads. Do you
| remember how a US Senator had a hard time understanding how ads
| allowed Facebook to remain free? People will not grasp without
| significant effort the ads economy and no journalist wants to
| take on that every time they write about tracking.
|
| It's a tough situation. I'm not satisfied with how they do it,
| but I understand it's a limitation related to the medium and
| target audience.
| laurent92 wrote:
| But that still means a real estate agency doesn't have my
| address, and the painter doesn't have the list of shoes I
| have bought.
|
| Only being able to show me ads in some apps is a comically
| narrow way of way of "having sold all my data", akin to
| "Thugs have sold my house" for "temporarily skinny-dipping in
| my swimming pool while we were on holidays". Not nice, but
| they didn't sell my house, and Facebook didn't sell my data,
| just told an advertiser they could put a picture in a window
| where there would be house-owners passing by.
| villasv wrote:
| I don't think the analogy helps. Digital goods can be sold
| infinitely many times, unlike your house. Explaining the
| difference between selling data and selling a service
| enabled by that data is not as easy as it sounds. It means
| that a real state agency doesn't have to know your address
| to assess how much your property is worth - someone else is
| doing the math and connecting you and them.
| fairity wrote:
| What does Facebook realistically expect to get out of this PR
| push?
|
| Apple seems to be doing nothing legally wrong. So, I'm guessing
| FB is trying to sway public opinion. But, does the public really
| care that much about the health of small businesses who advertise
| on Facebook?
| dleslie wrote:
| They may see their efforts to oppose Apple as seriously
| damaging to the public perception of Facebook, and so the PR
| campaign is an attempt to diminish that harm to their image.
| gt565k wrote:
| Lmao, just like all the businesses that build their platform on
| top of Facebook APIs only to have those APIs closed down, now
| Facebook will realize what it's like to build your business based
| on hardware device tracking, only to have manufacturer's like
| Apple restrict that down.
|
| Buh bye facebook. May you rot in hell.
| frongpik wrote:
| Imho, Apple just wants money. FB will agree to pay 15
| billions/year to keep tracking enabled, similar to how Google
| pays Apple to keep their search the default option.
| dang wrote:
| Please don't post like this to HN. I'm not saying you owe FB
| better, but you certainly owe the community better if you're
| participating here. We want thoughtful, curious conversation
| that adds new information on interesting things. A comment that
| starts with "Lmao" and ends with "rot and hell" is not
| intersecting that space.
|
| If you wouldn't mind reviewing
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the
| intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.
| amelius wrote:
| Meanwhile, everybody else is building their business on Apple
| too.
|
| I hate FB like the next guy, but I don't like the idea of Apple
| playing government.
| Schiendelman wrote:
| I want government to do for me exactly what Apple just did.
| amelius wrote:
| At least give me the choice. Like a switch in the settings
| screen saying "let Apple police me and others". I would
| even be ok with it being ON by default.
| jaywalk wrote:
| That's... literally what Apple is doing. Facebook is
| crying because they know that a lot of people will opt
| out of the tracking when given the choice.
| amelius wrote:
| Oops. Yes. But Apple is not applying it consistently.
| They are still policing us in a lot of different ways
| too. One of the many examples is that Firefox is forced
| to use webkit on iOS, and nobody is allowed to have their
| own web rendering engine in the app store, which goes
| right against the principles of general purpose computing
| and having control over your own device. It's nice that
| Apple has a content-filter for people who are not tech-
| savvy, or for kids who are not allowed to see certain
| content, but that filter should be optional.
| jaywalk wrote:
| Ok, so you want Apple to allow iOS to be completely open.
| That's obviously not gonna happen.
| amelius wrote:
| Yes, because it's a slippery slope and I don't want to
| end up in a programmer's dystopian future.
| Dig1t wrote:
| In this case I don't think that giving the user a choice over
| whether they are tracked is playing government. But agree
| with the general sentiment.
| [deleted]
| Tijdreiziger wrote:
| IIRC, a while ago an internal memo from Zuckerberg leaked in
| which he detailed that this is why he's investing in Oculus.
| Zuck sees VR as the next frontier of technology, and he wants
| to own the platform instead of merely being an app on it.
| nimos wrote:
| I've always bought android phones but this genuinely makes me
| consider buying an iPhone.
| williesleg wrote:
| All about the data. Apple wants to be the sole source.
| kmonad wrote:
| _" This discouragement, this is going to have a real impact on
| the Internet as we know it, which is increasingly going to move
| to a paid experience, which again, benefits Apple's bottom line,"
| Satterfield said._
|
| The hypocrisy and dishonesty of this statement! Nothing comes
| from the new consent requirements that directly stop you from
| keeping your app free. Can't do it because commercially not
| viable? Well then, how much are users paying you right now?
| qwerty456127 wrote:
| Asking for consent or informing about tracking is bullshit. I
| would bet 99% "voluntary conscious consent" is either not
| conscious or not voluntary. People just are given no real choice
| (they would be denied service or forced to go through an
| intimidating configuration dialog if they object) and/or have no
| actual idea about what does that really mean.
| jasonjayr wrote:
| The point is to introduce some friction into app developers
| using these methods, by informing users what's possible.
|
| It's disgusting what some apps do to slurp off personal
| information, that they are only able to get away with because
| users don't understand whats at stake.
| knodi wrote:
| Drop them from the app store.
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