[HN Gopher] Analytics Suggest 96% of Users Leave App Tracking Di...
___________________________________________________________________
Analytics Suggest 96% of Users Leave App Tracking Disabled in iOS
14.5
Author : Tomte
Score : 358 points
Date : 2021-05-07 12:33 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.macrumors.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.macrumors.com)
| jdlyga wrote:
| What's the benefit to me of enabling it?
| gedy wrote:
| Maybe if you are Dev or QA in an ad tech company and need to
| test? /s
| mtmail wrote:
| More relevant ads. If you play free mobile apps and ads are
| shown anyway you might as well opt-in to have them be relevant
| to you.
| simondotau wrote:
| That assumes that the tracking data is only used for display
| ad targeting. Would you be so happy if this was used to track
| behaviours which correlated to (for example) political
| affiliation, and this was used to place you on a different
| content track in another app?
| pmarreck wrote:
| You know... It just occurred to me that disallowing tracking from
| these apps would force them to seek a business model that is far
| less destructive to the fabric of society
| worik wrote:
| I loth Apple. I am a Apple developer and it is _painful_. After
| thirty years sticking to Unix like systems, Apple is not!
|
| That said I am very impressed that they turn off apps access to
| the UUID for the device by default. Bless them. There is more
| money to be made, I would have thought, by going down the well
| trodden path of avarice, duplicity, and self deception that
| Google has trodden. Well done Apple.
|
| (Perhaps I am wrong and there is some nefarious plan for world
| domination behind their moves - just because I cannot see it does
| not mean it is not there!)
| throwaway287391 wrote:
| I'm actually quite surprised it's that high -- I've seen one
| prompt so far, and I was kind of running on autopilot so I
| accidentally clicked "Accept" before my brain even processed what
| it was asking me (and then I didn't bother to track down the
| setting to manually opt-out afterwards). I guess I'm in the top
| 5% of absent-minded users!
| arielm wrote:
| Another thing to keep in mind is how often these will be seen.
| Right now ~10K apps ask (or, try to ask).
|
| So the odds of seeing the prompt in the wild aren't too high
| unless you're a Facebook user.
|
| But as more apps show the prompt and it'll become very common all
| you need is to agree once and you'll then be more likely to opt
| in more than opt out, in my opinion.
|
| I expect that 10k to 10x before the end of the year. Even then,
| 100k apps out of ~2M isn't all that many, so it might take a long
| time for advertisers to regain the kind of access they had pre
| ATT.
| noxToken wrote:
| 10k out of 2M isn't a good metric, because there will be a long
| tail of niche, unpopular clone (AKA a student's first to do
| list app), shovelware or spyware apps that most people will
| never encounter. If the list of apps is sorted by users, I'm
| sure the top 50 will have a massive reach.
|
| ESPN, Hulu and Cruncyroll issue thepop up. Consider the reach
| of those 3 apps alone compared to the bottom 500k.
| Firebrand wrote:
| Based on Apple's job postings I'm beginning to suspect their
| stance on ads and tracking was nothing more than a clever ruse to
| weaken competitors while they build their own a personalized ad
| business for iOS:
|
| https://i.imgur.com/y1s9F4J
|
| They also just hired Facebook's first ads targeting product
| manager to work for their ad platform. I don't think Apple ads
| won't be limited to the App Store within a couple years.
| zffr wrote:
| Has apple ever said they were anti ads? I thought their
| position was that they were anti tracking without consent.
| rsj_hn wrote:
| I would even go further and say that Apple doesn't care about
| anything other than making money by making good products. As
| more and more people begin to be concerned about privacy,
| Apple takes steps to try to reassure them that the phone is
| still a safe platform in which they can store private
| information such as photos, personal messages, address books,
| banking information, etc. Neither does Apple want a lot of
| annoying requests for tracking from interfering with their
| UI. For them, it is all about improving the experience of
| using the phone, nothing more.
|
| But there is no core value that is anti-tracking or anti-ad,
| and all of these policies can be reversed the moment they no
| longer post a threat to people's enjoyment of Apple products.
| nojito wrote:
| Apple has been pro privacy for decades.
|
| They even called out google and Facebook 10 years ago and
| were vilified for it.
| chipotle_coyote wrote:
| I don't think Apple's "pro-privacy" stance is solely about
| improving the experience about using their products.
| They're certainly very aware a focus on privacy and
| security makes a great product differentiator for them, but
| from all appearances, it's not just fluff when Apple
| executives say they believe privacy is a fundamental right.
| I'm not intending to be Pollyannaish about Apple
| specifically, either; I think most companies have some set
| of core values distinct from profit-seeking, and will try
| and stick by them as long as (a) the profit-seeking and the
| values don't come into serious conflict, and (b) the
| executives at the top continue to believe in those values.
|
| So I don't think those policies are in danger of being
| reversed based on "threat to enjoyment"; I think they're
| more in danger of being reversed based on "measurable
| threat to profit" somewhere down the road -- but probably
| most in danger of being reversed, long-term, by executive
| shuffle.
| throwawayAI39 wrote:
| The caring about money part is exemplified by this story.
| IMO this is one of the biggest stories in tech recently,
| but sadly never got traction on HN:
|
| https://www.theverge.com/2021/4/21/22385859/apple-app-
| store-...
| colejohnson66 wrote:
| They did have one previously: iAd. It was a major flop.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IAd
| mywittyname wrote:
| Oof, they had better be careful, this is absolutely cut-and-dry
| monopolistic behavior.
| amelius wrote:
| Especially considering that the competition has money. Lots
| of money.
| pydry wrote:
| The competition is probably equally averse to attention
| from antitrust lawyers.
| no_wizard wrote:
| It's never been a matter of ads, it's always been about
| _tracking_. Ads just happen to be the vector in which tracking
| is default included, as is well, other tracking scripts around
| the web and via mobile SDKs.
|
| What Apple's doing here is trying to undercut in a serious way
| the ability for everyone to be able to do the kind of granular
| tracking we have today all over the place.
|
| I'm not shocked they're building / expanding an ads division.
| The real key is this: will their ads be served up with the kind
| of granular, identifiable tracking we have today? My gut
| feeling is no, it won't be[0]
|
| [0]: As an aside, I want to note the following:
|
| When I say _tracking_ or speak of it in this context, I do not
| mean simple metrics, like _how many page views did this get
| compared to Ad B?_ That is the kind of, well, tracking, that
| can be done in a way that isn 't privacy invasive (and should
| never be invasive), akin to A/B testing. Technically, error
| logs are a form of tracking, if we want to be pedantic.
| Instead, I to point out that I'm talking about _granular
| tracking data that can be used to identify a person or granular
| set of data that can sort people into unique groups that then
| make it easy to identify them_. The real quandary here of
| course, is that in _some_ cases Facebook, Amazon, Google and
| others have enough data to actually be able to say _oh hey,
| this is no_wizard, not some other person_. Thats a huge part of
| this problem, however, its also not always the case that they
| can harvest enough data to be able to do that. The other, often
| overlooked issue by many (particularly those that don 't follow
| this sort of thing. Not likely your average HN reader but
| probably most people you know, is that they also have the
| heustristic data that confidently sort people into little
| groups, and they are constantly continuing this narrowing. So
| instead of saying _hey, this is no_wizard_ they can say, _well,
| looks like someone who identifies as no_wizard believes in
| these causes, has these purchasing habits, and has seen these
| ads, along with x people from Y area, lets put them in Z group_
|
| I know people get upset (ever so rightly) about being
| personally tracked, but both issues need to be systemically
| addressed. Its not about ads, its about what _ads became_ , and
| through that we now have this kind of detailed tracking all
| over the place, from mobile SDKs to CLIs to most popular
| websites.
|
| I would welcome an Apple Ads platform that went against all
| this and _could prove it_
| ErikVandeWater wrote:
| Does this affect Apple's ability to track its users?
| arielm wrote:
| Not really. But Apple doesn't use its data to sell you ads.
|
| Wait! They actually do. Apple allows targeting ads in the App
| Store by things that require data collection.
|
| So, a better answer might be "not right now" because no one is
| forcing it to play by its own rules.
| naravara wrote:
| > Wait! They actually do. Apple allows targeting ads in the
| App Store by things that require data collection.
|
| AFAIK Apple's ad targeting is largely based on self-reported
| stuff like demographic information and what you're subscribed
| to in Apple News or Music. It's not doing the kind of massive
| log-ingestion and cross-site tracking to do psychographic
| profiling that people tend to find most problematic.
| Tagbert wrote:
| Apple's App Store ads are keyword-based not based on user
| behavior.
| hansel_der wrote:
| no
| valparaiso wrote:
| For selling your data to third-parties? No.
| zepto wrote:
| No, but that has already been opt-in for years.
| whoknowswhat11 wrote:
| Apple asks about some of the tracking items on device setup
| SideburnsOfDoom wrote:
| 4% is level with the Lizardman constant, i.e. the threshold of
| noise in the data:
|
| https://slatestarcodex.com/2013/04/12/noisy-poll-results-and...
|
| So that 4% is basically meaningless, indistinguishable from 0%,
| it might represent misunderstanding, misclicks and the like.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27076848
| DrJohanson wrote:
| Thank you, I now understand why the popularity of the former
| French president Francois Hollande was at 4%.
| barbazoo wrote:
| As an Android user, is there anything I can do other than use
| Firefox with uBlock installed to improve privacy?
| agogdog wrote:
| Privacy from whom specifically? If you're talking about
| Facebook, the only winning move is to not play (and they'll
| still try to track you anyway).
| pyrophane wrote:
| You can use something like Blokada or AdGuard. There are others
| as well. I believe they all mostly work one of 2 ways:
|
| 1. Intercept DNS requests to filter out requests to certain
| domains
|
| 2. Provide an ad and tracking blocking VPN service.
|
| Both of these approaches can work device-wide and do not
| require root access to your device.
|
| Blokada: https://blokada.org/ AdGuard:
| https://adguard.com/en/adguard-android/overview.html
|
| BTW I'm listing these apps as examples but I don't know them
| well enough to specifically recommend either of them.
| fragileone wrote:
| Google just announced today that they're rolling out their own
| version of this in 2022.
| varispeed wrote:
| It's great that Apple does this, but I think this should be
| mandated by law that tracking should be opt-in and for adult
| users only. I think people who decide to be tracked should also
| be compensated for their data.
| minikites wrote:
| That sounds like government interfering with the free market,
| which is completely unacceptable under any circumstance for
| ~50% of the population.
| theonemind wrote:
| That'd be a pretty rare position even amongst the most
| conservative economists, since markets are generally
| acknowledged to have 1. failure modes, like monopoly, and 2.
| externalities, which the economic actor should get forced to
| internalize.
| minikites wrote:
| It's how the US government operates, so it can't be that
| rare. Looking at the past 40 years, the answer to those
| "failure modes" is nearly always "less regulation".
| Economic actors are almost never forced to be responsible
| for their externalities. It's un-American to regulate any
| market: "Government is not the solution to any problem.
| Government is the problem."
| fogihujy wrote:
| Well, apart from the adult-only part, it sounds like the EU.
| simion314 wrote:
| But why does 50% are mostly fine with "only medical data is
| super special"? Your private data could be abused in a
| similar way.
|
| Also why not a law for full transparency? You can have all
| your freedom you want just be transparent about all the
| tracking and information selling or sharing that is
| happening. Can't you convince the free loving americans that
| a simpler GDPR that only requires full transparency is "very
| capitalistic"?
| niij wrote:
| What Apple is doing here is the free market solution to
| invasive tracking. The GDPR was the government's solution
| to that.
|
| I'd much prefer the Apple solution which allows for a
| company to be _rewarded_ for taking a voluntary stance (a
| positive one!) on tracking, instead of coercing every
| business to follow a government mandated rule on something
| as relatively minor as advertising.
| simion314 wrote:
| What Apple is doing is limited. A law will force everyone
| (not limited to websites or mobile apps) to disclose if
| they track you, what data they track and who they share
| it with.
|
| What Apple is doing is also a recent thing, so before
| this fancy privacy labels the market had no solution.
|
| Let me know all the downsides to a transparency law and
| for each downside specify who is affected by the
| transparency.
| dd36 wrote:
| Or did the government interfere with the market by not
| protecting privacy to begin with?
| dylan604 wrote:
| Worse, they interfered with citizen's right to a pursuit of
| happiness.
| dd36 wrote:
| The joy of Monopoly.
| bavell wrote:
| Nah, everyone would get behind this if we actually had
| politicians brave enough to lead the charge. No one wants
| Faceflixzon to dig their hooks into your kid's life.
| minikites wrote:
| Tech company regulation is popular with politicians on both
| sides of the aisle (with different motivations from each
| side), so there has to be more to it than this. I think at
| least some of it is because the politicians are afraid of
| their constituents (my parent 50% comment) and donors
| (affects both sides of the aisle).
| lawtalkinghuman wrote:
| Government requiring car manufacturers fit seatbelts and
| airbags is intrusion in the free market. And a good one that
| saves hundreds of thousands of lives.
| Spivak wrote:
| Well if consumers didn't want to die they would have
| upgraded to our premium safety module for only a $9.99/mo
| maintenance fee and $1200 installation (was $1700).
| lawtalkinghuman wrote:
| The children should have had the good karma to be born to
| more responsible parents.
| yabones wrote:
| The government absolutely has the authority to mandate safety
| measures. Corporations don't have the right to violate users'
| privacy and security, I see this as completely fair.
| batch12 wrote:
| Something stating you own your data and can choose who to
| sell or not sell it to sounds pretty free market to me.
| breakfastduck wrote:
| Free market!= Freedom to invade peoples privacy without
| regulation
| chrisan wrote:
| Also, a free market = freedom to protect my privacy
| smhenderson wrote:
| I'm not sure why you're being down voted. As far as I can see
| you're not advocating one way or another. And you're not
| wrong, with apologies for being so US-centric, that about
| half this country would agree with you that the parent idea
| is "interfering with the free market". I happen to disagree
| with those people but that doesn't mean you're incorrect to
| point them out.
| hluska wrote:
| Taking control of my own data and only giving it/selling it
| when I choose is perfectly free market.
| varispeed wrote:
| Exactly - currently if you want to use Facebook (because
| your whole family and friends are on it) you have to give
| up your personal data and there is no other way for you to
| pay for the service. There should also be an option to pay
| with other means than personal data.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| >The challenge for personalized ads market will be significant if
| the first two weeks end up reflecting a long-term trend.
|
| I know, right? Explain to me how anyone made any money at all 20
| years ago?
|
| Seriously though, can we get back to making good products that
| sell themselves?
| 1_person wrote:
| Cue HN adtech cheerleading squad shitposting the taint off their
| soul in 3, 2, 1...
| afrcnc wrote:
| Source: https://www.flurry.com/blog/ios-14-5-opt-in-rate-att-
| restric...
| woeirua wrote:
| I think this speaks to the power of defaults. 96% of users have
| not turned this on because they didn't even know that its
| disabled, and when an app asks you if they can track you, the
| response is going to be a strong no. The reality is that FB's
| entire business model has been predicated on the default being
| that tracking is allowed.
|
| If this holds, this will be cataclysmic for FB. You can't have a
| huge portion of your wealthy user base just disappear and expect
| advertisers to keep paying what they were paying previously.
|
| BTW, this is also why the covid exposure notification apps failed
| miserably. They should have always been opt-out.
| nothis wrote:
| I don't really get how trends like this one (and IMO that's
| just the tip of the ice berg - this is companies preparing for
| the inevitable legislation that will make most forms of
| tracking illegal within the next 10 years) don't affect
| facebook or google stock.
|
| This IMO makes two scenarios likely:
|
| 1) The market is currently just dragging along, hoping this
| will all go away and we're really in a major ad-bubble that's
| about to pop.
|
| 2) Tracking... isn't that profitable after all. All the
| personalized tracking shit can be replaced with a simple "users
| who clicked on canon printer also clicked on cheap ink refill
| kits" type of model that gets the same results or better. Which
| also puts into question a _lot_ of what FB and Google are
| actually doing.
| woeirua wrote:
| Why would it affect Google's stock? Google has Android, and
| is pretty upfront about the fact that they're collecting
| literally everything you do on your phone. Android still has
| the largest installed user base, and is still feeding tons of
| info to FB.
|
| FB's stock prices hasn't changed because we haven't seen if
| this really impacts revenue to FB. We know that banner ads
| are extremely ineffective. So if FB ads are still more
| effective than that, they will continue to capture the lion's
| share of ad revenue.
| zibzab wrote:
| Not a huge fan of Google, but have to defend them here.
|
| They have a pretty huge privacy section in android settings
| where you can see exactly what data they have on you and
| how to opt out and/or delete existing data.
|
| When you set up android, it ask you if your want in or out.
| You can even set up a new android device without a Gmail
| account and disable all Google services including Gmail and
| search. I don't belive you can do this with iOS.
| sralbert wrote:
| You can set up an iPhone without an Apple account.
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| Although, since you won't be able to install any software
| or use much of the preinstalled software, I don't think
| it would have much utility...
| zibzab wrote:
| That is mainly used to rescue a device, you can't really
| use it as your daily phone that way.
|
| (Yes, I know there are some hacks to get around that )
| [deleted]
| TheSpiceIsLife wrote:
| iOS can also be set up without a Gmail account, no Google
| services required either.
| lurkerasdfh8 wrote:
| You are not wrong. But not right either.
|
| All those nice settings (for google and everyone else)
| are only for the minimum they are required by law. That
| means anything that they can claim to be "anonymized" is
| fair game and not visible to you in any way.
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| ...are they? In the US?
|
| One thing I really do appreciate about Google products is
| that I'm able to fully disable personalization. My
| Youtube homepage is completely depersonalized, because I
| went through their privacy settings and switched off
| _everything_. I can 't say whether or not Google is still
| secretly tracking me, but my biggest concern is actually
| that algorithmic recommendations put me in a filter
| bubble. Google lets me turn off the bubble.
|
| Amazon, by contrast, does not let me depersonalize my
| recommendations. Neither does Netflix. There was a period
| of several years where I would periodically go through my
| Amazon history and manually mark everything as a gift.
| This worked for a time, but abruptly stopped one day. I
| assume Amazon decided I'd marked too many things as gifts
| and my selections should be ignored.
| rdsnsca wrote:
| Google makes 4 times as much on iOS as they do on Android.
| woeirua wrote:
| And that's because iOS users are more valuable in
| general. They tend to be wealthier, and have more
| disposable income.
| ankmathur96 wrote:
| Because while FB definitely doesn't _like_ that this is
| happening, it will certainly cement their position. 3rd party
| ad services that are less tech /ML-forward are way way more
| reliant on the ID tracking than Facebook is, and this
| actually will probably cement them as the only game in town.
| This is a very complicated situation.
| bserge wrote:
| > All the personalized tracking shit can be replaced with a
| simple "users who clicked on canon printer also clicked on
| cheap ink refill kits" type of model
|
| That was how it was done for a long time. Advanced tracking
| was just a way to try and keep increasing revenue.
|
| Whether it worked or not, only the higher ups at these
| companies can tell... probably.
| laurent92 wrote:
| And as an advertiser, I confirm losing a lot of money
| trying to advertise, not seeing revenue. Choosing to
| advertise 25-34 males (in addition to being the
| _definition_ of sexism /ageism) who type "Jira time
| tracking" (because "Jira" keyword is reserved anyway) is
| useless. I want to put an ad on websites that talk about
| Jira. And that requires no tracking at all.
| coldcode wrote:
| It's only a big issue if you try to advertise a specific
| item on a generic platform; but if you can target
| websites that cater to your specific business, you really
| don't need anything more. Of course it means ad networks
| lose out since they can't just target specific people,
| they have to only target specific websites or apps.
|
| Personally in the old days of newspaper ad's, I always
| wondered what the point was of anything smaller than a
| whole page; what is the point of a 1x1 inch ad in the
| midst of 200 others. Even today I ignore 99% of what's on
| the page other than the content.
| jamiek88 wrote:
| Point of those ads generally is that people were looking
| intentionally at them for a plumber, sparkie, piano
| tuner, gramophone polisher, used tap shoes or what ever
| else newspapers used to advertise.
|
| In fact many people only bought the paper on ad day.
|
| Whole different kettle of fish.
| dillondoyle wrote:
| 'users who clicked on also clicked on' is at the core of a
| lot of the tracking Apple is banning in many cases. This is
| why Google is pushing FLOC and 'anonymous' cohorts in Chrome.
|
| This happens on every single HN thread on this topic. I'm not
| a total expert but there is a lot of arm chairing that's
| wrong.
|
| Tracking is profitable and more so than contextual for a lot
| of direct response in a lot of industries.
|
| Not in all cases, e.g. usually not for brand advertising. But
| it works.
|
| For my clients is the direct data I have - and we have
| extensively tried every single other option. FB is the only
| platform that delivers strong ROI and we use the targeting
| iOS blocks. And yes - it's always retorted - I know 100% the
| donations come from the ads, it's incredibly simple to track
| even as simple as making a new page or individual product
| only linked from that ad.
|
| So far this change is definitely effecting our ads and FB
| seems pretty buggy with the new ads manager changes. But they
| 'always find a way.' But so far it's not as bad as I
| originally thought it would be.
|
| Plus you can still upload offline conversion data. most
| purchases have full contact info. We'll see if Apple comes
| after that, but they would then have to go after the entire
| ecosystem including Visa.
| Iv wrote:
| I wonder if we are not overestimating the value of tracking
| and underestimating the value that Google brings by forcing
| some "quality advertisement" from their clients.
| tannhauser23 wrote:
| How is going to be 'cataclysmic' for FB? They can still serve
| up ads. The ads won't be as targeted as before, but they still
| have billions of users. Advertisers will spend money on the
| platform. Perhaps they'll have to spend more since they can't
| fine-tune the ads as much.
| rednerrus wrote:
| The ability FB had to target ads directly to people was their
| biggest value add.
| hparadiz wrote:
| > BTW, this is also why the covid exposure notification apps
| failed miserably. They should have always been opt-out.
|
| If Google or Apple remotely installed a hastily built tracker
| controlled by a government agency on my device I'd be pretty
| miffed about it.
| titzer wrote:
| I hope you don't use Google Play Services, because you really
| don't want to know what it does.
| swiley wrote:
| Unless you're using a pinephone they already have.
|
| And even then the default OS on the newer pinephones uses KDE
| as a DE which had telemetry built in at one point.
| djrogers wrote:
| Except that's not what the exposure notification APIs did at
| all. Location is never tracked or transmitted to anyone. What
| exactly would you have been concerned about?
| Lammy wrote:
| It is literally impossible to submit any exposure alert
| without including location data, and then it can reasonably
| be assumed that all the matched bluetooth device IDs were
| within the same general vicinity as well. Have you ever
| used a GeoIP database?
| dbbk wrote:
| You clearly don't understand how the system works, there
| is no data related to location involved.
| azinman2 wrote:
| Except it wasn't hastily built, and the tracking isn't
| controlled by a gov agency in the nefarious way that you're
| implying.
| luxuryballs wrote:
| but it could be used to essentially manipulate you to stay
| at home if someone went around town and then told the app
| that they have covid, which is nefarious enough
| jwalton wrote:
| The Canadian version of the app recently added "secure
| anonymous usage statistics", which aren't particularly
| anonymous (since all we have is their word that they don't
| log your IP), and that aren't particu secure (messages are
| encrypted with HTTPS but it's not too difficult to infer
| the contents of the message based on their length). And,
| you can't opt out of them.
|
| I still have it on my phone (although at least within my
| house I'm blocking their metrics via pinhole) but I 100%
| understand why someone would not want it on their phone.
| azinman2 wrote:
| AFAIK they don't gain access to the BLE contact database
| on your phone, so what exactly is it that they could be
| transmitting of concern?
|
| What are you able to infer about the contents exactly?
| hparadiz wrote:
| I've seen all sorts of solutions put together by
| municipalities big and small from counties to states to
| countries and everything in between during this whole Covid
| thing and the thing that struck me is how easy it was for
| them to essentially track you with perfect precision and
| tie it back to a phone number.
|
| > Except it wasn't hastily built
|
| They were built very hastily with little oversight with
| iterative beta cycles in plain sight.
|
| > nefarious way that you're implying
|
| I didn't imply any nefarious intent what so over. All I
| implied is that your location data is being tracked and put
| into some database somewhere and you don't control it.
|
| Who has this data? No idea. How will it be used a year from
| now? 10 years from now? No idea. Does it draw more energy
| on my device or use more processing power? No idea.
|
| That alone is enough to not use it.
| azinman2 wrote:
| When you say Apple or Google installed, I assume you're
| talking about exposure notifications that they built. I
| work at Apple and witnessed it. Nothing about it was
| slapdash and privacy was #1.
|
| In this system, it's not easy at all for government
| agencies to track you. That was very explicitly part of
| the design, as is shown in all the public docs. It's not
| like how it works is a secret [1].
|
| Your location isn't being tracked and put into a
| database. Nothing about exposure notifications uses
| location.
|
| [1] https://www.apple.com/covid19/contacttracing
| hparadiz wrote:
| Here's one example: https://play.google.com/store/apps/de
| tails?id=org.alohasafe....
|
| No idea if it's using the official API or what.
|
| I honestly just don't believe that it can work well
| enough in some places. Especially here in Hawaii where
| gatherings are on a beach and people leave their
| cellphones in their car or backpacks or whatever. I was
| even recently at a camp where people were sharing a blunt
| and there wasn't a single phone in sight cause it was out
| of signal range. Could have easily been a super spreader
| event and the tech solution would have failed.
| burke wrote:
| What are you even trying to draw attention to here? This
| appears to be using the EN framework, which suggests it
| wouldn't have been approved for distribution if it
| collected any personal data or location information.
|
| I get that you have an axe to grind here for some reason
| but I'm not even sure what point you're trying to make.
| azinman2 wrote:
| Exactly. It's not like Exposure Notifications are meant
| to solve every single spreading case out there -- many
| people aren't even opting into it. But we need all the
| help we can get, so why not chip away at the problem?
| hparadiz wrote:
| I have no axe to grind at all. I'm just saying why I
| personally don't use it. I don't really have an opinion
| one way or the other. Please don't be so angry with me.
| sleepybrett wrote:
| What you are 'just saying' is FUD. You don't know how the
| system works yet you keep coming back to this thread to
| defend your incorrect assumptions.
| nemothekid wrote:
| It isn't fair to claim they were built with (1) no
| oversight, (2) hastily, and (3) out of plain view when
| you haven't even looked into how it works. AFAIK none of
| the implementations use location data.
| burke wrote:
| In fact, Apple and Google won't accept apps that use both
| exposure notification and location APIs.
| lrem wrote:
| And this is exactly why the apps failed: even HN readers
| don't know how they work.
| azinman2 wrote:
| And that's really a shame. It has the power to make an
| even larger dent in the epidemic. This is the cult of
| ignorance at play, where mistrust of all institutions
| (heavily fueled by need to get clicks to serve ads) means
| we can't have nice things.
| Lammy wrote:
| I'm not ignorant just because I don't want to be tracked,
| and slinging insults like this just reaffirms my beliefs
| :)
| azinman2 wrote:
| It's not an insult directed at a single person. I'm
| echoing Isaac Asimov's critique of American culture:
| https://aphelis.net/wp-
| content/uploads/2012/04/ASIMOV_1980_C...
| brewdad wrote:
| You are ignorant though. The whole point of EN is that
| you CAN'T be tracked.
| post_below wrote:
| There's some truth in what you're saying, but mistrust of
| institutions is completely rational in light of history.
| Empirically, ignorance in this context would be
| unskeptically trusting institutions.
|
| That it strays into the irrational at times is as human
| as the inevitable corruption that fuels the mistrust.
|
| For someone without full knowledge of the technology to
| assume (in this case wrongly) there's a privacy issue is
| entirely practical. It's an assumption that will be
| correct far more than it won't.
| JeremyBanks wrote:
| Your _choice_ to be ignorant about the contact tracing
| frameworks is your own, but please stop spreading
| misinformation: https://www.google.com/covid19/exposureno
| tifications/#exposu...
|
| There were many locations who built their own apps that
| did not follow this privacy model, or used it
| incorrectly, but for most cases "your location data being
| put into some database" is not accurate.
| Lammy wrote:
| There is no amount of mental gymnastics you can do to
| turn "app that tracks when yours and other phones are
| together and does <something> about it" into something
| that is inside my moral boundaries.
| azinman2 wrote:
| Then I'd suggest you're not being reasonable at all,
| because the way it works is entirely consistent with a
| privacy-first methodology.
|
| That <something> by the way is to take the database
| that's only on your phone (and never uploaded) and show
| only you an alert. That's it.
|
| If this is immoral, but letting covid spread around the
| world and have people needlessly suffer because you
| refuse reasonable interventions, then I don't know what
| is moral.
| hparadiz wrote:
| > There were many locations who built their own apps that
| did not follow this privacy model, or used it incorrectly
|
| We agree then.
| simonh wrote:
| No we don't, because the systems you actually specified
| are known for a fact not to do the things you alleged
| that they do.
| azinman2 wrote:
| You mentioned Apple & Google remotely installing
| something, so the only logical conclusion is that you're
| talking about Exposure Notifications (which btw are opt-
| in, not opt-out, so remotely installed is a
| mischaracterization here). If someone built their own
| solution and put it on the app store, then it doesn't
| really have much to do at all with Apple or Google
| outside of being distributed on their platforms, and
| certainly would never be remotely installed (at least on
| Apple platforms... I have no idea what Oppo might do in
| China for example, but whatever they'd be doing would
| likely be because some country law dictated it).
| burke wrote:
| > All I implied is that your location data is being
| tracked and put into some database somewhere and you
| don't control it.
|
| This is patently wrong. Exposure Notification apps (those
| using the official APIs, anyway) have no access to
| location APIs. The absolute worst they could possibly do
| is to log your IP address when you reach out for new
| data, but this is also true of every app you use, and
| every website you visit.
|
| You don't really seem interested in understanding how
| they actually work, but if anyone else cares,
| https://ncase.me/contact-tracing/ is a pretty reasonable
| explanation.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > They were built very hastily with little oversight with
| iterative beta cycles in plain sight.
|
| The amount of data that the Covid tracking API of Android
| and iOS makes available is precisely known. Germany's and
| a few other (https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/collection/open-
| source-observato...) are open source.
|
| > Who has this data? No idea.
|
| The users on their individual devices.
|
| > How will it be used a year from now? 10 years from now?
| No idea.
|
| It will be all but useless.
|
| Except if you're in Singapore. Their tracing app morphed
| into a spy software for law enforcement:
| https://twitter.com/kixes/status/1384566617330229250
| ViViDboarder wrote:
| I'm assuming you didn't read the white paper or anything
| about the implementation. No location tracking is
| happening.
| sneak wrote:
| I would be miffed about it for the thirty minutes it takes me
| to find the nearest body of water.
| NightMKoder wrote:
| Im not sure why this is cataclysmic for FB - they're mostly a
| first party advertiser. App tracking transparency doesn't
| prevent Facebook from running ads on their own apps and using
| SkAdNetwork to track conversions (which works even if the user
| opts out).
|
| Granted the fidelity and latency of SkAdNetwork is a concern
| but hardly enough to materially impact the bottom line.
| Lammy wrote:
| I don't understand being strongly against one type of default
| tracking but strongly for another. Tracking is tracking as far
| as I'm concerned and I'm against all of it.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| 1cvmask wrote:
| While Apple and it's ad business will be the biggest
| beneficiaries, it will not be a surprise if Google and FB also
| partially benefit. The clear losers will be all the smaller
| players.
| 1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote:
| "I think this speaks to the power of defaults."
|
| Even more, it speaks to the power of removing choice. When app
| tracking is enabled by default it effectively removes choice
| because most users _never_ touch settings (and may not even
| know they exist). Therefore users are not choosing anything.
| Someone else is choosing for them. "Tech" company employees
| will respond to criticism of their employer's behaviour with
| something like: "But users can choose to turn this off." That
| is not relevant if 96% are unaware of this "choice". The
| question is: why is tracking on by default. That was a choice
| the user did not make.
|
| Only when faced with a screen asking the user if she chooses to
| be tracked do we get a chance to find out what a user would
| choose. And even then, developers will use "dark patterns" to
| manipulate the decision-making process toward a self-serving
| outcome.
|
| Perhaps we should ask ourselves whether there should even be a
| setting to enable tracking. If the majority of users would
| choose to turn it off, if they were presented with the choice,
| then why even have it. This is essentially "privacy by design".
|
| This is no different than when developers argue to HN that it
| is not worth catering to the preferences of privacy-conscious
| or minimalist users since those users comprise such a small
| percentage of users overall. By the same token, it should not
| worth catering to the small percentange of users who _want to
| be tracked_.
| [deleted]
| shmatt wrote:
| In Israel, covid exposure notification was can't-ever-opt-out.
|
| What happened next was people stopped going out with their
| phones, because any exposure would result in a Police enforced
| 14 day quarantine
| FridayoLeary wrote:
| Its a bit shocking. I heard of a gathering that the police
| caught, because they noticed a large concentration of mobiles
| in one place.
| distribot wrote:
| Is there anything written about this?
|
| I'm _extremely_ skeptical that a big chunk of people in such
| a highly online country just left their phones at home. Maybe
| some of the Hardeim but I would guess 95+% of people wouldn
| 't do this.
| anders_p wrote:
| Seriously? Why would you be so skeptical of that?
|
| Would you really bring your phone with you, when going out
| for a beer or coffee, even if it could easily result in you
| being forced to stay quarantined for 2 weeks?
|
| Is your smartphone really that important to you?
|
| Even though I have personally stayed socially distanced and
| worn a mask everywhere it was required, it makes perfect
| sense to me, after seeing how a lot of people have reacted
| to the pandemic, that a good portion of the population,
| would let their phone stay at home, so they would not risk
| a police enforced quarantine.
| codebook wrote:
| I do want to know whether I am exposed to COVId and get
| to be quarantined to not spread out the covid to others
| who I really take care of. Dont want to be a person that
| possibly make my family or friends sick.
| HeyImAlex wrote:
| Is there anything to stop gating features/whole apps behind
| having tracking enabled?
| NightMKoder wrote:
| The Apple policy requires that opting out is not treated
| adversely. See https://developer.apple.com/app-store/user-
| privacy-and-data-...
| Spivak wrote:
| > BTW, this is also why the covid exposure notification apps
| failed miserably. They should have always been opt-out.
|
| Absolutely not. Using defaults because you know most people
| wont' change them to achieve a specific outcome that you, the
| default setter want, is exactly the same evil. Just because
| you're doing it for "good" doesn't justify it.
| blakesterz wrote:
| I'm very curious how this works, so this is from a report [0]
| from Flurry Analytics, "owned by Verizon Media, is used in over 1
| million mobile applications, providing aggregated insights across
| 2 billion mobile devices per month"
|
| How is Flurry Analytics measuring app tracking on iOS devices?
| Are they just reporting how much they themselves are being
| disabled?
|
| [0] https://www.flurry.com/blog/ios-14-5-opt-in-rate-att-
| restric...
| ddlatham wrote:
| The setting controls whether Flurry can retrieve the
| advertising id (IDFA) which allows for cross-app
| identification. Without that, Flurry can still count devices
| using an app, but cannot identify if they are the same across
| apps. So they can easily sample what portion of an apps users
| allow access to the IDFA.
| arielm wrote:
| I believe so, which is why that % is very small.
|
| I've seen quite a few reports from different providers in the
| last couple of weeks and suspect the _real_ average of opt-ins
| is considerably higher.
|
| I'm hoping to see some numbers from Apple at WWDC, which I
| expect would be in the 30-50% opt-in. Why? Because some apps
| (like Facebook) make it seem like it's mandatory to opt-in. And
| I believe that if you opt-in for Facebook you're more inclined
| to just hit that same button for every app...
| theshrike79 wrote:
| Apple has guidelines on the screens displayed before the opt-
| in.
|
| I've seen apps fail audit because of the pre-text.
| quenix wrote:
| I disagree that Facebook makes it seem mandatory. Receiving
| their in-app popup yesterday brought me great joy in denying
| access.
| arielm wrote:
| Haha. I totally get that.
|
| But... I don't think that popup was designed to get the HN
| folk to opt in but rather those that use Facebook (and
| Instagram, which has the same language) to communicate
| actively.
|
| It's really the pre-prompt I'm referring to here, which, as
| one of its bullet points for why you should opt in, says it
| helps keep Facebook free.
|
| That's a big statement to drop in a tiny bullet point,
| which makes me feel like they thought about it a lot.
| Meaning, it's very targeted.
| sciprojguy wrote:
| I flatly refuse to have the Facebook app on any of my
| devices, and if they start charging to use it I'll
| happily delete my account.
| dwighttk wrote:
| Same
|
| Only still have an account because my mom blogs on
| Facebook
| swatthatfly wrote:
| Flurry provides an analytics library to app makers that gets
| compiled into their applications and then reports back. Flurry
| compiles data from all users and apps and gets a global
| portrait.
| the_snooze wrote:
| >The challenge for personalized ads market will be significant if
| the first two weeks end up reflecting a long-term trend.
|
| Adtech is basically highly-paid people sniffing your underwear
| trying to figure out what you had for breakfast. And they get all
| indignant when you say "hey cut it out, that's kind of weird."
| NicoJuicy wrote:
| Ads are paying for something with tracking.
|
| Expect prices of apps to go up.
| teachingassist wrote:
| Alternative take: Ads give unethical actors a systemic
| advantage, where they are willing to slap ads on to their
| products that can't justify charging otherwise.
|
| Expect more competition and higher standards as this
| artificial funding model is removed.
| NicoJuicy wrote:
| What?
|
| The systemic advantage is simple, it's having a good
| product, eg. Search for Google or a complete portal (
| Amazon, Facebook).
|
| What got easier?
| pydry wrote:
| It sure would be awful if Facebook became a paid app :)
| NicoJuicy wrote:
| Paid features and by default the freemium mode.
|
| You'll see who's a freeloader ;)
| elite_hackers5 wrote:
| You mean like Facebook? What a tragedy.
| Dma54rhs wrote:
| There's no harm in filming your daughter changing clothes at
| these booths we installed all over the beaches. We are keen at
| protecting her data and making sure her face stays blurred. If
| we'd stop the costs of going to beach would go up tremendously,
| so that's out the question.
| jtdev wrote:
| Plus, we're able to help these ladies by recommending
| beachwear that is aligned with their sensibilities... it's
| really a win-win for all parties.
| the_snooze wrote:
| You're probably joking, but the TSA has made that exact
| argument for their full-body scanners.
|
| >"The (body image scanning) technology is sent to the
| airports without the ability to save, transmit or print the
| images," said Greg Soule, TSA spokesman, in an interview with
| CBSNews.com. "At airports, the images are examined by a
| security officer in a remote location, and, once the image is
| cleared, they're deleted."
|
| https://www.cbsnews.com/news/naked-body-scan-images-never-
| sa...
| ForHackernews wrote:
| I mean, at least the putative negative consequences they're
| trying to avoid are exploded jetliners and hundreds of
| deaths, not "advertising would be somewhat less effective
| and profitable" (similar to all advertising before about
| 2002).
| blueline wrote:
| it's very charitable for you to accept at face value that
| that's what the TSA security theater is for
| [deleted]
| mhb wrote:
| He doesn't. That's why it said putative.
| mumblemumble wrote:
| > The (body image scanning) technology is ... without the
| ability to ... transmit ... the images,"
|
| > the images are examined by a security officer in a remote
| location
|
| oh dear.
|
| More seriously, _at least_ TSA can at least make a
| proportionality type of argument, along the lines of, this
| invasion of privacy is justified on the grounds that it
| might save lives.
|
| Adtech is just going to use it to try and figure out how to
| convince me to buy a motorized turnip twaddler.
| curryst wrote:
| Of the data that I've seen, adtech has about as much
| legitimacy in claiming they "might" save lives as the TSA
| does.[1] The last year the TSA released the stats on
| their Red Team tests, they failed to detect 95% of
| threats. Some of the threats that made it through were
| fully assembled handguns, fully assembled bombs, and
| partially disassembled versions of both. As many have
| pointed out, the TSA is largely security theater. It
| makes people feel better that we're doing something, and
| apparently the greater the intrusion on privacy, the more
| secure people feel.
|
| https://www.latimes.com/nation/nationnow/la-na-tsa-
| screeners...
| mumblemumble wrote:
| FWIW, I'm not necessarily saying that TSA's argument
| works out in practice. I'm just saying that they can at
| least try to make it.
|
| Versus, even if we give adtech a similar benefit of the
| doubt, and accept for the sake of argument that they
| really could more effectively convince me to buy the
| world's greatest fidget cube, there's still just no way
| that such an outcome is a great enough social good to
| justify the means they used to achieve it.
|
| (Except perhaps from the perspective of the adtech and
| fidget cube people. And, even then, only if we assume
| that they have a slightly deranged opinion of the social
| utility of their fidget toy relative to all other fidget
| toys. Or that they're solipsists.)
| disgruntledphd2 wrote:
| So, this is a weird one. I mean, all of this stuff is
| pretty much automated, there isn't a team of people at
| adtech companies going hmmm user 621163091 is looking for
| PC's serve him an ad for Lenovo. Its a series of
| complicated ML models with large amounts of inputs and
| outputs that no human understands at a level where they
| could predict which ad a human gets.
|
| In the above scenario, I'm not sure that I see a
| violation of privacy, but I suspect you would. If you
| could enlighten me as to why, that would be super
| helpful.
| mumblemumble wrote:
| Data has a way of being used in ways other than the one
| for which it was ostensibly originally collected.
| Especially once you let data scientists get in there and
| start having fun with it. (Source: I should know, I am
| one.) Or maybe you've got a unscrupulous employee who
| uses their access to the data to dox people. (Source: I
| used to work at a company where that happened.) And
| since, in a country like the USA, they are not subject to
| any particularly effective data protection laws, they're
| also really easy to sell to just whoever, or maybe
| liquidate at a bankruptcy auction, or whatever. The buyer
| may or may not intend to use it for better or worse
| purposes than the original collector. There's no real way
| of knowing.
|
| There's also the security question. Data breaches are
| real and happen all the time. I think that the crackers'
| perspective on this subject may be, if I may
| misappropriate the famous IRA statement, "remember we
| only have to be lucky once. You will have to be lucky
| always."
|
| In short, the mere existence of these pools of data is a
| threat, not only to people's privacy, but to their
| personal security. Even when you can't demonstrate that a
| specific harm has occurred yet. It's like hazardous
| waste: given enough time, it _will_ leak out and cause
| damage.
| disgruntledphd2 wrote:
| So, I totally agree with everything you've said, (I am
| also a data scientist, so appreciate that part
| especially).
|
| OTOH, ads pay for a lot of stuff, so if you could delete
| the raw data after some short time, and only retain the
| model which was used for serving/prediction, then I think
| a lot of those concerns go away, and the whole
| infrastructure around data is made an awful lot safer.
|
| Lots of your other points only really apply to the US
| (the cavalier attitude towards data and privacy,
| especially), so I wonder if this is something that would
| work better in the EU, because you do have much stricter
| laws around the use of personal data.
| [deleted]
| da_big_ghey wrote:
| you see this wrong. TSA is infringement of our civil
| liberty by government, avoid flying is not much option in
| this day. comparatively easier for to avoid ad
| surveilance and install ublock.
| skinnymuch wrote:
| I don't see why the TSA having awful reasons they can get
| away with is any better or any better hedge than any
| other player invading privacy unnecessarily.
| meowface wrote:
| Even if it may be awful on an absolute scale, on a
| relative scale, I find egregious privacy violations more
| justifiable if the claimed intention is mitigating
| supposed risk of bodily harm or death rather than showing
| me advertisements.
|
| I have the right to simultaneously hate and be disgusted
| by the TSA yet hate and be disgusted by advertisers and
| ad tech even more.
| toss1 wrote:
| >> >"The (body image scanning) technology is sent to the
| airports without the ability to save, transmit or print the
| images,...and, once the image is cleared, they're deleted."
|
| Perhaps from the machine, but what prevents a TSA viewer in
| the remote location from snapping an image of the screen
| with their smartphone, or wearing an always-on logging
| camera to the workstation?
| the_snooze wrote:
| The TSA's proud culture of professionalism and integrity,
| of course.
| toss1 wrote:
| ... well, there ya go! Why didn't I think of that?
| Terretta wrote:
| Of course, the images may not be deleted. Unless someone
| notices, such as with these 35,000 from Orlando:
|
| https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2010/11/100_images_from_the
| _...
|
| And an alleged insider discussion of how those "remote"
| viewers respect passenger privacy:
|
| _" Personally, in the I.O. room, I witnessed light sexual
| play among officers, a lot of e-cigarette vaping, and a
| whole lot of officers laughing and clowning in regard to
| some of your nude images, dear passengers."_
|
| https://takingsenseaway.wordpress.com/2012/12/19/letter-
| from...
| pja wrote:
| Recently, a website I had only visited once somehow cross-
| referenced the cookies available through my browser to work out
| my email address & directly emailed me to invite me to sign up
| for their services.
|
| This has to be a GDPR violation, I certainly didn't give
| consent for them to email me, but people are still doing this
| kind of thing apparently.
| cosmie wrote:
| I haven't had exposure to this space since the GDPR went into
| effect, but it used to be trivially easy to do this. A quick
| Googling shows there are still providers of this sort of
| service, such as GetEmails[1] which bills itself as '100%
| compliant in the US'.
|
| [1] https://getemails.com/
| da_big_ghey wrote:
| If company has no operation in Europe it is not realistic for
| to enforce GDPR against. This are true for many company and
| it not is a surprise that some do not care on any GDPR
| restrict.
| segmondy wrote:
| For years I had a professional email and a non-pro email
| address that I kept separated. Personal email for job
| applications/linkedin/bills etc, non-pro for regular surfing.
| It's worked great until last year. I think it's Google cuz I
| login from the same browser/device, but they eventually
| linked it and I'm now being contacted by recruiters via my
| non-pro email which pretty much unmasks me and my social
| media accounts. To really have any kind of anonymity today,
| you pretty much have to hide as if a nation-state actor is
| after you.
| cosmie wrote:
| I doubt it was Google itself - Google is a one-way sieve
| when it comes to data. Google allows advertisers to _tap
| into_ their user graph for targeting and attribution, but
| they don 't actually give access to user-level info in any
| meaningful form, let alone in a form that would allow you
| to get your hands on user emails. The closest you can get
| is Ads Data Hub[1], which requires advertisers to import
| _their_ first party data into the (very expensive) Google-
| controlled environment to work, and is designed so that
| Google 's identifiers can be used for joins and aggregate
| functions but can't be directly returned in queries.
|
| There _are_ providers that directly exploit their graph by
| selling the PII within it, such as GetEmails[2] (and the
| publishers they source data from). But Google isn 't one of
| them.
|
| [1] https://developers.google.com/ads-data-hub
|
| [2] https://martech.zone/getemails-identify-anonymous-
| visitors/
| Saint_Genet wrote:
| I don't ever log in to my personal accounts on my work
| computer/phone or vice versa. Another perk of having a work
| only phone is that I can leave it at work or turn it off
| when not working.
| moksly wrote:
| I abandoned having a free (as in beer) mail account around
| the time google started doing their own advertising in
| gmail. At first I went for the ideology approach of
| fastmail, then tutanota/proton mail and finally runbox (or
| whatever the Norwegian service is called, which was my
| favorite by the way), but I just couldn't live with going
| from gmail to any of those, and so I ended up with gsuite.
| When google decided to make having a gsuite for private
| usage harder, I switched to Office365 where I still have
| the smallest "only in browser" package.
|
| I have to say that whole outlook isn't as good as gmail,
| all the things evolving spam is super easy to handle with
| policies. I still have my old gmail address forwarding
| things that google would sort into "this is the relevant
| mails" part of its new inbox system, and 90% of it goes
| directly into my "unwanted stuff" or clutter or whatever
| it's called in outlook.
|
| As a benefit it also gave me a TB of storage and in browser
| office, and while I don't use the office stuff much, I do
| use one drive to backup my photos because iCloud storage
| frankly is almost as expensive as the entire office365
| account.
| f6v wrote:
| I think the users have brought it on themselves. Almost
| everyone wants free content, more, more of it! Just say: "You
| know what? I'm not gonna watch these cat videos on YouTube
| cause there's an outrageous number of ads!" Or (and I'm going
| to sound crazy) we could skip scrolling Instagram and just read
| a book or take a walk when we need to unwind. Google search is
| harder to escape, of course.
| toss1 wrote:
| I'd say it is more the blame on the industry's failure to
| deliver a usable micropayments system.
|
| I'd be happy to pay a few pennies or dimes for every article
| I open to skim or read. But I cannot and will not pay the 2-3
| figure subscriptions demanded by every publisher.
|
| There is a range of choice, all too high to commit to one, so
| the only one that gets my money is the Guardian, with a
| donate-what-you can model. The rest I put up with generally
| avoiding them, and reading only a few per month before the
| paywall goes up.
|
| If micropayments don't work, I'd also happily pay a single
| subscription in the $hundreds/year for access to around a
| dozen of the publications, but no one offers that to my
| knowledge (if anyone knows of such a service, please post!)
|
| But to blame the users when they clearly state their
| preferences at the first opportunity, and the industry has
| failed for decades to provide such an opportunity.. nope.
| mekkkkkk wrote:
| You could use the same defense for drug dealers. "Why don't
| you just read a book instead of smoking crack?"
| jdofaz wrote:
| TV and radio were successful with ads for a long time without
| needing to build a profile on every person in the audience
| wccrawford wrote:
| I think this is key. Ads can be targeted without knowing
| anything about the user other than that they're viewing the
| content on that page.
|
| Sure, not as finely-tuned, but that's not the user's
| problem.
| srswtf123 wrote:
| > Google search is harder to escape, of course.
|
| Try Duckduckgo.com?
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| Nobody can be blamed for wanting free content, who doesn't?
| The fact most sites are free of charge does not mean the
| advertising industry should be allowed to surveil everyone
| and monetize their private information. If sites can't aford
| to offer content for free, they should charge money for it.
| tshaddox wrote:
| I find it hard to blame the users when (according to this
| article) as soon as they're given a modicum of control, they
| clearly reveal their preference for _not_ being tracked.
| paulcole wrote:
| Rivaled only by the indignity of those proudly and unironically
| proclaiming, "I own the result of my HTTP request and consider
| blocking ads and still taking advantage of not paying for
| content my god-given right."
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| Yeah, I'm one of those and I'm not ashamed.
|
| I do own the HTTP response. It's on my computer and in my
| control. Sites that require payment before responding could
| do something like return 402 Payment Required or simply
| refuse to send me anything. If they send me ads I'll delete
| them. I can rip out and trash the ads I find in magazines,
| there's no reason websites should work differently.
| shameful_idiot wrote:
| This ain't it chief
| oblio wrote:
| Honest question: are you, or have you ever been (or are you
| planning to be), someone with a direct financial stake in the
| ad industry? Employee, shareholder, board member, whatever.
|
| The answer to that question will greatly influence what we
| think of your witticism in the previous comment :-)
| paulcole wrote:
| Yes, my livelihood depends on customers discovering
| products and services and then paying money for those
| things.
| oblio wrote:
| You're good, you should work in advertising.
| disgruntledphd2 wrote:
| I'm all over this thread, and the answer to your question
| is yes. I spent a number of years at an ad-driven FAANG
| (which narrows it down to three).
|
| And I still think that firstly, this decision by Apple is
| gonna drive a lot of small niche products to the wall, and
| secondly, is a part of Apple's longer term plans to make a
| significant amount of money from advertising over the next
| five years.
| FriedrichN wrote:
| But personalized ads offer so much value to customers! How could
| this have happened? All these poor users missing out on so, so
| much value.
| grumpitron wrote:
| Does this mean if I leave this disabled then I'll stop getting
| ads for products I just bought?
| lsllc wrote:
| My guess is the remaining 4% simply don't know it's enabled --
| who would knowingly want apps tracking them?
| dubcanada wrote:
| They are probably developers who make money from ads. Or just
| people who click Yes to get things out of the way.
|
| There is a variety of reasons one may click "Yes".
| wmeredith wrote:
| > who would knowingly want apps tracking them?
|
| The number is certainly almost zero. Hence the Facebook/Google
| shit-fit about all of this.
| MengerSponge wrote:
| Bootlickers come in all shapes and sizes
| ghostpepper wrote:
| Don't you need to explicitly find the setting and enable it to
| be part of the 4%? I wonder if 4% are just curious which apps
| will ask... seems high though.
| justapassenger wrote:
| What a surprise. If I tell people going to the store that they
| choose to pay for the products, or not, a lot of people will
| choose not to. Who would guess that people like free stuff?
|
| Apple is disrupting whole economy for apps. It's a very broken
| economy, with lots of questionable practices, that's for sure.
| But we'll see if it'll be net benefit for customers. For sure for
| Apple, as more apps will have to move to be paid, and give Apple
| their 30% cut.
| libertine wrote:
| >Apple is disrupting whole economy for apps.
|
| I've been wondering why people aren't asking what kind of data
| is Apple itself collecting?
|
| Not only from users, but from the marketplace. Shouldn't users
| also give consent to what they share with Apple? Shouldn't
| businesses also choose to share info with Apple?
|
| This is gave us a sense of "justice as been done", but now we
| should look deeply into what the gatekeeper is doing, to what
| benefit, and how balanced it made the playing field.
|
| Truth be told, I'm biased because I'm always suspicious of
| Apple because I always believed that unlike what they preach,
| they put Apple first above everything else... but I only see
| them getting an exclusive view of user behavior on their
| devices.
| zepto wrote:
| > Shouldn't users also give consent to what they share with
| Apple?
|
| They do. And it has been opt in for much longer than this new
| change.
| phoe18 wrote:
| > This is gave us a sense of "justice as been done", but now
| we should look deeply into what the gatekeeper is doing, to
| what benefit, and how balanced it made the playing field.
|
| Interestingly, Apple's Ad tracking doesn't show up under
| 'Settings > Privacy > Tracking' but instead tucked away at
| the bottom of the 'Settings > Privacy' menu. Apple's tracking
| also defaults to opt-out instead of the opt-in route taken
| for other apps.
|
| I am all for providing privacy settings but whats with the
| double standard?
| vbezhenar wrote:
| Because Apple collects data in an anonymous manner and will
| make sure for user to benefit the most from that data,
| compared to other evil ad companies.
|
| /s
| bun_at_work wrote:
| When you set up an iPhone or other Apple device, you're
| prompted and asked if you want to share you data with
| Apple, which makes sense because they make the device and
| OS.
| sumedh wrote:
| > Shouldn't users also give consent to what they share with
| Apple?
|
| You do that when you accept their terms.
| libertine wrote:
| Do you have an option to not accept those terms and use the
| software? Similar to what is shown now for the App
| Tracking?
| simondotau wrote:
| Apple's apps have _never_ done what the new App Tracking
| policy requires your permission to do. Apple doesn 't
| need to ask for your permission in this instance because
| they're not doing it.
| simondotau wrote:
| > Shouldn't users also give consent to what they share with
| Apple?
|
| You give consent to share data with a company when you share
| it with that company. This straightforward relationship isn't
| an issue so long as the company's use of your data is in line
| with your expectations.
|
| When you want to know what a company's incentives are, look
| at their financials. Money is the great truth teller. Does
| Apple have sources of revenue which rely upon use of
| customers' private data? I'm not aware of any.
|
| Now ask the opposite question. Does Apple have a financial
| incentive to be a good steward of their customers' data?
| _This_ is a very clear yes, as evidenced by their
| highlighting of privacy as a distinguishing feature. While it
| 's stupid to trust a company's marketing, it's important to
| appreciate that Apple have wilfully staked a large part of
| their reputation on customer privacy. That would have been a
| monumentally stupid move if they weren't intending to live up
| to it.
|
| > they put Apple first above everything else
|
| A weird accusation. Setting aside immutable truths about the
| motivations of any corporation, Apple has _famously_ placed
| their customers ahead of many other external concerns. Case
| in point--where they have actively defied the wishes of the
| FBI (and similar arms of many world governments) in the
| implementation of robust on-device encryption and
| cryptographic security.
|
| > I only see them getting an exclusive view of user behavior
| on their devices.
|
| Yes, and? Tell me, who are these other people that should
| have access to my data? _Damn right_ it should be exclusive
| to Apple--people are paying them good money to be a
| trustworthy steward of their data.
| 8fingerlouie wrote:
| While I'm sure Apple collects ample (pseudo anonymous) data
| from their respective stores about patterns, they actually
| don't gather that much data about you.
|
| For a long time they've had an "on device" policy to handling
| data. Buy a new phone and your frequently visited locations
| list is empty. Most of their AI stuff only lives on your
| device.
|
| Of course there are limits to what can be handled on your
| device, but they're generally pretty open about what happens
| where.
|
| Make no mistake, the privacy stance is a profit maker for
| Apple, and that's the real reason they're doing it.
|
| In any case, I'm way more likely to trust Apple with my data
| than Google or Microsoft. Google and (to some extent)
| Microsoft has based their business around collecting and/or
| selling my data, Apple makes a living by selling me hardware
| and software, and privacy is the one parameter that Apple can
| compete on that will directly reduce profits of its
| competitors.
|
| https://www.apple.com/privacy/docs/A_Day_in_the_Life_of_Your.
| ..
|
| As well as https://www.zdnet.com/article/apple-data-
| collection-stored-r...
| libertine wrote:
| I do agree with you that it's part of Apple new
| positioning, that they are a privacy first company, yet I
| think you missed my point: I'm talking about consent.
|
| When you said:
|
| >While I'm sure Apple collects ample (pseudo anonymous)
| data from their respective stores about patterns, they
| actually don't gather that much data about you.
|
| I don't doubt it, what I meant is that even for that
| there's no explicit consent in the way they are doing with
| the Apps on appstore (they probably mix it when you're
| setting up your account). Because you might have apps that
| collected even less data then Apple, and they are still
| subject the user consent message.
|
| I can see from the downvotes that this is not a popular
| opinion, which is odd - I'm just saying that everyone
| should play by the same rules, else there's an asymmetry
| that will favor the ones who can circumvent this
| limitation, which in this case, it's Apple.
|
| It's just not coherent, since it's not about collecting a
| lot, or very little data, it's about users giving explicit
| consent to share data.
| simondotau wrote:
| > everyone should play by the same rules
|
| Apple's apps have _never_ done what the App Tracking
| policy stops App developers from doing. To be clear, this
| new policy is _not_ about apps tracking their own
| customers--that 's always going to happen. This policy is
| designed to stop companies like Facebook from tracking
| your activity across multiple apps on your device.
|
| > you might have apps that collected even less data then
| Apple, and they are still subject the user consent
| message.
|
| The consent requirement has got nothing to do with _how
| much_ data they 're collecting about you, rather with
| _what they 're doing_ with the data that has been
| collected.
|
| > I can see from the downvotes that this is not a popular
| opinion
|
| The downvotes are not because your opinion is unpopular,
| it's because your opinion is grounded in the
| aforementioned misunderstandings.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| > Apple is disrupting whole economy for apps.
|
| Not at all. Facebook can simply _require_ you to enable
| tracking in order to use Facebook.
| KoftaBob wrote:
| Apple explicitly says that apps can't require app tracking in
| order to use their app, they're removed from the app store if
| they do.
|
| Keep in mind "app tracking" here means reading your device
| ID, called the 'Identity For Advertisers' (IDFA for short).
| They do this so that they can cross reference that IDFA with
| data that other apps have collected on that same IDFA,
| allowing them to connect the dots that it's the same user.
|
| This app tracking transparency feature makes it so that they
| can't access your IDFA, and can only show you ads based on
| info you provide within their own app, not from the other
| apps you use. It keeps your data silo-ed to each app.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| That's interesting, I did not know that.
|
| Seems Facebook could nonetheless offer two tiers of service
| for those with and those without tracking.
|
| Although a bit orthogonal, Instagram will not let me post
| from a Desktop browser but will from a Mobile browser. (So
| I switch my User Agent to a phone on the Desktop when I
| navigate to Instagram and wish to post.)
| yborg wrote:
| >disrupting whole economy for apps
|
| Citation needed. Somehow there was an app economy before the
| rise of massive data aggregation.
|
| It's going to slightly impact the people profiting from the
| mass surveillance economy until they figure out how to get
| around it. This does nothing to impact the vast input feeds of
| location and traffic data from mobile carriers and ISPs,
| transaction data from purchases, etc. It basically forces those
| wanting to market to customers using Apple devices to remove
| the cameras from their customers' bathrooms and figure out
| another way to discover they are out of toilet paper. The
| pissing and moaning is because the industry basically was able
| to use the laziest possible implementation to get this
| information, now they will have to do a little more work.
| disgruntledphd2 wrote:
| It's probably gonna put a bunch of mobile game studios out of
| business. It was a tough business anyway, but the major
| advantage that they had was the ability to track at a device
| level and use that to be more efficient with their marketing
| spend.
|
| More generally, it's gonna make FB and GOOG less useful for
| small, niche businesses. The big players will be fine, but
| lots of smaller businesses are likely to do less well.
|
| Maybe the big players will do something to make cohorted ads
| work, but it will be less efficient and will lead to lots of
| small businesses having much more difficulty getting their
| products in front of the right people.
| ahmedalsudani wrote:
| A lot of people would be happy to pay upfront and keep their
| data.
| vbezhenar wrote:
| And a lot of people don't have money to pay and their
| attention is the only resource they can pay for apps. With ad
| economy broken, they'll lose access to the apps they're using
| now and that's a bad thing in my opinion.
| phoe18 wrote:
| Its not accurate though, Apple can and does still track
| users.
|
| https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202074
| zepto wrote:
| That link doesn't support your claim.
| ahmedalsudani wrote:
| Apple and ad companies are worlds apart.
| disgruntledphd2 wrote:
| Until they launch an ads service (which they are almost
| certainly going to do).
| ahmedalsudani wrote:
| They already have one
| dlhavema wrote:
| I think the market has said otherwise. Among aware engineers,
| sure. Among Suzie home maker and Tommy Q the support rep?
| Doesn't seem so. Facebook is free and has how many people
| now? ( Just one example I know )
| heavyset_go wrote:
| Most people realize that Facebook's real value in their
| lives is negative or 0.
|
| People are more than willing to pay for streaming content
| that they actually value, though.
|
| If you give people the option to pay for, say, Doge memes,
| and they don't pay for them, that doesn't mean that they
| aren't willing to pay for anything, it just means that Doge
| memes have little to no value.
| ahmedalsudani wrote:
| The situation likely arose as a tragedy of the commons.
| It's why Apple taking the hammer to the business model is
| worth watching. A dominant platform like Apple has the
| ability to change the economics so we don't end up with
| everything being "free" and trying to learn everything
| about you.
|
| There's some concern about how Apple is changing the
| economics of free apps. I personally have always had a
| problem with free apps destroying the opportunity for those
| that charge the user cash instead of data.
| ghaff wrote:
| I don't disagree. But, at the same time, especially in a
| more macro sense, if you theoretically make advertising
| less profitable, you tilt things towards a world that
| makes it harder for people to trade their attention for
| product. So there are fewer options not to just pay money
| for things. Which is probably fine for most people here,
| but not everyone.
| ahmedalsudani wrote:
| Sure, you are 100% correct.
|
| My personal story is:
|
| - Initial position 12 years ago: Apple is a closed
| company and they fight open standards. I don't like them
|
| - Jump head-first into Android starting with the G1 (aka
| HTC Dream in Canada)
|
| - Get worn down by the constant race to the bottom and by
| finding out how the sausage is made
|
| - Get an iPhone, which is not my phone of choice, to move
| away from the data harvesting economy
|
| So for me the entire reason I swapped my Android for an
| iPhone is to avoid the ad machine.
|
| This will definitely sound tone-deaf, but if you want to
| trade your attention for apps, you are free to make the
| same trip in reverse to Googleland ;)
| mrtksn wrote:
| At the end of the day, nothing is free. It's just a different
| payment scheme and Apple is killing that scheme. We don't even
| pay through our privacy or attention span. These are simply
| wasted in the process of offloading the payment to a different
| payment processor.
|
| The game is not free, it just collects the payments through the
| candy shop. The offsetting of the payment includes you stop
| playing and looking at candy images and initiating the process
| itself requires us writing off our privacy so that the candy
| image guys can try to guess which candy we might like more.
|
| What if everything is paid directly? Yes, there's Apple's %30
| cut but there's also Google's cut and Facebook's cut in
| advertisement(which is not transparent and I hear that it's
| about %50).
|
| Besides, huge resources are spent in running the system that
| tries to guess who would prefer to buy what. It comes at the
| cost of computational and human resources too, not just the
| privacy. That cost must be incorporated to the product price.
|
| Is finding the product you look for through WOM, lists and
| publications that inefficient? Is it really impossible to find
| your customers organically? Do we really need the
| customer/product matching in exchange of money?
|
| Do we really need an incredibly inefficient centralised
| communist system(the big agencies like FB) where the party
| members(the technicians in these companies) need to track
| everyone(the spying required to make the system possible) so
| that we can have free games and apps(which are not free but
| paid from the communal money that the central organisation
| collects from you)?
| disgruntledphd2 wrote:
| > also Google's cut and Facebook's cut in advertisement(which
| is not transparent and I hear that it's about %50).
|
| In general, neither Google nor FB take a "cut" in the
| traditional sense from their advertising. What (normally)
| happens is that advertiser bids their "true value" (i.e
| expected LTV), and a second price auction is run. In this
| kind of auction, the winner pays the price that the runner-up
| was willing to spend.
|
| This differs massively from the pre-internet ad business
| (radio, tv, print etc), in that they would normally quote $X,
| but up to $X/10 was the minimum price, but the rest was built
| in as margin for people further up the chain (sales, agency
| etc).
|
| One of the big problems that the ad agencies are having now
| is that their business model relied on arbitraging the price
| of the client vs the cost of the service, and this doesn't
| work for Google or Facebook.
|
| That being said, both Goog and FB make _insane_ amounts of
| money, but that 's because the ads are essentially free to
| deliver (in fact, the users pay to render the ads
| themselves), and they have huge amounts of users to serve ads
| to.
| mrtksn wrote:
| Thanks for the clarifications. How they charge the money
| and What does FB and Google call it? How much is it?
| guerrilla wrote:
| Except that's not what happens when paying is optional. People
| still pay, albeit not as much. 96% leaving this disabled is
| something else entirely.
| justapassenger wrote:
| Not if you put big "for free sign" in front of it. That's
| what Apple is doing. "Hey do you want to give them more data?
| No? That's totally cool, it's purely optional and it doesn't
| change anything for anyone else".
|
| It's not presented to an user as a way to pay for the app.
| It's presented as something that's third party, not really
| related to an app.
| Spivak wrote:
| I mean I have said yes to some apps that ask if they can
| collect usage information mostly because I know they're not
| using them for ads.
| ArkanExplorer wrote:
| What exactly is the benefit to the average user of not having
| apps track them?
|
| Most people seem to welcome more relevant advertisments, and a
| significant number of people in my social circle - even in
| Ukraine - like to purchase products directly from Instagram
| advertisments.
|
| If you can't make money from advertising, and paid apps have an
| enormous 15-30% commission, how exactly does anyone except Apple
| make money from mobile apps?
| criddell wrote:
| Would you put up with somebody following you around all day,
| noting the things you do and places you go in order to serve
| you more relevant ads?
|
| > If you can't make money from advertising
|
| You charge for the app. If the value your users put on your app
| is $0, then shut it down and try again. It's like any other
| business.
| nonameiguess wrote:
| You make money because your app is tied to a real-world useful
| product. Looking at my own usage, the only apps I have
| installed and use on any regular basis that didn't come
| preinstalled with iOS are Signal, Authy, Bitwarden, Amazon, and
| my banking app. Amazon and the bank provide me a service I can
| access other ways and mobile is just one of those ways. Signal
| is a non-profit and receives donations and Authy is owned by
| Twilio, which sells backend services to other software
| developers. I just pay Bitwarden.
|
| Of these, Amazon also serves ads. Opening the app, three items
| on the home page are marked sponsored. One for some k-cup
| coffee pod product, one for dog food, and one for cat food.
| These are clearly targeted (I have bought cat food and coffee
| very recently from Amazon and Whole Foods). But to be perfectly
| honest, I'm fairly comfortable with a company I buy stuff from
| keeping a record and making suggestions based on it through
| their own storefront. That's just good customer relations. I'm
| not comfortable with my activity being tracked everywhere
| across all applications I ever interact with to create a grand
| unified profile of all my synthesized purchasing, viewing,
| reading, and searching habits that can be sold to all
| advertisers advertising anywhere. That's a panopticon.
| the_snooze wrote:
| I think you're framing it the wrong way. You should be asking:
| What's the benefit to the user (and advertisers too!) of all
| this tracking and data collection?
|
| Adtech often touts "relevant ads." But I think that's a red
| herring. I'm a fan of The Simpsons. That doesn't mean I want
| ads for Simpsons stuff following me from site to site. I'd
| probably get annoyed if I get Simpsons ads on a serious
| financial website. What's more important is that the ads are
| relevant to the _context_ of the site they 're displayed in.
| And that requires no tracking or personalization. It does,
| however, require human understanding and communication skills,
| not tech or data. People like ads _if they 're well-crafted and
| convey a compelling message in context_.
| f6v wrote:
| It's a false dichotomy for me. I understand many people make
| money off it, but I just don't want to see any ads. And I
| believe if a person needs something, they should be able to
| find it. But buying stuff because you see a banner? If the
| banner was the only reason you bought an item, maybe you
| didn't need it in the first place.
| the_snooze wrote:
| You might have too narrow a conception of what advertising
| tries to do. It doesn't necessarily try to induce demand.
| Instead, it tries to direct demand towards a certain
| direction.
|
| Everyone knows what Coca-Cola is. But Coke still heavily
| advertises worldwide. It's not to make people thirsty when
| they see the ad. It's to make thirsty people think "Huh, a
| Coke would be quite nice right now" when they're at the
| store.
| f6v wrote:
| TV ads, billboards - yes. But internet ads are very
| different.
| stale2002 wrote:
| Obviously the benefit of better ads, is that making an app is
| not free, and highly profitable ad models allows companies to
| not charge for apps.
|
| If these ads business models become significantly less
| profitable, then it becomes more difficult to provide free
| apps to everyone.
| sciprojguy wrote:
| Not really. Well-crafted ads that convey a compelling message
| in context are fine the first time or two that you see them.
| Even the best ones get really irritating when they're played
| over and over and over, at which point they motivate me to
| ignore them.
| throwaway_att wrote:
| I just want to point out that Apple is ostensibly doing this in
| the name of transparency, and yet here we have a whole thread of
| technologically proficient people debating what the setting
| actually means.
|
| Does it mean that if the users don't know about this option in
| the settings they will never be prompted to allow tracking, and
| just implicitly disallow it? If that's the case, the prompt is
| just transparency theater, Apple has already made the decision;
| and it's hard not to notice the conflict of interest.
|
| [throwaway because I work in the industry, but not in ads]
| catketch wrote:
| Right next to the togglswitch, there's a learn more link that
| explains in more detail...
|
| Tracking Apple requires app developers to ask for permission
| before they track you or your device across apps or websites
| they don't own in order to target advertising to you, measure
| your actions due to advertising, or to share your information
| with data brokers. If you give your permission to be tracked,
| the app can allow information about you or your device
| collected through the app (for example, a user or device ID,
| your device's current advertising identifier, your name, email
| address, or other identifying data provided by you) to be
| combined with information about you or your device collected by
| third parties. The combined information can then be used by the
| app developer or third parties for purposes of targeted
| advertising or advertising measurement. The app developer may
| also choose to share the information with data brokers, which
| may result in the linking of publicly available and other
| information about you or your device. When you decline to give
| permission for the app to track you, the app is prevented from
| accessing your device's advertising identifier (previously
| controlled through the Limit Ad Tracking setting on your
| device). App developers are responsible for ensuring they
| comply with your choices. In some circumstances, the app
| developer is not required by Apple to ask for your permission.
| The app developer may combine information about you or your
| device for targeted advertising or advertising measurement
| purposes without your permission if the developer is doing so
| solely on your device and not sending the information off your
| device in a way that identifies you. In addition, the app
| developer may share information about you or your device with
| data brokers without your permission for fraud detection or
| prevention or security purposes. However, the data broker must
| be performing the fraud detection or prevention or security
| services only on behalf of the app developer, which means the
| data broker cannot use the information about you or your device
| for any other purposes. You can control whether apps can ask
| for permission to track you. If you don't want to be asked for
| your permission by each app that wants to track you, you can
| disable Allow Apps to Ask to Track. On iOS and iPadOS, go to
| Settings > Privacy > Tracking. On tvOS, go to Settings >
| General > Privacy > Tracking. When you disable Allow Apps to
| Ask to Track, any app that attempts to ask for your permission
| will be blocked from asking and automatically informed that you
| have requested not to be tracked. If you previously gave apps
| permission to track, you can tell those apps to stop tracking
| you at the same time you disable Allow Apps to Ask to Track.
| You can also control the tracking permission on a per-app
| basis. On iOS or iPadOS, go to Settings, tap an app, then tap
| to turn off Allow Tracking, or go to Settings > Privacy >
| Tracking and tap to turn on or off each app displayed in the
| list of apps that have requested permission to track you. On
| tvOS, go to Settings > General > Privacy > Tracking and select
| the app in the list below Tracking.
| hyperbovine wrote:
| I expected the number to be something astonishingly high based on
| FB's PR blitz over the past nine months. With their limitless
| resources, I'm sure they focus grouped and user tested this
| scenario to death before concluding that apocalypse was nigh.
| Rock on, Apple.
| sethd wrote:
| I'm interested in how Apple will respond when they encounter a
| useful feature but, by its nature, requires tracking to even
| function. :)
| wmeredith wrote:
| See: the Apple Maps fiasco.
|
| If that's anything to go by, Apple will ship a shitty half-
| baked version of it and then take years to figure out a way to
| finally make it good without compromising user privacy.
| gigatexal wrote:
| With all the anti-trust stuff going on against Apple I wonder if
| this strong stance against cross app/site tracking gets
| overturned after some sort of legislation.
| disgruntledphd2 wrote:
| I mean, as long as they don't get into the ads business
| themselves, I'd say they'll be fine.
| hu3 wrote:
| They might be trying to re-enter ad business since they are
| hiring: https://m.imgur.com/y1s9F4J
| gigatexal wrote:
| They've an ads business and have had one for years. App
| Store ads come to mind. And the iad network as well. I
| applied to a few ad related roles at Apple in the data
| engineering space.
| kwdc wrote:
| Why would you enable it? What possible benefit is there in doing
| so?
|
| The ads won't get better regardless of the data they have on you.
| They aren't exactly using ML or AI to help you get better ads.
| Its really just boring data queries in SQL or some graph
| language. That's the sum total of most advertising intelligence.
| Its not 21st century high tech. Its mostly relational databases
| with some NoSQL to make that table linking faster and cached. In
| cases where they do actually bring out that NoSQL it is to
| reimplement all the relational smarts just with extra steps. Then
| its at least shiny and cool.
|
| The whole thing is really just about storing and gathering a
| profile on you as part of them building an asset they can later
| resell. Creepy technology for creepy uses. An asset full of
| subtle errors about you that can likely never be seen or fixed.
| Much later they will invariably then leave all or some of it on a
| usb stick or some poorly protected cloud server. After that your
| details will end up in the hands of some scammer or other
| miscreant to enable them to send you endless emails full of
| typos, lies, emojis and if you're exceptionally average like the
| rest of us: an interesting tale about long lost nigerian princes
| just needing a bank account. If you're lucky.
|
| So, yeah, leave it disabled. There's really no point in doing
| otherwise.
| kevinventullo wrote:
| > They aren't exactly using ML or AI to help you get better
| ads.
|
| They most certainly are, and this is not a secret.
| dbbk wrote:
| I opted in, because if I'm going to see ads, I would prefer
| they be somewhat relevant to me. And I want to support the
| sites/apps I use for free.
| NotPractical wrote:
| "Better ads" is just one of the three reasons the Facebook app
| provides for enabling tracking before asking users to do so:
|
| 1. Show you ads that are more personalized
|
| 2. Help keep Facebook free of charge
|
| 3. Support businesses that rely on ads to reach their customers
|
| Source: https://cdn.vox-
| cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/69222710/...
|
| While "better ads" could be construed as a benefit for users,
| the other two reasons seem like an attempt to scare/guilt the
| user into enabling tracking. Of course, it's just a bunch of
| bullshit they had the marketing department come up with so they
| could continue to profit from tracking at least a small
| percentage of iOS users. Businesses don't need to rely on
| Facebook's invasive tracking to sell products. Don't let
| Facebook guilt you into giving up your personal data.
| quenix wrote:
| Disclaimer: I did not opt in to tracking.
|
| However... I'm not sure how the discussion about the technology
| behind ad targeting is relevant to the end user. The point is
| that it -works- and that the ads shown to the user are indeed
| more likely to pique their interests. As an end user, I don't
| -care- whether the backend is using AI/ML or a relational
| database--I care that by enabling tracking, I get more relevant
| ads.
| fpgaminer wrote:
| > the ads shown to the user are indeed more likely to pique
| their interests
|
| They're more likely to convert the targeted user. That's not
| the same thing.
| KoftaBob wrote:
| I've seen a lot of people confused by this, so I figured I'd
| clear it up:
|
| "App tracking" here means reading your device ID, called the
| 'Identity For Advertisers' (IDFA for short). They do this so that
| they can cross reference that IDFA with data that other apps have
| collected on that same IDFA, allowing them to connect the dots
| that it's the same user.
|
| This app tracking transparency feature makes it so that they
| can't access your IDFA, and can only show you ads based on info
| you provide within their own app, not from the other apps you
| use. It keeps your data silo-ed to each app.
|
| This is where the whole "I looked up nike shoes on Amazon and now
| I'm getting nike shoe ads on Facebook" comes from. Without the
| IDFA, Facebook has no way of knowing what you looked up on
| Amazon, only what you look up on Facebook.
| disgruntledphd2 wrote:
| > This is where the whole "I looked up nike shoes on Amazon and
| now I'm getting nike shoe ads on Facebook" comes from. Without
| the IDFA, Facebook has no way of knowing what you looked up on
| Amazon, only what you look up on Facebook.
|
| That's not really true, as far as I know. FB provide a feature
| called custom audiences, which can take a set of emails and
| match them to FB users. Amazon could easily upload this list
| and use it to target on FB.
|
| Apple can't really prevent advertisers/platforms from sharing
| information from other sources. What they can stop is apps
| using IDFA as a primary key for a particular Apple user, and
| that's what they appear to have done.
| nonameiguess wrote:
| Facebook and Amazon can both track you individually and
| correlate accounts because you need an account under your real
| name to use the service. They can just choose to share this
| information with each other. This only prevents services from
| using IDFA to correlate pseudonymous accounts or across
| services that don't require accounts at all.
|
| I especially don't understand the complaint from Facebook with
| reference to the four plus apps they have where users may very
| well just use the same account. As it stands, they've been
| wildly inconsistent about this. Here is Mark Zuckerberg only
| six weeks ago claiming this change would be good for Facebook:
| https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/03/as-apple-app-trackin...
| everdrive wrote:
| >This is where the whole "I looked up nike shoes on Amazon and
| now I'm getting nike shoe ads on Facebook" comes from. Without
| the IDFA, Facebook has no way of knowing what you looked up on
| Amazon, only what you look up on Facebook.
|
| Can this really be true? Wouldn't the conclusion be "Facebook
| can no longer rely on the IDFA for this information, but can
| probably gather it by a different ID shared between both Amazon
| and Facebook?"
| disgruntledphd2 wrote:
| This is not true, see my other comment. You are correct, as
| far as I know (which isn't much, as I'm not really in the
| industry anymore).
| excalibur wrote:
| Around 90% of users will never change a default setting unless
| it's directly interfering what they're trying to do.
| goalieca wrote:
| > unless it's directly interfering what they're trying to do
|
| That's where the trouble will come. I can see trend emerge
| where essential functionality could be blocked on account of
| tracking being disabled. I have some faith policies and people
| will work against this but i've seen so many dark patterns in
| freemium that I think this sort of dishonesty could just work.
| goerz wrote:
| Apple added an App Store rule specifically to prohibit this,
| see the first FAQ at https://developer.apple.com/app-
| store/user-privacy-and-data-...
| dylan604 wrote:
| It is okay for games to have limited gameplay until you use
| in-app purchases to unlock more features. You could easily
| have an app that provides a limited bit of functionality,
| but then allow you to unlock more just by changing this
| setting. Especially if any of the monopoly cases against
| Apple forces them to change.
| vbezhenar wrote:
| The proper way of handling that would be to show less ads
| to those who enabled tracking.
|
| Tracked ads have more value because it's more likely that
| you'll buy something targeted at you. So you need to show
| less ads compared to untracked ads to extract the same
| value.
|
| I think that this kind of differentiation is allowed by
| Apple and probably will be implemented in some apps.
| sethd wrote:
| What about a feature that is both useful and, by its nature,
| requires tracking to even work? (not a dark pattern but
| technically depends on something that falls under the purview
| of tracking)
| meowster wrote:
| My observation is 95% of people will never change a default
| setting even if it's directly interfering with what they're
| trying to do.
|
| I'm not sure why. Either maybe they don't know that there's a
| way to change settings, or maybe they're too afraid they'll
| break something, I don't know.
|
| I try to show people where settings are in different apps and
| opperating systems and encourage them to explore the options,
| but it seems like they never do.
|
| I think most people are just conditioned to live with the way
| things are. Some people will try to search for a solution
| online, but that's an extreme minority in my opinion. It seems
| like most people will suffer silently, and some others might
| complain, but they still won't do anything to fix it - just
| complain.
| coif wrote:
| I tend to forget how customizable phone settings have become.
| When I had my first iPhone 3G the settings were quite meager.
| It feels like by now I'm conditioned to just expect the
| experience to be consistent throughout the life of the
| device. The thought of playing with settings rarely occurs to
| me unless I'm actively having an problem with an app.
| bredren wrote:
| Changing settings was a good way to break your computer not
| long ago.
|
| There's probably some ptsd from seeing a geek squad van
| pulling up out front for a lot of households.
| oblio wrote:
| There are several of solid reasons to not change anything:
|
| 1. It might not be obvious that changing a setting could
| improve things. You need to have a solid mental model of how
| the specific tech works and how the setting could influence
| things. Casual users don't really have a model. Well,
| everyone has one, but for casual users it's more like a half-
| drawn sketch.
|
| 1. Changing a setting might break something - sometimes for
| good. Worse, it could break something unrelated (at least
| unrelated for the casual observer). Worst case scenario, it
| breaks something in a subtle way, that you only notice after
| a long time.
|
| 2. Changing a setting might break something that you can't
| fix on your own. Which takes us to a crucial social aspect:
| nobody like to feel dumb. Asking for help in many cultures
| and for many individuals makes them feel dumb.
| throwaway492338 wrote:
| An example from someone normally on the "just try it out"
| side:
|
| Got a new laptop, it has a "high performance" nvidia GPU as
| well as the integrated AMD one. I was getting notifications
| that regular apps were using the wrong GPU and wasting
| battery, and I should use an option from the manufacturer
| to disable it. Once I eventually figured out that you
| needed to kill all such apps before enabling it does
| anything, everything seems fine, until weeks later I
| realise sleep isn't working.
|
| Took a detour investigating "modern standby", which is
| Microsoft's new sleep mode that doesn't turn off the CPU
| and so was suspicious. But after messing around trying to
| force classic S3 sleep, messing with the powercfg command
| (which reported sleep as normal, wake on keypress, no wake
| timers, etc.), and testing with all apps closed, no change.
|
| On the verge of giving up and assuming this was just the
| nature of modern standby, I booted a Ubuntu live USB, hit
| sleep, and saw all the usual pulsing LEDs. That reminded me
| of seeing the same thing when I used the laptop for the
| very first time, so I had enough confidence to "refresh
| Windows" (a reinstall that keeps files).
|
| After doing so, I hit sleep, it worked fine, then had to
| gradually reconfigure the laptop, hitting sleep every time
| until it broke, which of course was just after I started
| feeling brave enough to make multiple changes every time.
| Narrowed it down to the GPU setting and all working fine
| after changing it back, but I'm going to be very selective
| about what I change and install for a while now.
|
| I think most people who enabled the setting (as prompted!)
| would just be living with the battery drain though.
| ghostpepper wrote:
| The interesting thing to me is that it's only 96% in the US.
| Worldwide it's closer to 78%, according to the linked article.
| hollerith wrote:
| 88%, not 78%.
| clircle wrote:
| Because Apple can't stop tracking in China?
| hollerith wrote:
| That's a great point: the statistics in the OP might have
| been calculated by people who did not take into account the
| possibility that a large fraction of the sample might not be
| free to choose.
| bradgessler wrote:
| "Allow Apps to Request to Track" [ On | Off ]
|
| That's the setting in iOS under Settings > Privacy > Tracking.
|
| What does it actually mean?
|
| If it's turned off, does that means that apps are tracking you
| since they don't have to ask?
|
| If it's turned on, does that mean apps have to ask and you can
| disable tracking per app?
|
| Something feels very strange about the way this setting is
| worded. I'd have excepted something like: "Allow Apps to Track" [
| On | Off ]
| bobbylarrybobby wrote:
| Agree that it seems weird, and that it doesn't align with their
| other permissions wording: "always allow without prompting",
| "allow each app to ask once", "always deny without prompting".
| jjr2527 wrote:
| If it's on and you toggle it to off it triggers the "Do not
| track" across all apps.
| vesh wrote:
| Yes the wording is confusing. If you turn it off it will block
| all apps from being able to track you without prompting.
| https://9to5mac.com/2021/04/26/allow-block-iphone-app-tracki...
| BugsJustFindMe wrote:
| That's not quite right. If you turn it off apps may still be
| able to track you nefariously but they'll be violating
| Apple's policies.
|
| Apple's explanation for wording it this way is that it's
| impossible to block all tracking through technical means at
| the system level because there will always be new nefarious
| tricks that malicious people will try to use against you.
| They can only do it at the policy level and try to punish bad
| actors.
| hhjj wrote:
| That's clear but can't they turn the setting into "Require
| apps to ask consent before tracking" ?
| beervirus wrote:
| But that's a very different question. If you say yes, you
| get lots of pop ups from apps asking to track, and if you
| say no, they track you without asking.
| dlivingston wrote:
| From a Wall Street Journal interview with Apple's Craig
| Federighi:
|
| WSJ: "Why the verbiage 'Ask Not to Track'? Why not just 'Do Not
| Track'?"
|
| Federighi: "There are other techniques that developers over
| time have developed, like fingerprinting, which is a bit of a
| cat and mouse game around other ways that an app might scheme
| to create a tracking identifier. And it's a policy issue for us
| to say 'you must not do that'. And so, we can't ensure at the
| system level that they're not tracking, [but] we can do so at a
| policy level."
|
| https://youtu.be/G05nEgsXgoI?t=153
| KoftaBob wrote:
| If it's turned on: I want to individually _opt in_ to app
| tracking, only for specific apps
|
| If it's turned off: I want to _opt out_ of all app tracking
| automatically
| HumblyTossed wrote:
| Apps have to ask. This turns OFF their ability to ask.
|
| It really doesn't mean anything other than that. It's a binary
| decision.
| shawkinaw wrote:
| If it's on, apps still have to ask. Global opt-in is what it
| used to be.
| selykg wrote:
| If it's off it means that apps cannot request to allow
| tracking.
|
| The default in this case is to outright disallow it for any app
| requesting.
|
| If the option is on then the app can ask, and the user has a
| choice to allow or disallow. Again, if it's off, the default is
| to disallow tracking.
| dubcanada wrote:
| It turns off the ask, so the way it works is you need to ask
| and then you need to wait for a response and if that response
| is "Yes" they can then begin tracking. In any other
| case/situation you are not able to.
|
| So if you don't want this asking you everytime you open any app
| (based on my experience it happens frequently) you can turn it
| off.
|
| But yes, it could use a better wording.
| dlhavema wrote:
| It would ask once per app, per install. This global setting
| just auto denies it for every that asks, and I'm pretty sure
| ( but haven't tested ) retroactively denies any app you had
| previously said yes to.
|
| Source: I'm a newly role changed iOS developer at my job.
| xvilo wrote:
| Isn't the default for "Allow Apps to Request to Track" disabled?
| So that would keep this number very low
| twobitshifter wrote:
| No I don't believe iOS blocks all tracking by default. I had to
| go into settings and enable this.
| bun_at_work wrote:
| This is what all the fuss is about - the latest patch makes
| the ATT opt-in, instead of opt-out. Since iOS 14.5, ~2 weeks
| ago, it's now opt-in.
| arielm wrote:
| I don't think it's like that for everyone, but I'm not sure
| what would determine where you are.
| Tomte wrote:
| That's why "leave disabled".
|
| But Facebook and other popular apps are nagging you to switch
| it on, so it's still an interesting statistic.
| happytoexplain wrote:
| The switch allows the app merely to _request_ tracking, so I
| 'm surprised _requesting_ that the user enable the switch
| doesn 't violate the App Store guidelines (or maybe it does).
| xvilo wrote:
| If I remember correctly it does.
| dlhavema wrote:
| Pretty sure they are referring to the system level switch
| that blocks the prompt and auto-denies every app.
| xenophonf wrote:
| I haven't seen this option presented to me. How would I make
| sure that app tracking is turned _off_?
|
| Edit: Never mind. I found it under Settings/Privacy/Tracking:
| "Allow Apps to Request to Track". I might flip it on just to
| see what nags me about allowing tracking.
| dan1234 wrote:
| I did switch it on, but only because I was interested to see
| which apps would try to request the permission.
| Grustaf wrote:
| So 4% haven't found the setting yet.
| egwynn wrote:
| It's opt-in. You need to go digging around to find the setting
| to turn it _on_.
| andrewla wrote:
| Really? I only just disabled it (although I had refused it
| for each app that asked me to enable it). Maybe I missed a
| prompt during the upgrade?
|
| I'm sure I'm not the only one. I'm relatively technical and I
| thought until now that you had to do in on a per-app basis.
| anticristi wrote:
| G.D.P.R. It's fun to be ruled by G.D.P. ah R.
|
| You can have services No intrusive tracking You can have all the
| joooooooy
|
| G.D.P.R.
| [deleted]
| bogwog wrote:
| I'm curious about the 4% of users who enabled it. Did they get
| tricked into doing so? Was it an accident? Or do some people out
| there really genuinely want to be tracked?
| intergalplan wrote:
| 3% accidentally hit the wrong thing but didn't bother to fix
| it. The other 1% is developers who need to be able to test ad
| tracking in their apps.
| gregoriol wrote:
| Probably people working in the ads industry or facebook or
| amazon... makes quite a lot of people!
|
| Joke aside, I believe most people don't understand what this
| iOS popup wants from them: for most average users, it's another
| annoying popup that their device shows them and they don't
| really know what it means or what option they should choose
| (like the location ones, networking ones, bluetooth, ...). It
| happens a lot with the older generation, but even as a tech
| person I sometimes just don't know what is the right choice.
|
| So it's so easy for someone to choose the "wrong" option, when
| it's presented with too few information or at a wrong time,
| like refusing the location service and then Waze doesn't work,
| because they just don't know they have to allow it.
|
| I believe these choices should be handled by Apple through the
| store and not by the users: if the app is doing something shady
| with ads or location, the app should be disabled before it
| reaches the user's device; the user shouldn't have to "know"
| those things, the user has no way to check or validate that the
| usage is legitimate.
| ceh123 wrote:
| I mean, if you accidentally choose the wrong option you can
| just go fix it in settings. I do this all the time when
| downloading new apps, my default is declining everything and
| then something usually breaks (like location on Waze) and
| then I go fix it.
|
| Incredibly mild inconvenience for the benefit of having the
| default option be not tracking me unless I specifically allow
| it.
| gregoriol wrote:
| You and I can find probably the option, but I have had
| enough experience with people who have something broken and
| don't have a clue why or what to do. We are used to go
| through menus, system Settings, commandline options, ...
| but that's really only us, tech people on hn.
| SCHiM wrote:
| The user most definitively has to know these things. Your
| argument is a race to the bottom I think.
|
| We will end up with devices where the user has to know
| nothing, cannot do anything and is lazy and easily led.
|
| Just as moving yourself around on a bike is healthier than
| planting your ass in your car, so is thinking for yourself
| and _once_ in your life taking the time to figure out what
| that whole location sharing thing actually means.
| vbezhenar wrote:
| > We will end up with devices where the user has to know
| nothing, cannot do anything and is lazy and easily led.
|
| Sounds like a good summary for iPhone.
| gregoriol wrote:
| I get your point as a tech person, but really, have you
| ever had this issue with your parents and iOS devices these
| days? I mean even most 30-something people don't know what
| those choices are about, that Whatsapp is worse than
| Signal...
|
| Maybe there should be something like a "root" or
| "developer" setting that can be enabled for advanced users,
| but for the average person the default for all this must be
| the best possible option already and they don't need to
| worry about it.
| SCHiM wrote:
| I mean sure IOS is hassle free and all that, but on IOS
| you're also a computational serf, computing at the whims
| of your apple overlords.
|
| I've thought one member of my family to setup their own
| wireless access point. And they can reliably solve most
| 'the internet does not work' problems on their own now.
| This member used to confuse the explorer.exe window with
| a picture of an explorer.exe window in internet explorer,
| with predictable results (at the time)...
|
| I'd rather live in the latter world than the former, time
| will tell if more people agree with me.
| RGamma wrote:
| Virtually every major consumer-targeted appliance or online
| service these days is like you describe.
|
| It's a side effect of eliminating friction when interacting
| with the product. Having to stop and read manuals or
| reflect or such is a big no-no and interferes with
| "engagement".
|
| And it's wildly successful and common to cater to and
| foster intellectual laziness instead of, say, furthering
| education or individual mundigkeit.
|
| Also, what rock do you live under? I want to join you.
| pembrook wrote:
| Or, maybe all these "lazy normies" are just busy with
| things like friends, family, work and their
| community...so they don't really care if X company is
| able to do better ad targeting.
|
| But sure, you guys have fun living under your rock and
| being super educated on the nuances of mobile ad
| targeting technology. The rest of us idiots will waste
| our time doing intellectually lazy things like spending
| time with our kids and living in the real world.
| SCHiM wrote:
| Not to be too offensive, but it _is_ lazy no? This stuff
| is important! I feel like it's (and has been for a while)
| going wrong. I know user education it mostly a pipe
| dream. But it's all I can think of.
|
| The iPhone is probably relatively free compared to the
| streamlined hassle-free applications and devices of the
| future. And all the while polarization in all our
| societies grows, until my government too has no option
| but to lock it down and forge social cohesion through
| state-sponsored psy-ops and information-ops. We'll be
| well on our way to a 1984 dystopia then. ---
|
| And please, it's not like there's not time for a normal
| life. See my comment about my family member below. Maybe
| if tech people would just refuse to fix the internet,
| more people would understand how it works.
| zepto wrote:
| > I believe these choices should be handled by Apple through
| the store and not by the users: if the app is doing something
| shady with ads or location, the app should be disabled before
| it reaches the user's device; the user shouldn't have to
| "know" those things, the user has no way to check...
|
| They _do_ screen out nefarious tracking to the extent that
| they can detect it.
|
| This choice is about consensual tracking.
|
| I think users ultimately do have to know something about
| these things.
| elliekelly wrote:
| This comment on TFA might provide some insight:
|
| > I've chosen be the 4% of population. I prefer to say to every
| app "ask not to track" and see what apps are currently trying
| to track users.
|
| Smart, but a bit misguided. In iOS Settings>Privacy>Tracking
| the text below the toggle for "Allow Apps to Request to Track"
| says:
|
| > Allow apps to ask to track your activity across other
| companies' apps and websites. Apps that don't ask may still try
| to track your activity.
| vesrah wrote:
| I toggled mine on to see which apps would ask to track. My
| phone says something different than what you've quoted there:
|
| > "Allow apps to ask to track your activity across other
| companies' apps and websites"
| dannyw wrote:
| If you present two buttons, one being "Give me $10" and the
| other being "Debit me $10", you'll probably get 3% pressing the
| debit button. Especially on a mobile device.
| rdsnsca wrote:
| Facebook is threatening them with a pop stating oping out will
| require them to make the app subscription based.
| [deleted]
| vnkatesh wrote:
| I am one of them - I did it intentionally to see which apps ask
| to be tracked.
|
| So far it's been Instagram and Sony's Headphones App. I do not
| have facebook.
| emmett wrote:
| I enable it on purpose. I like having more relevant ads, why
| would I want them to show me crappy untargeted ads instead?
| jabroni_salad wrote:
| My attitude here is that they are welcome to target me based
| on the data I submitted to facebook directly and my
| interactions with facebook's website. Are the things I Like
| and the people I interact with really insufficient to create
| a profile for me? What I do on websites that are not facebook
| is none of facebook's concern, which is why I have been
| taking care to block those 'like' buttons that snoop on you
| all over the net.
| sgc wrote:
| What happened to the days when you could be asked about your
| interests and you would get ads based on that, rather than
| voyeuristically watching your every move to predict what your
| next fix will be?
| ncc-erik wrote:
| I saw an app prefix the prompt to allow tracking with a
| similar-looking pop-up that said something like "please press
| allow on this next step ...". That pop-up only had one button,
| saying "Allow", then the actual pop-up asking to allow tracking
| came up after that.
| bun_at_work wrote:
| Some folks I've talked to about ad tracking things (unrelated
| to ATT, specifically) prefer to see targeted ads. Most people
| (in the US) will knee-jerk refuse, which the data indicates (so
| far as it's accurate data). However, enough people don't mind.
| [deleted]
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2021-05-07 23:01 UTC)