I wanted to love Airpods, but the fall out of my ears, even when I'm sitting still. The linked article doesn't mention Beats By Dre, so I'm guessing Beats sales are not included in that $23B/year number. I wonder what is the annual for Beats. I bought a pair of the Powerbeats Pro that go over the ear & I quite like them.
I guess it's just how true-wireless headphones work. It is designed for most common shaped ears. And if your ear did not meet it. All you can do is finding something else.
> but the fall out of my ears, even when I'm sitting still.
That's mind boggling to me. I basically have mine in 24/7 including my daily run and while I am sleeping. They basically never fall out of my ears, and they somehow made them so comfortable that I don't even notice them and have a mini panic attack when I see they're not in the case.
And a real estate company, and a hedge fund, and a bank, and (this is more recent) a data center company.
Big companies have the scale to efficiently internalize activities that smaller companies have to outsource. As time passes, they try to turn these internal service companies into profit centers.
They put everywhere “we do not track or share data with third-parties” maybe that’s the key difference with other ad networks? It’s not like they follow you around over the web which FB or Google does.
I actually don’t even see those ads, as they are only in few apps and App Store.
They're in the "kill competition" mode right now, so are obviously doing different than what others are doing. But what are the guarantee that they won't start selling user's data to advertisers when they're big enough?
Didn't Steve Jobs say that the 30% cut was just to keep the AppStore running?
OP is also just wrong. Apple is sharing data from all their properties like apple news. This is pretty similar to google and Facebook tracking you across the web. I just don’t see how it’s better for my privacy if apple sees everything I read on their app and targets advertising to me based off that, rather than google seeing I visited a news site
The difference between Apple News and Facebook or other third-party tracking is that Apple News only tracks what you do within their app while FB/etc track what you do everywhere on the internet.
I wouldn't actually have any problems with Facebook tracking what you do on the Facebook app (or Google doing so in their own apps), the problem is when they litter the rest of the internet with spyware (Facebook "pixel", Google Analytics, etc) and then spy on what people do on other domains without clear disclosure or opt-out.
Apple will only let you install apps through their App Store, and they correlate your actions in the App Store with the ads you click in the News app. How is that any different?
The problem with that is that Apple's strategy is to draw in a user into completely relying on their ecosystem. I'm guilty of falling victim to this myself. So even while they only track across Apple's apps, the tracking of the phone, news, music, app store, watch, fitness, laptops, etc. will add up to a monopolistic advantage.
Except that ecosystem is entirely opt in. If you are okay with a walled garden that you can't control, that's on you. Apple tracking what you do in all of their various properties and apps that they've built to try and be your one stop digital life isn't perfect but it is IMO categorically better than going to a random website and having my data get scooped up into my google account or my facebook shadow profile.
If I leave the apple ecosystem, they no longer track me or sell ads to be displayed to me. That is not the case with facebook or google.
The average user is not aware that the walled garden is still tracking them, especially with Apple's charm offensive about how it is more privacy-respecting (probably since their refusal to submit to FBI mandate to unlock the iPhone of the 2015 San Bernardino shooter). Click-through EULA is click-through EULA, no matter what company generates it. That Apple tracking is better than that of other, more egregious offenders, is damnation by faint praise.
If apple doesn't track you outside of the ecosystem, then that is genuinely a better outcome IMO than the google and facebook status quo. That you DO have an option to stop it entirely, by giving up apple services and products, is also a genuinely better option.
Some people aren't against advertising, analytics, etc in the more limited case like apple has. I don't think it's false advertising for apple to say "we respect your privacy" when they have demonstrated that they respect it better than the other companies in the advertising industry.
Don't let perfect be the enemy of better. It is damnation by faint praise, but that's because the bar is literally on the floor here.
I don't understand this argument. Are you really worried about being tracked or what the outcome of that tracking is?
When a company tracks you anywhere - let's say Google on Website X or Apple on Apple product Y, they will both use that data to sell you advertisements. Neither will actually "sell" your data to an advertiser, but will use their technology to let an advertiser target you.
What's the difference? It's the same outcome, you are being sold things.
You mention "opt-in" as one potential difference - that one can opt out-of the Apple ecosystem but apparently not out of other places...I don't understand, you can opt out of any website that serves Google Ads. In the same way you can opt out of Apple products, you can opt out of Google products.
They are both corporations, equally committed to earning money for their shareholders.
You don’t see a difference between Apple using your article reading activity in their own News app and Facebook creating a shadow profile of you even if you’ve never signed up for their service which collects your entire browsing history?
Please, publishers have been fighting to get more data from Apple News and they won’t give it. I know for a fact several Big Name outlets aren’t on Apple News precisely for that reason.
> Apple is sharing data from all their properties like apple news. This is pretty similar to google and Facebook tracking you across the web.
Google and Facebook track you across the web, as you said. The comparison to Apple's tracking, which is opt-in, would be Google and Facebook tracking you across their own services only.
I think this assertion from them is misleading (in the same way that it is when Facebook et al make it). If Apple is allowing micro targeting then they are implicitly sharing data. E.g. let's say they let me buy targeted ads for "dog lovers aged 34-39", and then you show up on my website as a lead via that campaign, then Apple has just implicitly sold me demographic/interest information about you, even if it wasn't done as explicitly as if they sent it over in a spreadsheet. I fundamentally think that microtargeting and privacy are incompatible.
(I'm open to bring shown, however, that Apple's new ad marketplace explicitly eschews microtargeting, but I haven't seen that so far)
The best and most effective ads are the ones you don't see or notice as ads. They are more subtle and woven into content. Adblockers can't block them, and people walk away thinking they consumed some useful information.
This isn’t incorrect but your privacy options when dealing with China are limited so Apple either has to chose no privacy or limited privacy for that market.
Governments exist to regulation the actions of economic entities like companies. It’s an infinite regress to argue about apples privacy stances in china.
The parent's claim was that Apple is a lot better at privacy than Google. It looks like they are basically the same. You could just as accurately claim that they are all equally bad.
What does it matter if Apple isn’t sharing your data with third parties if your entire digital life is within their walled garden? You still essentially have no privacy.
I look at all advertising as obnoxious. If it is unbidden it is little different from a door to door salesman knocking at my door trying to sell me solar.
With regard to Apple not tracking us with PII, that is good however.
But Apple is tracking you. They build an advertising profile using your behavior on iOS and your personal information (and at least for me, that included PII that I would never have consented to them using for ad targeting; but they just took it, and hid the opt-out in an obscure settings menu). They then allow targeting of ads based on these fine-grained profiles. Just how is this better than FB?
What do you mean? Apple is literally running your phone, they have more PII data on you than any pretty much any online add network (now they might not use all of it although I believe they use a lot of them. But they definitely have it) .
> We create segments, which are groups of people who share similar characteristics, and use these groups for delivering targeted ads.
> We may use information such as the following to assign you to segments:
> ... The music, movies, books, TV shows, and apps you download ...
> ... The topics and categories of the stories you read and the publications you follow, subscribe to, or enable notifications from ...
> ... Your name, address, age, gender, ...
> ... your App Store searches and browsing activity ...
> ... information stored on your device, such as the apps you frequently open ...
There's a lot more, that's just a sample of the data they use. The only thing they promise explicitly either not to have or not to use is:
> No Apple Pay transactions or Health app data is accessible to Apple’s advertising platform, or is used for advertising purposes. Apple does not know or make available to advertisers information about your sexual orientation, religious beliefs, or political affiliations.
That's not ideal, but it's certainly much better than every other ad company out there.
Apple can at least enumerate the ways it profiles you in plan text, and most of it makes perfect sense. (Though I'd be happier if they excluded age and gender.)
The other companies profiling information requires a massive spreadsheet, or even a JSON dump that no human being can make sense of. And that's just for their internal data, not the data they sell (oops, "share with trusted partners").
basically FLOC; that's quite different than selling your PII to third-parties or targeting you based on your individual profile (i.e., you visited xxxx store so now you all of a sudden see tons of adds from that online store)
not saying it's good, but it's probably the least intrusive way to do it; and many users like it. I'd rather never see an ad, but if I do have to see any, I'd prefer to see ads for watches or cycling gear (which I like) rather than clothing or pick-up trucks.
> (i.e., you visited xxxx store so now you all of a sudden see tons of adds from that online store)
They do that also:
> When selecting which ad to display from multiple ads for which you are eligible, we may use some of the above-mentioned information, as well as your App Store searches and browsing activity, to determine which ad is likely to be most relevant to you.
> We may also use local, on-device processing to select which ad to display, using information stored on your device, such as the apps you frequently open.
(emphasis added). They don't track your activity across the web, since they can't, but they do track your activity on Apple properties, including your iPhone.
First of all, your definition of tracking is different from the one used by Apple. Apple’s definition of tracking is sharing information about an identifiable person between unrelated parties. Think Facebook buying all your purchases from Mastercard. Apple simply does not do that.
Next, Apple’s cohorts and interest information about audiences is not nearly as detailed as Facebook or Google. And even at a far less detailed level, they have started asking users for permission to personalize in a modal. The other ad networks have never asked in that way.
It seems like you have a problem with how Apple personalizes ads, but that’s a different conversation than whether they track and if tracking without consent is acceptable.
Yes, of course Apple would try to define tracking in a way that doesn't apply to their data collection. But the fact is that they are taking my activity across apps, my PII entered for non-ads purposes, and allowing ad targeting using that. What is the word you'd use for that instead of "tracking"? Why is that OK, but the advertising profiles built by other companies aren't?
I don't have a problem with how Apple tracks people for ad targeting. They're not a particularly bad actor, but they're not a particularly good actor either. And a thing I do have a problem with is people thinking that Apple isn't doing all of this and giving them a free pass.
You linked to the privacy policy, so did you miss this part?
> Apple’s advertising platforms receive information about the ads you tap and view against a random identifier not tied to your Apple ID.
In other words it isn’t tied to your Apple ID, or the information linked to it, or the PII you enter for non-Advertising purposes. If you go into the News or Stocks settings, you can also reset that identifier at-will, and as you pointed out, you can also just turn it off. Completely opt-out. Facebook’s entire business model is predicated on not letting you opt-out of tracking and being able to link it to a social profile they host, whereas Apple can take it or leave it.
I think you’re trying to argue Apple’s definition is contrived, but I don’t see it. Buying identifiable information from a poorly regulated data market is very unlike personalizing ads based on first party data.
Apple isn’t trying particularly hard to hide that it personalizes ads. It puts up a modal telling users about it and giving them a choice in the apps where it advertises. I’m not sure why you imply that Apple is fomenting confusion.
> Apple’s definition of tracking is sharing information about an identifiable person between unrelated parties.
That is a weird definition of tracking! By that definition, a single party that follows what you do over time is not tracking you?
That is separate from the question of whether or not Apple is actually doing this and not telling us (I'd bet they are), I'm just saying that that definition of tracking reads like it's from a parallel universe.
The analogy isn’t particularly applicable. If you engaged with many Walmart stores and they recorded that, it wouldn’t be tracking. If a Walmart agent followed you into Target and recorded what you did, it would be. The Facebook pixel and other status quo data practices in the online advertising marketing look a lot more like the second than the first. It seems valuable to engage with that as an especially bad practice.
If Apple is not doing surveillance capitalism, then their advertising revenue is better compared to TV/Radio than to Facebook. Nobody loves advertising, but society seems fine with TV and Radio being paid for by non-surveillance ads.
The problem has been the micro-targeting / retargeting at the heart of Facebook and Google's surveillance capitalism model. That model enables a lot of direct to consumer small business, but it also turbocharges polarization, misinformation, and radicalization (as does the algorithmic feed). That's what consumers are increasingly looking to opt-out of, and Apple is catering to that interest.
If only we had some kind of medium better-suited for long-form text. A place to write text that isn't interrupted every 280 characters of text. A "web log", if you will.
> But it crushed FB, Snap, and 1000s of small businesses in the process.
Ironically, this is far more of a narrative than this guy’s idea of Apple’s “narrative.” The idea that banning user tracking hurts small businesses was FB’s narrative to try and get backlash against Apple for its tracking crackdown. That genuinely is a narrative because from Apple’s decision we have seen that consumers (1) prefer not to be tracked (go figure!) but also (2) are spending more than ever.
What he calls Apple’s “narrative” is actually their substantiated history of privacy-protecting technologies. Not just tracking, but iCloud Private Relay, Hide my Email, iMessage E2E encryption, keeping many things on-device only. Even the example he gave as a gotcha - personalized ads - has an opt out button right there! Try opting out of FB’s tracking and ads network and see the difference.
While this is a "narrative", there is quite a lot data back that this is a fact. You can argue that you trust and fell comfortable to give apple the power of crushing any other small businesses they don't care based on Apple's own company decision.
Yup. Facebook ads were evil. And now that wiener-dog ramp guy can't spend pennies to buy millions of impressions on cross-app-accessed data, he has to be smarter and work harder to get his ad dollars in the right place.
1. Apple did use their market power crush small companies.
2. Facebook does have an awful privacy history.
So the question is, do you think improving Facebook's privacy must hurt small companies? Another example, Google is working very closely with UK's Competition and Markets Authority to make sure the plan of replacing third-party cookies won't punch other companies at their faces.
These are not separate facts. FB and Google have a global surveillance network to track people which is 1) awful for privacy and 2) makes it easier to serve niche ads to people. Apple is prioritizing user-privacy which necessarily means it is more difficult for advertisers to place their niche ads.
You can frame it as "crush small companies" if you want. But that framing is just as valid as "Apple's narrative".
Third-party cookies should have never been a thing. Google shouldn't get kudos for barely rolling back this privacy nightmare they created while Apple gets punished for being more pro-privacy and pro-user.
But if apple's tracking is not sold to third parties, is secure, and people trust apple from a security standpoint, is it actually bad for individual privacy?
> FB and Google have a global surveillance network to track people
> Apple is prioritizing user-privacy which necessarily means it is more difficult for advertisers to place their niche ads.
Google provides the exact same privacy preferences on Android / Google ecosystem: the ability to enable/disable personalized ads, deviceId which is unique to the device, can be reset. The ability to delete your data automatically. It does not sell or share your data.
I don't like personalized ads, but we can't hail Apple for being a champion of privacy when its basically doing the same things Google does.
> 1. Apple did use their market power crush small companies.
What small companies? The ones buying/selling my data without my consent? Yeah, they can take a long walk off a short pier.
Also, TBH some FB and those "small companies" poor performance cannot be taken with a grain of salt - cheap cash is no longer there given the interest rate hikes and collapse of crypto - so maybe the performance has more in common with all those startups that lost runway this summer than Apple's rules.
Yeah, I read about Ramon and his wiener dog ramps when this was first submitted to HN months ago and I said the same thing then as I am now. It’s bullshit. If Ramon wants to sell wiener dog ramps, then the system to do that should be “buy adspace when people search for wiener dog,” advertise on wiener dog enthusiast forums, sponsor videos/meetups, etc. Not “create an all knowing digital surveillance system tying together user profiles across devices and networks and embedding tracking pixels in websites.”
So Ramon wants to sell a niche product and that means I have to be tracked across the internet so companies can sell a digital profile of me? Get real.
I mean, wether this is a bullshit won't affect "Small business were crushed by Apple" is a fact? It's a statement based on data. How you or apple justifying their behaviour is another story.
Let's say a chemical is found to cause cancer (outside of the state of California), then Walmart pulls all offending products from the shelves. Would you say Walmart is "crushing" these manufacturing businesses, or would you say Walmart is keeping their customers safe?
For that analogy to be accurate Walmart would have replaced the offending product with their own in house brand of the same product.
Which is exactly the justification Apple uses. What I don't understand is why people paying upwards of $600 to buy those shelves from Walmart and use in their own homes are ok with Walmart insisting that those shelves actually still belong to them and putting up their own products in the shelves you bought from them and installed in your home.
In this analogy, Wal-Mart isn't happily selling other harmful chemicals for a 30% cut, so I don't think your metaphor matches up with reality. I don't trust Wal-Mart to make my decisions for me in the first place, this scenario would be entirely circumvented if the government just had a list of all the chemicals you're not allowed to sell. Why do we need to let private corporations be the authority on which chemicals are harmful to sell and which are not?
But of course, Apple will fight to the death avoiding regulation. US authorities don't seem to care, but the EU is getting pretty pissed off.
I can't for the life of me why Apple people will go to all lengths to justify their standard corporate predatory behavior. Apple, like Amazon, Google, Facebook, etc. is a business that operates ruthlessly for money.
What an insanely illogical but also misplaced metaphor. Apple didn't "save" anyone - they found a new revenue stream and tightened control over data their platform produces to monetize it further, just like Google. What is the "saving" nonsense you all believe?
Yea but people don’t spend a lot of time on weiner dog forums, even weiner dog owners.
People want to advertise to customers where the customers actually go. Customers actually go to Facebook not weiner dog forums.
Don’t use Facebook if you don’t like the value proposition. I’m guessing most people who complain about tracking on HN don’t use Facebook properties anyways.
> People want to advertise to customers where the customers actually go
But do those customers want to see the advertising? People primarily go on Facebook to connect & keep up with their friends.
Being able to advertise is not some kind of right, nor is being in business. If your business isn't sustainable without stalking people (or paying a third-party to do that for you), maybe you shouldn't be in business.
This is a bad arguement. People who want products and services go to Google and search for them. Then, after the purchase has been made, your web experience is filled with ads for the product you already bought.
This is because Google wants to sell ads for impressions advertisers don't want and restricts their ability to filter out users who LOOK like people who might but stuff, but are actually people who bought stuff already. No advertiser wants to advertise a product someone already bought to that customer... And yet that's the default (and nearly impossible to eliminate entirely).
This wiener dog guy story is not compelling. The guy starts umpteen businesses with either little value to society or little ability to execute, as evidenced by him being paycheck to paycheck after starting numerous businesses.
I mean, isn't it "people's desire not to have personalized ads driven by cross-site tracking crushed a bunch of small business"? This is a market effect, basically.
Of course the maker of a platform used by the majority of high-value users would have power. That in itself isn't a damning fact. Nor is the narrative that Apple wanted to expand its services revenue. FB and Shopify want to grow their revenue too. Turns out they're competing on opposing principles, and Apple is winning.
A better question is whether or not anyone who isn't in the ad business actually gives a flying f about the shift in power dynamic. Is it an ABUSE of power? To the majority of consumers (by a wide margin) the answer is "NO". They don't want to be tracked and have their data exhaust vacuumed up for capital gains of billion dollar titans.
So this is the underlying motivation on why nobody cares that Apple is flexing hard on ad companies.
No, you are factually incorrect, but getting upvotes for a pretty populist view.
As with most centralization or “regulation” (this case from a private company), it hurts the smallest companies the most.
Large brand advertisers don’t care about granular targeting because they have the budget to just advertise to everyone. By definition the very smallest advertisers are the one who are getting restricted here.
Luckily ATTv2 will actually fix some of this, but that’s because apple has realised they’ve killed an entire ecosystem which actually hurts the iPhone in the end.
Small business were also crushed when the FDA started requiring clinical trials before you could market your drugs. The assumption here is that the needs of small businesses trumps any ethical or moral concerns. We shouldn't have prop up Big Brother so that little Johnny can sell graphic t-shirts.
People call it a story because it's an obvious lie. The CIA has declassified dozens of documents where they admit they can pull data right off iCloud/iMessage. Chinese citizens run a version of iOS that subjects them to perpetual government surveillance. Macbooks send telemetry back to Apple every time you launch an app. The App Store sells it's own personalized ads. Maybe Apple protects your security, but your privacy is something they don't give a rat's ass about.
The problem with that narrative is that apple does not apply the same rules to themselves. I actually agree with apple tracking should be optional, however why should apple get a free pass?
This implies collecting data for ad personalization is the only means through each Apple tracks you, which clearly isn't the case [1]. Some interesting keypoints posted here before: [2]
As it currently stands, there is no way to "opt out" of being tracked by Apple.
Apple does not track your activity across unrelated apps, websites, or the real world. They can offer personalized ads based on your interactions with Apple, which is not tracking, and they allow you to turn off that personalization. What rule are they exempting themselves from?
oh but they do. All of the apps you purchase, stocks you own, news stories you read, location of your phone/mac based on precise geolocation, your name, address, age, gender, oh and this too:
> We may also use local, on-device processing to select which ad to display, using > information stored on your device, such as the apps you frequently open.
Your reference or comment doesn’t disprove my point, but with the way you wrote it, it seems like you think it does? When they say unrelated, they mean offered by different providers, not of different purposes.
It’s not a pretty loose or arbitrary standard. For example, it’s a key basis on which data sharing is regulated. The claim that it’s a weak enough definition that it doesn’t matter is inconsistent with criticism that it’s a definition which has materially impacted Facebook’s revenue.
I just don’t agree that financial data and health data are “related” simply because they were both generated on a single platform. It’s pretty easy to link any type of data at that point. All you need is for Apple to develop two apps and literally any type of data can be “related”. At that point the word “related” loses all meaning.
I think you made a poor choice of words. You probably meant 3rd party apps not related.
Regardless - I also don’t think it’s meaningfully better that Apple links financial and health data to sell Ads vs. Google or Facebook linking the same data from two external sources.
Revenue and regulations are not relevant factors in this argument.
Tbh if you are charging $1000+ for handsets.. why are you trying to scrape my data as-well or show me ads ?
Forget personalized vs. non-personalized. I paid a premium, I want an ad-free experience.
Not sure what you’re referring to, and I doubt they’ve said they consider 3rd party app data as fair game for their own advertising targeting without invoking targeting.
1. Apple has claimed (from the epic trial) that since they owned the App Store, apps were theirs to sell.
2. Apple has claimed that any use of the iOS APIs is “apple’s data” (eg the Apple Pay system for in-app purchases)
3. Apples privacy policy claims that as long as apple’s data isn’t combined with 3P data, they aren’t “tracking” you.
4. Apple also lets you opt-out of personalized ads not data collection.
Ergo, apple will collect data about you from wherever and use it to target ads.
[1] apples privacy policy
Apple’s advertising platform does not track you, meaning that it does not link user or device data collected from our apps with user or device data collected from third parties for targeted advertising or advertising measurement purposes
Which rules? Because they very famously do not treat themselves the same way.
Between built in apps, changing defaults, different tracking rules, payment processing, access of hardware features, UI/UX guidelines, there’s a long list of ways apple priorities themselves.
> All they are saying is that tracking is ok as long as you just ask the end user first.
And yet, Apple only started informing users of Apple "personalised ads" only after a French regulator started investigating Apple. More info here - French antitrust complaint alleges Apple allows itself to run personalized ads on iOS without getting user consent - https://9to5mac.com/2021/03/09/french-antitrust-complaint-al... and iOS 15 now prompts users if they want to enable Apple personalized ads, after it was previously on by default - https://9to5mac.com/2021/09/02/apple-personalized-ads-target... ). Yet again proving how we need governments to step up and be more proactive to protect us from corporate abuse and create a fair market.
personalized ads - has an opt out button right there!
I saw something amusing last week.
It was an ad being played on a local TV station. It had one of those little blue swirly "Your Ad Choices" arrow icons in the corner that are displayed on advertisements on the web.¹
This was being transmitted by a television station over the air. What, exactly was I supposed to do with that?
On a related note, getting an ATSC OTA DVR is an awesome way to watch television with zero tracking, and 100% portability. Record video directly to a USB stick, and transcode to whatever device I want for free, and keep it forever, for free. No streaming. No tracking. No subscriptions. No network charges. Just $35 to Amazon for the box.
I know that not everyone has a lot of OTA choices, but in some cities, like mine, there are over 100 channels. About 40 if you filter out infomercials, religion, and non-English. I was surprised to find there's a 24-hour news,² and 24-hour weather station³ OTA these days.
tl;dr; Apple stopped Facebook from tracking (for privacy lol), now Apple gets more cash in the ad game because they are the only ones that can track. Well played Apple.
Facebook likes to demonstrate how useful they are by showing traffic/revenue of people who advertise through them vs people who don't, and then say "look! The people who do it are making way more money!" Ignoring the fact that they intentionally suppress businesses who don't pay them.
It's like if the mafia came by your business every week to collect their $1000 to not break your kneecaps and say "look at all the happy businesses who pay us walking around, and the people who don't do business with us dragging themselves across the floor with their hands. We're an important factor in keeping people walking!"
Except now you have to pay Apple for the privilege of protecting your app store rankings.
If someone decides to purchase ads for "HBN App" searches, you're out of luck on your own trademark. You have to pay for ads too.
Let me count the ways that we're now beholden to app store mafias:
- Downloads are no longer free to distribute
- You have to obey draconian and arbitrary rules, and your engineering team has to jump through the hoops constantly
- You can't deploy on your own time. No emergency hot fixes.
- You can't leverage JIT engines and dynamic code (WTF!?) to solve for a bunch of headaches.
- You have to learn multiple platforms
- You're taxed (15+%!) for the privilege
The whole concept of app stores and walled garden downloads is so inherently broken that the DOJ needs to break up the party wholesale for all of the major players.
While I'm happy Apple removed tracking, I also want the government to prohibit Apple, Google and the rest from doing these other godawful things.
This is harming innovation and productivity massively. This is bad for small, medium, and even large businesses. Startup founders, engineers, and business people alike should be up in arms.
We live in the crazy times Stallman warned us about. And as a capitalist, I couldn't agree more with Stallman.
If I have a page for my business and people explicitly follow my page to get updates, Facebook will still not surface content from my page as frequently to my followers without paying them.
The mafia metaphor seems pretty on the nose to me. If you have a page, its posts will not regularly appear in followers' feeds — that is, the feeds of people who've explicitly signaled that they want to see your content — unless you give Facebook their vig.
Most people probably subscribe to more pages (and therefore more posts) than they can actually consume the content of. It seems pragmatic that something should help the user surface more meaningful content. Suppressing commercial pages for friends content seems reasonable, and business v business is a decision where there will always be a loser.
You can look at many accounts from the mid 2010s but the one I can recall the most clearly was FB updated to the algorithm and everything was fine. They then began actively suppressed people who were posting YouTube links a few months later. They told at least Phillip Defranco that the reason was they should advertise. They then came back months later and instead said why not post your videos here. This failed policy years later re-emerged as the video push for news organizations where FB intentionally deceived them into pushing into video to on the platform only for them to later update to honest video view tracking and make all of the media companies realize there was much less viewership than they were initially told was there.
At some point they decided to basically stop showing updates to your own followers. Affected pages reported a drop of 90%+ in feed views, and the only way to reach your audience again was to boost your own posts, which is a paid service.
I have interviewed a lot of small D2C brands, either a single person company or a family. To say that the banning user tracking hurts small business is an FB narrative is not the complete story. Businesses still need to do marketing, the amount of money is just diverted away, in a less efficient manner so they budget has increased and the end users see less relevant ads (just like back in early 2000 where all ads were penis enlargement/real estate/viagra).
Not justifying what FB did / does, but what apple did, does impact the small businesses and end users negatively and it did stem from Apple wanting to get a cut of FB's business, there is a published email thread for this, it's a known thing.
The terrifying truth for the future is that advertising revenue is addictive and inherently corrupting.
Google makes strategic decisions that are user-hostile, because they can't wound their golden cow.
How much more ad revenue expansion at Apple before suddenly user privacy's priority decreases a few notches? And on a much more locked-down, controlled-platform, no less.
> ... consumers (1) prefer not to be tracked (go figure!) ...
And that means from Apple too!
Note that "tracking" includes data collection. And this is where Apple's duplicity on privacy really annoys me - Apple has never stopped data collection of their users data. Instead they mislead their users by just informing you with a popup that your data can be used for personalised ads, but you can opt out it - opt out of personalised ads, not from the data collection part ( https://9to5mac.com/2021/09/02/apple-personalized-ads-target... ). And even this happened because French regulators started an anti-trust investigation into how Apple gave itself an exception (by ensuring that the "Personalised ads" options is enabled by default on ios) while blocking everyone else ( https://9to5mac.com/2021/03/09/french-antitrust-complaint-al... ).
So let's not be under any illusion that Apple is "protecting our privacy" by blocking others. They are just protecting their bottom lines by blocking their competitors. All this PR spin on how Apple blocking Facebook and Google from tracking is good for the consumers is bullshit, when all you are doing is replacing Facebook and Google for Apple! Remember that once they have our data, all they have to do in the future is to update their terms of services to use it as they want. This kind of creeping encroachment is why we need to strong data privacy laws and regulations to prevent even companies like Apple from abusing their consumers trust, and create a more fair market.
> What he calls Apple’s “narrative” is actually their substantiated history of privacy-protecting technologies. Not just tracking, but iCloud Private Relay, Hide my Email, iMessage E2E encryption, keeping many things on-device only.
All these so called "privacy" features are also designed to help Apple data mine your personal data too ... the more data you funnel through Apple servers, the more they know about you and the less data their competitors have.
Remember that once they have our data, all they have to do in the future is to update their terms of services to use it as they want. This kind of creeping encroachment is why we need to strong data privacy laws and regulations to prevent even companies like Apple from abusing their consumers trust, and create a more fair market. Otherwise all that is happening is that you are cheering for the replacement of Facebook and Google with Apple ...
Internet activity including Safari browsing, all dns queries and all insecure http connections.
Yeah, I know Apple claims that they cannot "see" the data as it is funnelled through some other third-party - CloudFlare, Akamai etc. ... would Apple be willing to reveal the terms of the contract they have with these third-parties? How can anyone be sure Apple hasn't outsourced datamining or made another PRISM like deal with the US government to provide their users data, but through a third-party? We'll never know because there are no US laws and regulations preventing Apple from doing so.
(And when it comes to privacy that's the key thing - in the absence of laws and regulations, it is incredibly foolish to believe BigTech's word. They exist only to make money, which is their right. Hiding the truth, and exaggerating through marketing is an established practice in their world.)
Another thing to note is that BigTech are interested in promoting these kind of technology only to become gatekeepers of collecting and mining users data. Currently, some ISP's collect and store their users history. And make money from selling it. In effect, these ISP's are potential competitors to ad companies. Techs like these (https://blog.cloudflare.com/oblivious-dns/) are designed to disrupt these kind of data collection from the ISPs and undermine their business of selling data. With techs like these, BigTech now again get the upper hand in collecting, mining and monetising user data.
It's bad for distributed internet as a whole (where users have more control) because now BigTech are forcing themselves to be another intermediary, another step between accessing the data we users want.
Politically also, such techs are designed to tighten the grip of US / BigTech on the internet over that of a country's government. That is a big no-no for any democracy as a citizen loses the power to question its government's policy on the internet (including commercial and privacy laws related to it that a government may not be able to enforce because of such tech). It also weakens a country's security surveillance apparatus. Yeah, I know 'National Security' is a bogey that is used by all governments to try and curtail our rights. But would you really prefer that the usage of some of your rights be indirectly dictated by the whims of foreign BigTech or your democracy?
iCloud Private Relay, Hide my Email, all happened after the ATT (AppTrackingTransparency). And if you read ATT carefully it is designed fist and foremost against Ads. Not Privacy.
And the opt OUT of Personalised Ads? When did HN's narrative changed that opting out was ok? Or even Ads were not evil? I can assure you 95% of comments in the past 5 to 6 years on HN front page with Ads were all religiously Anti-Ads.
I agree that's it's not ok for this to be opt-out. And it's also not ok to show ads in system critical places like the App Store (at least without an option to disable them). I hope regulators come down hard on Apple and force them to open up the iOS platform. Their stewardship of the iOS app ecosystem is getting worse.
I don’t understand the point of this thread. Apple never said that advertising is bad. They just said tracking users across web is bad. When I use FB app, FB can still use my activity in their app to show me relevant ads, which they do. Apple can do the same but their prompt gives users the ability to turn that personalization off as well. This is different from tracking and apple is giving a choice where FB and Google aren’t.
But advertising is bad, it's just lucrative. I never want to see an ad when I use my phone, every single ad contributes to a worse experience. Every dollar that Apple manages to squeeze out of ads will come at the cost of making their devices worse. They could have resisted this and concentrated on making gigantic profits from building devices.
If they can't say no to money, why don't they go into porn instead? They can't be too good for it, the ad business is far slimier than that.
> Apple can do the same but their prompt gives users the ability to turn that personalization off as well.
Yes, and consider that Apple allows themselves to refer to tracking with soft words like "personalization" while forcing everyone else to use the scary "tracking" word. Apple should be showing the same "tracking" prompt for themselves as everyone else.
They wouldn't, but until recently they provided explicit functionality that allowed apps to access a persistent identifier so advertising SDKs in those apps could link activities happening in between apps, something that's not normally possible due to app sandboxing.
Now they've made that identifier explicitly opt-in (it prompts the user on first run) so if the user declines, advertisers have to fall back on probabilistic methods such as heuristics to try and link sessions together (which is harder especially if other countermeasures such as anti-fingerprinting, IP anonymisation with Private Relay, etc are used).
I don't think they can. As far as I understand what they blocked was the ability of the Facebook app to send Metadata to the website that the user arrived by the action of clicking an ad. They also blocked the website being able to reply to the Facebook app whether the user bought anything. This way users og Facebook ads aren't able to see whether their ads are effective, which lower the value of them.
In principle Facebook and the website could store these events (ad clicking and item buying) on their own servers, and just synchronize once in a while. I don't know if they are working on this or it already exists.
However, Apple could threaten to kick the Facebook app of the platform if it provides this "service" to advertisers.
> As an Apple investor, I am happy to seem them grow an advertising business.
An an Apple user, I am not. And I'm getting closer and closer to jumping ship on the whole Apple ecosystem. I wonder if this is a wise long-term strategy for their brand.
It's a shame Apple are going down the ad route, this is what the Stocks app on MacOS looks like - https://i.imgur.com/xGrzfyL.png
I'd be ok if it was a big 'Diet Coke' or other big brand app, but low level spam being injected into first party apps is just not on, it might have made more revenue but at what detriment to the brand value? Over time I think more ad revenue is going to equal more brand damage in 1st party apps, and that might even leak to brand damage for Apple.
Edit - Would like to add some context, Business News by Apple News is the first item open when you open that app, and this ad is below top stories, so depends if it's visible when you open it on your screen height, I did scroll for 1 second after opening the app to see this.
That's not what Stocks looks like - you scrolled down about two pages to get to the ad. You make it look like the ad is first. https://imgur.com/a/t7ncKoc
Oh yes sorry, I've edited my comment to add some context, I would stand by it is what Stocks looks like, as the app is Stocks and it looks like that. I did scroll just past the top stories to take the screenshot. I didn't mean to mislead at all, I do agree I did make it look like that, not intentionally.
Also maybe the add disappears for Apple News+ subscribers? I'm not subscribed to Apple News+ so I can't speak to that.
Cool, thanks! I use Stocks on a variety of platforms and never seem to scroll down far enough to see the ad, so I had to check to see why my experience was vastly different. I'm in the same boat as you without News+.
You don't have to scroll very far at all, there's an ad in between every block of news stories in Stocks, you only have to scroll once on any stock or the first news tab - https://i.imgur.com/ICX0w0I.png - this is just a tiny bit of scrolling on the APPL stock.
> But it crushed [snip] 1000s of small businesses in the process.
There's a lot of comments here suggesting this is a narrative from FB/Snap, but it really isn't. I was previously able to target adverts directly to the tiny audience of potential users of my product, and the return on those adverts was nearly 10x.
Overnight it entirely evaporated as a source of new customers and I don't know how I'd build a niche business again without it.
Advertising gets a bad rap, but I like to believe I am providing value to my customers and they wouldn't have found my product otherwise. Who was hurt?
Operating a business with a single point of failure is a risk to be considered in the risk:reward analysis. For many businesses, it is a reasonable risk that enables unique solutions.
It's important to observe that the parent didn't suggest regretting building that business even though the customer-acquisition channel evaporated. They merely said that option is no longer viable for future businesses.
> Operating a business with a single point of failure is a risk to be considered in the risk:reward analysis. For many businesses, it is a reasonable risk that enables unique solutions.
Then they didn't compute the risk correctly. A risk that some other entity could at any moment turn off your entire sales funnel which would, with nearly 100% certainty, ruin your business ought to be one no one should take. I'm not going to cry for those people that did.
The people who have obviously made their preferences clear that they prefer not to be profiled and tracked that way, because the possibility is still there for those who consent to tracking.
It’s merely a corporate story (from both sides) that people made informed choice about that. It’s full of BS everywhere.
Apple fighting for privacy is BS (look at China). Ads networks not affecting privacy is BS. Reducing effectiveness of ads not affecting small business is BS. Moving monopoly in ads market from one group of companies to others being good for people is BS. People understanding impact of all of that on their privacy, small businesses, cost of digital apps, etc is BS.
Both sides spend many millions of dollars to try to swing public and regulatory view of the problem.
Apple does not need to be a white knight who does no wrong anywhere for me to make the informed choice that I prefer their policies in my current country at the current time, nor for me to choose not to be tracked.
I don't think anyone claimed that reducing ad targeting did not affect small businesses. What they claimed was that small businesses do not have a right to target ads against user preferences.
> Advertising gets a bad rap, but I like to believe I am providing value to my customers and they wouldn't have found my product otherwise. Who was hurt?
Probably. But if the means in which you can connect with those customers requires a surveillance apparatus that infringes on the privacy of the unconsented than perhaps the question that should be asked is does your business have a greater right to exists than the privacy of those customers (I’m guessing the reason you can’t reach them anymore is because they decided to no longer be tracked.
It's a moot-point. Switching away from AdSense isn't going to protect you from surveillance, it's just going to change the pool of customers buying your information. All your iCloud data is a few clicks away for most NSA employees, and I don't think it's a stretch to suggest that they also have root capabilities on your iPhone. No matter how you slice it, Apple isn't going to give you privacy. The data you hold near-and-dear is already in adversarial hands. The game is lost before you even put your chips on the table, that's the consequence of agreeing with TOSes for more than a decade. Nobody wants to admit it, but privacy is literally unattainable in a digital era.
What Apple sells is security. They do a fairly good job with security, and their whitepapers are almost industry-leading. Their commitment to privacy is entirely lip service though, and the volume of their marketing seems to indicate the emptiness of that promise.
What part of opt-in advertising IDs is only lip service to privacy? Seems entirely about privacy and very little about security. Similarly, iCloud Private Relay is completely privacy focused and isn't really about security at all. Both of these things provide real value to consumers and dramatically limit data collection as evidenced by reports from Facebook and many others in recent quarters.
NSA data collection isn't anywhere close to equivalent to private companies storing it. The NSA programs could be shut down if the political will existed. Private companies with all of this data have absolutely zero oversight under US law at the moment.
I'd rather have NSA employees having access to my data rather than NSA employees and employees of the hundreds/thousands of players in the digital advertising ecosystem.
It would be very hard to make sure the NSA doesn't have your info if thousands of other unscrupulous players have it and trade it.
One danger of this cancer having infected everything is that back in the day, if the NSA wanted to track people, they'd need to either exploit an existing feature that collected data (which there weren't many, and no guarantee people used them) or convince developers to include backdoors which had its own risks. Any large-scale spying required them to build & maintain infrastructure.
Nowadays, the cancer that is advertising provides a business reason as to why everything should be collecting data, so now the NSA effectively got to outsource their spying (without even any coercion!) and can just ask for the results.
> All your iCloud data is a few clicks away for most NSA employees, and I don't think it's a stretch to suggest that they also have root capabilities on your iPhone.
There is still value for most people in being able to limit personal data access from many data brokers even if that data is still potentially accessible by the NSA. It’s a spectrum and not a binary outcome.
You are right though our rights to the data we create for most services have been relinquished via the TOSs that no one is really expected to read. It’s certainly broken. However I still think there are steps one can take to resist cross linking of that data by companies; it does take a bit of effort though which isn’t realistic for most.
While I think Apple’s choice to support privacy are ultimately self serving it is still beneficial for many consumers (at least for now).
If you know your audience, then you already know the places where you should advertise. Contact them directly. I've placed ads directly with dozens and dozens of web sites, podcasts, vloggers, and others. Very often they're more than happy to take your money because they get to keep all of it, instead of a tiny percentage sent back to them by Google, Facebook, etc.
> If you know your audience, then you already know the places where you should advertise.
And if your audience is a very odd niche, and you can't find where they congregate, go old school and make a place for them to congregate.
If you can't figure out how to market your wiener dog slide without facebook, create a weiner dog site with information about weiner dog health, pictures of weiner dogs, stories about weiner dogs, a weiner dog forum (or at least a link to a weiner dog forum you have created on reddit.) Slap your brand all over everything. Distribute other weiner dog products along with your weiner dog slide.
If you couldn't find anywhere on the internet that weiner dog owners congregate (and you really made an effort), eventually after you do this every weiner dog owner will know about you either directly or through word of mouth.
That’s way more difficult than just asking Facebook who already knows, though. You could go out of business before you manage to build that audience, if you ever would have.
I’m not saying that makes Facebook’s invasion of their users’ privacy alright (I personally haven’t pondered it enough to have a well-thought-out opinion), but I really disagree with the grandparent comment that the only businesses that suffered negatively from Apple’s move did so because they were lazy.
>That’s way more difficult than just asking Facebook who already knows, though. You could go out of business before you manage to build that audience, if you ever would have.
Cry me a river. If your business can only be sustained by a 3rd party implementing a massive, global, impossible to avoid and opt out of tracking and surveillance apparatus, I genuinely don't care if it fails. Weiner dog slides aren't that important.
That’s a valid opinion. My point was just that arguing that this change has had no effect on small businesses (except those who are run by ”lazy” people) doesn’t make much sense. But that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s wrong, of course.
I suspect you are being disingenuous here, and you know the issue was not the nominal harm your niche business caused by advertising, but rather the perceived danger of the entire infrastructure created that made this possible for you.
This is a classic issue of technological capability vs societal interest (i.e. we can do it, but should we?), and there are rarely easy solutions. Some of the trade offs may just mean that some business models aren't as viable - this in principle seems reasonable to vast majority of people.
The good news is that if your business model has any non-superficial value there are bound to be other ways to reach people and make a go of it, if so desired.
votes suggest this came across snarky, wasn't intended. I was serious about the last part , if there is real value there almost has to be other, even better ways to reach people.
I'll bet $5 the 'niche business' is drop shipping, and the ads are targeting customers already looking for the product who would have found it for cheaper if not for the ad.
Specialist subscription weather forecasting. I don't really want to make myself into a case study here - just sharing my experience that the Apple-induced small-business-advertising-pinch is very real.
For the past 5-6 years, 95%+ of HN comments believe Ads are completely useless. And small business making money with ads, ( Facebook or not ) are Facebook or Social Media's narratives. Had your account not been one from 2011, you would have been labeled as shill for Social Media.
To me the problem is that the only upside to targeted advertising seems to be "discover this niche product from a small business that can only exist because it's now cheap to advertise directly to the community it serves", but the targeted ads I get are all mega brands trying to convince me that their product is better than the competition by making me laugh or shocked. Where are all the niche products I was promised?
Where are you getting ads? I have YouTube premium so I don’t see yt ads which are more mainstream iirc. But I’m Facebook newsfeed I get a ton of off non-mainstream ads. Maybe your profile is super vague so only big companies bother to pay for your eyes.
I'm an iOS user and spent 6 years working in the bowels of adtech. I'm generally skeptical of the industry. Apple's posture and position here seems like a net good for me as a user.
Apple's and Facebook's approaches are totally different. Facebook vacuumed up reams of data from themselves and third parties and spat it back out into the industry indiscriminately. It _did_ likely allow some niche businesses to reach target audiences. It _also_ created and enabled a rube goldberg machine of third parties to access behavioral data in a way that likely made it personally identifiable. The same was true of most third party platforms. Cookies were fundamentally broken and users have no idea what data they were creating and no meaningful control of how it was being consumed (or by whom). All sorts of harm was done in ways that was difficult to quantify.
Apple giving individuals meaningful control over their data within Apple's ecosystem and protecting anonymity at the boundary of their platform is a net good. Apple's segmentation and targeting of users is fundamentally different than cookie based targeting utilizing 3P data. The fact that this hurt parties who unknowingly relied on 3P data in good faith is a sad externality, but nobody should lose sleep over it. I wouldn't feel bad about mom and pop groceries losing revenue from cigarette sales either.
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[ 3.4 ms ] story [ 258 ms ] thread[1] https://www.acumenfinancial.co.uk/advice/airpods-revenue-vs-...
I guess it's just how true-wireless headphones work. It is designed for most common shaped ears. And if your ear did not meet it. All you can do is finding something else.
That's mind boggling to me. I basically have mine in 24/7 including my daily run and while I am sleeping. They basically never fall out of my ears, and they somehow made them so comfortable that I don't even notice them and have a mini panic attack when I see they're not in the case.
The Paperclip Maximizer Theory certainly seems to be coming true.
Big companies have the scale to efficiently internalize activities that smaller companies have to outsource. As time passes, they try to turn these internal service companies into profit centers.
I actually don’t even see those ads, as they are only in few apps and App Store.
Didn't Steve Jobs say that the 30% cut was just to keep the AppStore running?
I wouldn't actually have any problems with Facebook tracking what you do on the Facebook app (or Google doing so in their own apps), the problem is when they litter the rest of the internet with spyware (Facebook "pixel", Google Analytics, etc) and then spy on what people do on other domains without clear disclosure or opt-out.
If I leave the apple ecosystem, they no longer track me or sell ads to be displayed to me. That is not the case with facebook or google.
Some people aren't against advertising, analytics, etc in the more limited case like apple has. I don't think it's false advertising for apple to say "we respect your privacy" when they have demonstrated that they respect it better than the other companies in the advertising industry.
Don't let perfect be the enemy of better. It is damnation by faint praise, but that's because the bar is literally on the floor here.
When a company tracks you anywhere - let's say Google on Website X or Apple on Apple product Y, they will both use that data to sell you advertisements. Neither will actually "sell" your data to an advertiser, but will use their technology to let an advertiser target you.
What's the difference? It's the same outcome, you are being sold things.
You mention "opt-in" as one potential difference - that one can opt out-of the Apple ecosystem but apparently not out of other places...I don't understand, you can opt out of any website that serves Google Ads. In the same way you can opt out of Apple products, you can opt out of Google products.
They are both corporations, equally committed to earning money for their shareholders.
Google and Facebook track you across the web, as you said. The comparison to Apple's tracking, which is opt-in, would be Google and Facebook tracking you across their own services only.
(I'm open to bring shown, however, that Apple's new ad marketplace explicitly eschews microtargeting, but I haven't seen that so far)
Privacy Preserving Ad Click Attribution For the Web
https://webkit.org/blog/8943/privacy-preserving-ad-click-att...
No, they just follow you all over your phone, which you use to go all over the web.
They absolutely are better if it’s true they don’t do any tracking
Governments exist to regulation the actions of economic entities like companies. It’s an infinite regress to argue about apples privacy stances in china.
> We never sell your personal information
Both of them hold on to your data and allow advertisers to target based on it. Just like Apple does.
Google tracks you to allow for highly targeted ads while apple doesn’t.
With regard to Apple not tracking us with PII, that is good however.
https://www.apple.com/legal/privacy/data/en/apple-advertisin...
> We create segments, which are groups of people who share similar characteristics, and use these groups for delivering targeted ads.
> We may use information such as the following to assign you to segments:
> ... The music, movies, books, TV shows, and apps you download ...
> ... The topics and categories of the stories you read and the publications you follow, subscribe to, or enable notifications from ...
> ... Your name, address, age, gender, ...
> ... your App Store searches and browsing activity ...
> ... information stored on your device, such as the apps you frequently open ...
There's a lot more, that's just a sample of the data they use. The only thing they promise explicitly either not to have or not to use is:
> No Apple Pay transactions or Health app data is accessible to Apple’s advertising platform, or is used for advertising purposes. Apple does not know or make available to advertisers information about your sexual orientation, religious beliefs, or political affiliations.
My take is that this information is used to give you some sort of cohort identifier that is itself devoid of PII.
Besides, depending on how many segments you are assigned to, you're probably the only one in the intersection of all of them.
Apple can at least enumerate the ways it profiles you in plan text, and most of it makes perfect sense. (Though I'd be happier if they excluded age and gender.)
The other companies profiling information requires a massive spreadsheet, or even a JSON dump that no human being can make sense of. And that's just for their internal data, not the data they sell (oops, "share with trusted partners").
not saying it's good, but it's probably the least intrusive way to do it; and many users like it. I'd rather never see an ad, but if I do have to see any, I'd prefer to see ads for watches or cycling gear (which I like) rather than clothing or pick-up trucks.
They do that also:
> When selecting which ad to display from multiple ads for which you are eligible, we may use some of the above-mentioned information, as well as your App Store searches and browsing activity, to determine which ad is likely to be most relevant to you.
> We may also use local, on-device processing to select which ad to display, using information stored on your device, such as the apps you frequently open.
(emphasis added). They don't track your activity across the web, since they can't, but they do track your activity on Apple properties, including your iPhone.
Next, Apple’s cohorts and interest information about audiences is not nearly as detailed as Facebook or Google. And even at a far less detailed level, they have started asking users for permission to personalize in a modal. The other ad networks have never asked in that way.
It seems like you have a problem with how Apple personalizes ads, but that’s a different conversation than whether they track and if tracking without consent is acceptable.
I don't have a problem with how Apple tracks people for ad targeting. They're not a particularly bad actor, but they're not a particularly good actor either. And a thing I do have a problem with is people thinking that Apple isn't doing all of this and giving them a free pass.
> Apple’s advertising platforms receive information about the ads you tap and view against a random identifier not tied to your Apple ID.
In other words it isn’t tied to your Apple ID, or the information linked to it, or the PII you enter for non-Advertising purposes. If you go into the News or Stocks settings, you can also reset that identifier at-will, and as you pointed out, you can also just turn it off. Completely opt-out. Facebook’s entire business model is predicated on not letting you opt-out of tracking and being able to link it to a social profile they host, whereas Apple can take it or leave it.
Apple isn’t trying particularly hard to hide that it personalizes ads. It puts up a modal telling users about it and giving them a choice in the apps where it advertises. I’m not sure why you imply that Apple is fomenting confusion.
But meanwhile Apple doesn’t have to buy it. Apple Card and their wallet gives them access to it directly, without having to involve third party.
That is a weird definition of tracking! By that definition, a single party that follows what you do over time is not tracking you?
That is separate from the question of whether or not Apple is actually doing this and not telling us (I'd bet they are), I'm just saying that that definition of tracking reads like it's from a parallel universe.
The problem has been the micro-targeting / retargeting at the heart of Facebook and Google's surveillance capitalism model. That model enables a lot of direct to consumer small business, but it also turbocharges polarization, misinformation, and radicalization (as does the algorithmic feed). That's what consumers are increasingly looking to opt-out of, and Apple is catering to that interest.
This definitely has “a think of the poor advertisers” vibe to it.
Apple does have advertising, but I don’t think they engage in the dark patterns of the afore mentioned companies.
They built this ad revenue by doing it the right way, not stealing data on a massive scale and abusing it.
Ironically, this is far more of a narrative than this guy’s idea of Apple’s “narrative.” The idea that banning user tracking hurts small businesses was FB’s narrative to try and get backlash against Apple for its tracking crackdown. That genuinely is a narrative because from Apple’s decision we have seen that consumers (1) prefer not to be tracked (go figure!) but also (2) are spending more than ever.
What he calls Apple’s “narrative” is actually their substantiated history of privacy-protecting technologies. Not just tracking, but iCloud Private Relay, Hide my Email, iMessage E2E encryption, keeping many things on-device only. Even the example he gave as a gotcha - personalized ads - has an opt out button right there! Try opting out of FB’s tracking and ads network and see the difference.
BTW, you can here the same story from small businesses' narrative: https://www.npr.org/2022/03/17/1087425495/tech-giants-and-ti...
This remains a Facebook privacy story.
1. Apple did use their market power crush small companies. 2. Facebook does have an awful privacy history.
So the question is, do you think improving Facebook's privacy must hurt small companies? Another example, Google is working very closely with UK's Competition and Markets Authority to make sure the plan of replacing third-party cookies won't punch other companies at their faces.
Companies using third-party cookies deserve much more than a punch. They deserve corporate euthanasia.
You can frame it as "crush small companies" if you want. But that framing is just as valid as "Apple's narrative".
Third-party cookies should have never been a thing. Google shouldn't get kudos for barely rolling back this privacy nightmare they created while Apple gets punished for being more pro-privacy and pro-user.
…while rolling out their own alternative, complete with user tracking.
2. Facebook (the comparison here)/Google/etc don’t sell to third parties either.
3. Is tracking customers the issue, or is facebook tracking the issue. Most people seem to indicate they don’t support tracking writ large
> Apple is prioritizing user-privacy which necessarily means it is more difficult for advertisers to place their niche ads.
Google provides the exact same privacy preferences on Android / Google ecosystem: the ability to enable/disable personalized ads, deviceId which is unique to the device, can be reset. The ability to delete your data automatically. It does not sell or share your data.
I don't like personalized ads, but we can't hail Apple for being a champion of privacy when its basically doing the same things Google does.
Please help me with this - what is Apple doing with its ad network that Google is not?
"Privacy" is a marketing angle for Apple to monetize data - they do it in exactly the same way as Google. But why Google bad Apple good to you?
What small companies? The ones buying/selling my data without my consent? Yeah, they can take a long walk off a short pier.
Also, TBH some FB and those "small companies" poor performance cannot be taken with a grain of salt - cheap cash is no longer there given the interest rate hikes and collapse of crypto - so maybe the performance has more in common with all those startups that lost runway this summer than Apple's rules.
So Ramon wants to sell a niche product and that means I have to be tracked across the internet so companies can sell a digital profile of me? Get real.
Which is exactly the justification Apple uses. What I don't understand is why people paying upwards of $600 to buy those shelves from Walmart and use in their own homes are ok with Walmart insisting that those shelves actually still belong to them and putting up their own products in the shelves you bought from them and installed in your home.
But of course, Apple will fight to the death avoiding regulation. US authorities don't seem to care, but the EU is getting pretty pissed off.
What an insanely illogical but also misplaced metaphor. Apple didn't "save" anyone - they found a new revenue stream and tightened control over data their platform produces to monetize it further, just like Google. What is the "saving" nonsense you all believe?
People want to advertise to customers where the customers actually go. Customers actually go to Facebook not weiner dog forums.
Don’t use Facebook if you don’t like the value proposition. I’m guessing most people who complain about tracking on HN don’t use Facebook properties anyways.
But do those customers want to see the advertising? People primarily go on Facebook to connect & keep up with their friends.
Being able to advertise is not some kind of right, nor is being in business. If your business isn't sustainable without stalking people (or paying a third-party to do that for you), maybe you shouldn't be in business.
Nobody owes him an audience for ads.
A better question is whether or not anyone who isn't in the ad business actually gives a flying f about the shift in power dynamic. Is it an ABUSE of power? To the majority of consumers (by a wide margin) the answer is "NO". They don't want to be tracked and have their data exhaust vacuumed up for capital gains of billion dollar titans.
So this is the underlying motivation on why nobody cares that Apple is flexing hard on ad companies.
As with most centralization or “regulation” (this case from a private company), it hurts the smallest companies the most.
Large brand advertisers don’t care about granular targeting because they have the budget to just advertise to everyone. By definition the very smallest advertisers are the one who are getting restricted here.
Luckily ATTv2 will actually fix some of this, but that’s because apple has realised they’ve killed an entire ecosystem which actually hurts the iPhone in the end.
All they are saying is that tracking is ok as long as you just ask the end user first.
Here’s Steve Jobs in 2010
https://youtube.com/watch?v=Ij-jlF98SzA
Are they perfect? No. But at least they haven’t changed their stance in 12 years unlike Google et al.
As it currently stands, there is no way to "opt out" of being tracked by Apple.
[1] https://www.scss.tcd.ie/doug.leith/apple_google.pdf
[2] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...
> We may also use local, on-device processing to select which ad to display, using > information stored on your device, such as the apps you frequently open.
But who's counting?
https://www.apple.com/legal/privacy/data/en/apple-advertisin...
If you play around with definitions enough, nobody is collecting unrelated data I suppose.
I think you made a poor choice of words. You probably meant 3rd party apps not related.
Regardless - I also don’t think it’s meaningfully better that Apple links financial and health data to sell Ads vs. Google or Facebook linking the same data from two external sources.
Revenue and regulations are not relevant factors in this argument.
Tbh if you are charging $1000+ for handsets.. why are you trying to scrape my data as-well or show me ads ?
Forget personalized vs. non-personalized. I paid a premium, I want an ad-free experience.
Except apple has repeatedly claimed that everything on your iPhone including 3p apps is owned by apple.
2. Apple has claimed that any use of the iOS APIs is “apple’s data” (eg the Apple Pay system for in-app purchases)
3. Apples privacy policy claims that as long as apple’s data isn’t combined with 3P data, they aren’t “tracking” you.
4. Apple also lets you opt-out of personalized ads not data collection.
Ergo, apple will collect data about you from wherever and use it to target ads.
[1] apples privacy policy
Apple’s advertising platform does not track you, meaning that it does not link user or device data collected from our apps with user or device data collected from third parties for targeted advertising or advertising measurement purposes
What do you mean? Apple tracking is optional, they straight up ask when you setup your phone.
Between built in apps, changing defaults, different tracking rules, payment processing, access of hardware features, UI/UX guidelines, there’s a long list of ways apple priorities themselves.
And yet, Apple only started informing users of Apple "personalised ads" only after a French regulator started investigating Apple. More info here - French antitrust complaint alleges Apple allows itself to run personalized ads on iOS without getting user consent - https://9to5mac.com/2021/03/09/french-antitrust-complaint-al... and iOS 15 now prompts users if they want to enable Apple personalized ads, after it was previously on by default - https://9to5mac.com/2021/09/02/apple-personalized-ads-target... ). Yet again proving how we need governments to step up and be more proactive to protect us from corporate abuse and create a fair market.
I saw something amusing last week.
It was an ad being played on a local TV station. It had one of those little blue swirly "Your Ad Choices" arrow icons in the corner that are displayed on advertisements on the web.¹
This was being transmitted by a television station over the air. What, exactly was I supposed to do with that?
On a related note, getting an ATSC OTA DVR is an awesome way to watch television with zero tracking, and 100% portability. Record video directly to a USB stick, and transcode to whatever device I want for free, and keep it forever, for free. No streaming. No tracking. No subscriptions. No network charges. Just $35 to Amazon for the box.
I know that not everyone has a lot of OTA choices, but in some cities, like mine, there are over 100 channels. About 40 if you filter out infomercials, religion, and non-English. I was surprised to find there's a 24-hour news,² and 24-hour weather station³ OTA these days.
1: https://youradchoices.com 2: https://www.newsy.com 3: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fox_Weather
Assuming your TV isn't tracking what you watch.
https://advertising.roku.com/resources/blog/insights-analysi...
I have a problem with Apple's hypocrisy of doing that but labelling it as a move of privacy. And this hypocrisy is only the tip of the Iceberg.
But the saddest thing is that most people dont see it. iPhone 14 will likely continues to sell like hotcakes.
It's like if the mafia came by your business every week to collect their $1000 to not break your kneecaps and say "look at all the happy businesses who pay us walking around, and the people who don't do business with us dragging themselves across the floor with their hands. We're an important factor in keeping people walking!"
If someone decides to purchase ads for "HBN App" searches, you're out of luck on your own trademark. You have to pay for ads too.
Let me count the ways that we're now beholden to app store mafias:
- Downloads are no longer free to distribute
- You have to obey draconian and arbitrary rules, and your engineering team has to jump through the hoops constantly
- You can't deploy on your own time. No emergency hot fixes.
- You can't leverage JIT engines and dynamic code (WTF!?) to solve for a bunch of headaches.
- You have to learn multiple platforms
- You're taxed (15+%!) for the privilege
The whole concept of app stores and walled garden downloads is so inherently broken that the DOJ needs to break up the party wholesale for all of the major players.
While I'm happy Apple removed tracking, I also want the government to prohibit Apple, Google and the rest from doing these other godawful things.
This is harming innovation and productivity massively. This is bad for small, medium, and even large businesses. Startup founders, engineers, and business people alike should be up in arms.
We live in the crazy times Stallman warned us about. And as a capitalist, I couldn't agree more with Stallman.
Above, I’m using it to mean “appropriate”.
The reason for this is we don’t just post 24-7 about how amazing we are.
We post 1-2x a week, and our followers genuinely like us and are fans of the business.
So… the changes on FB haven’t impacted all businesses in such a negative way.
FB had $11B in profit in Q1 on $30B of revenue, and that's after massive drop due to R&D expenses; it's hardly crushed.
Not justifying what FB did / does, but what apple did, does impact the small businesses and end users negatively and it did stem from Apple wanting to get a cut of FB's business, there is a published email thread for this, it's a known thing.
Google makes strategic decisions that are user-hostile, because they can't wound their golden cow.
How much more ad revenue expansion at Apple before suddenly user privacy's priority decreases a few notches? And on a much more locked-down, controlled-platform, no less.
We like the trade offs.
And that means from Apple too!
Note that "tracking" includes data collection. And this is where Apple's duplicity on privacy really annoys me - Apple has never stopped data collection of their users data. Instead they mislead their users by just informing you with a popup that your data can be used for personalised ads, but you can opt out it - opt out of personalised ads, not from the data collection part ( https://9to5mac.com/2021/09/02/apple-personalized-ads-target... ). And even this happened because French regulators started an anti-trust investigation into how Apple gave itself an exception (by ensuring that the "Personalised ads" options is enabled by default on ios) while blocking everyone else ( https://9to5mac.com/2021/03/09/french-antitrust-complaint-al... ).
So let's not be under any illusion that Apple is "protecting our privacy" by blocking others. They are just protecting their bottom lines by blocking their competitors. All this PR spin on how Apple blocking Facebook and Google from tracking is good for the consumers is bullshit, when all you are doing is replacing Facebook and Google for Apple! Remember that once they have our data, all they have to do in the future is to update their terms of services to use it as they want. This kind of creeping encroachment is why we need to strong data privacy laws and regulations to prevent even companies like Apple from abusing their consumers trust, and create a more fair market.
All these so called "privacy" features are also designed to help Apple data mine your personal data too ... the more data you funnel through Apple servers, the more they know about you and the less data their competitors have.
Remember that once they have our data, all they have to do in the future is to update their terms of services to use it as they want. This kind of creeping encroachment is why we need to strong data privacy laws and regulations to prevent even companies like Apple from abusing their consumers trust, and create a more fair market. Otherwise all that is happening is that you are cheering for the replacement of Facebook and Google with Apple ...
Yeah, I know Apple claims that they cannot "see" the data as it is funnelled through some other third-party - CloudFlare, Akamai etc. ... would Apple be willing to reveal the terms of the contract they have with these third-parties? How can anyone be sure Apple hasn't outsourced datamining or made another PRISM like deal with the US government to provide their users data, but through a third-party? We'll never know because there are no US laws and regulations preventing Apple from doing so.
(And when it comes to privacy that's the key thing - in the absence of laws and regulations, it is incredibly foolish to believe BigTech's word. They exist only to make money, which is their right. Hiding the truth, and exaggerating through marketing is an established practice in their world.)
Another thing to note is that BigTech are interested in promoting these kind of technology only to become gatekeepers of collecting and mining users data. Currently, some ISP's collect and store their users history. And make money from selling it. In effect, these ISP's are potential competitors to ad companies. Techs like these (https://blog.cloudflare.com/oblivious-dns/) are designed to disrupt these kind of data collection from the ISPs and undermine their business of selling data. With techs like these, BigTech now again get the upper hand in collecting, mining and monetising user data.
It's bad for distributed internet as a whole (where users have more control) because now BigTech are forcing themselves to be another intermediary, another step between accessing the data we users want.
Politically also, such techs are designed to tighten the grip of US / BigTech on the internet over that of a country's government. That is a big no-no for any democracy as a citizen loses the power to question its government's policy on the internet (including commercial and privacy laws related to it that a government may not be able to enforce because of such tech). It also weakens a country's security surveillance apparatus. Yeah, I know 'National Security' is a bogey that is used by all governments to try and curtail our rights. But would you really prefer that the usage of some of your rights be indirectly dictated by the whims of foreign BigTech or your democracy?
And the opt OUT of Personalised Ads? When did HN's narrative changed that opting out was ok? Or even Ads were not evil? I can assure you 95% of comments in the past 5 to 6 years on HN front page with Ads were all religiously Anti-Ads.
HN is full of Facebook and Google engineers so I doubt that's accurate.
Except maybe Tiktok?
If they can't say no to money, why don't they go into porn instead? They can't be too good for it, the ad business is far slimier than that.
Yes, and consider that Apple allows themselves to refer to tracking with soft words like "personalization" while forcing everyone else to use the scary "tracking" word. Apple should be showing the same "tracking" prompt for themselves as everyone else.
Human attention is the ultimate analog resource. Throughout our lifetime, it will stay in high demand. It cannot be inflated away or commoditized.
What I don't get is: How can Apple prevent or even detect that other apps or websites tell Facebook about what you do?
If I go to example.com and example.com sends fingerprinting and useage information about me to one of facebooks servers - how would Apple know?
Now they've made that identifier explicitly opt-in (it prompts the user on first run) so if the user declines, advertisers have to fall back on probabilistic methods such as heuristics to try and link sessions together (which is harder especially if other countermeasures such as anti-fingerprinting, IP anonymisation with Private Relay, etc are used).
I don't think they can. As far as I understand what they blocked was the ability of the Facebook app to send Metadata to the website that the user arrived by the action of clicking an ad. They also blocked the website being able to reply to the Facebook app whether the user bought anything. This way users og Facebook ads aren't able to see whether their ads are effective, which lower the value of them.
In principle Facebook and the website could store these events (ad clicking and item buying) on their own servers, and just synchronize once in a while. I don't know if they are working on this or it already exists.
However, Apple could threaten to kick the Facebook app of the platform if it provides this "service" to advertisers.
An an Apple user, I am not. And I'm getting closer and closer to jumping ship on the whole Apple ecosystem. I wonder if this is a wise long-term strategy for their brand.
I'd be ok if it was a big 'Diet Coke' or other big brand app, but low level spam being injected into first party apps is just not on, it might have made more revenue but at what detriment to the brand value? Over time I think more ad revenue is going to equal more brand damage in 1st party apps, and that might even leak to brand damage for Apple.
Edit - Would like to add some context, Business News by Apple News is the first item open when you open that app, and this ad is below top stories, so depends if it's visible when you open it on your screen height, I did scroll for 1 second after opening the app to see this.
Also maybe the add disappears for Apple News+ subscribers? I'm not subscribed to Apple News+ so I can't speak to that.
There's a lot of comments here suggesting this is a narrative from FB/Snap, but it really isn't. I was previously able to target adverts directly to the tiny audience of potential users of my product, and the return on those adverts was nearly 10x.
Overnight it entirely evaporated as a source of new customers and I don't know how I'd build a niche business again without it.
Advertising gets a bad rap, but I like to believe I am providing value to my customers and they wouldn't have found my product otherwise. Who was hurt?
It's important to observe that the parent didn't suggest regretting building that business even though the customer-acquisition channel evaporated. They merely said that option is no longer viable for future businesses.
Then they didn't compute the risk correctly. A risk that some other entity could at any moment turn off your entire sales funnel which would, with nearly 100% certainty, ruin your business ought to be one no one should take. I'm not going to cry for those people that did.
Apple fighting for privacy is BS (look at China). Ads networks not affecting privacy is BS. Reducing effectiveness of ads not affecting small business is BS. Moving monopoly in ads market from one group of companies to others being good for people is BS. People understanding impact of all of that on their privacy, small businesses, cost of digital apps, etc is BS.
Both sides spend many millions of dollars to try to swing public and regulatory view of the problem.
They were victims both times of big tech power plays.
I don't think anyone claimed that reducing ad targeting did not affect small businesses. What they claimed was that small businesses do not have a right to target ads against user preferences.
Probably. But if the means in which you can connect with those customers requires a surveillance apparatus that infringes on the privacy of the unconsented than perhaps the question that should be asked is does your business have a greater right to exists than the privacy of those customers (I’m guessing the reason you can’t reach them anymore is because they decided to no longer be tracked.
What Apple sells is security. They do a fairly good job with security, and their whitepapers are almost industry-leading. Their commitment to privacy is entirely lip service though, and the volume of their marketing seems to indicate the emptiness of that promise.
NSA data collection isn't anywhere close to equivalent to private companies storing it. The NSA programs could be shut down if the political will existed. Private companies with all of this data have absolutely zero oversight under US law at the moment.
I'd rather have NSA employees having access to my data rather than NSA employees and employees of the hundreds/thousands of players in the digital advertising ecosystem.
I can say no to ads through self discipline. They can't force me to give them money.
The NSA can come with guns to lock me up because the current political leaders disagree with my opinions.
One danger of this cancer having infected everything is that back in the day, if the NSA wanted to track people, they'd need to either exploit an existing feature that collected data (which there weren't many, and no guarantee people used them) or convince developers to include backdoors which had its own risks. Any large-scale spying required them to build & maintain infrastructure.
Nowadays, the cancer that is advertising provides a business reason as to why everything should be collecting data, so now the NSA effectively got to outsource their spying (without even any coercion!) and can just ask for the results.
There is still value for most people in being able to limit personal data access from many data brokers even if that data is still potentially accessible by the NSA. It’s a spectrum and not a binary outcome.
You are right though our rights to the data we create for most services have been relinquished via the TOSs that no one is really expected to read. It’s certainly broken. However I still think there are steps one can take to resist cross linking of that data by companies; it does take a bit of effort though which isn’t realistic for most.
While I think Apple’s choice to support privacy are ultimately self serving it is still beneficial for many consumers (at least for now).
Someone too lazy to buy ads directly.
If you know your audience, then you already know the places where you should advertise. Contact them directly. I've placed ads directly with dozens and dozens of web sites, podcasts, vloggers, and others. Very often they're more than happy to take your money because they get to keep all of it, instead of a tiny percentage sent back to them by Google, Facebook, etc.
Business is hard. Welcome to business.
And if your audience is a very odd niche, and you can't find where they congregate, go old school and make a place for them to congregate.
If you can't figure out how to market your wiener dog slide without facebook, create a weiner dog site with information about weiner dog health, pictures of weiner dogs, stories about weiner dogs, a weiner dog forum (or at least a link to a weiner dog forum you have created on reddit.) Slap your brand all over everything. Distribute other weiner dog products along with your weiner dog slide.
If you couldn't find anywhere on the internet that weiner dog owners congregate (and you really made an effort), eventually after you do this every weiner dog owner will know about you either directly or through word of mouth.
I’m not saying that makes Facebook’s invasion of their users’ privacy alright (I personally haven’t pondered it enough to have a well-thought-out opinion), but I really disagree with the grandparent comment that the only businesses that suffered negatively from Apple’s move did so because they were lazy.
Cry me a river. If your business can only be sustained by a 3rd party implementing a massive, global, impossible to avoid and opt out of tracking and surveillance apparatus, I genuinely don't care if it fails. Weiner dog slides aren't that important.
This is a classic issue of technological capability vs societal interest (i.e. we can do it, but should we?), and there are rarely easy solutions. Some of the trade offs may just mean that some business models aren't as viable - this in principle seems reasonable to vast majority of people.
The good news is that if your business model has any non-superficial value there are bound to be other ways to reach people and make a go of it, if so desired.
I'm ok with your business failing if it can't work without ads.
The problem here is that ads are not banned, but that they are now the exclusivity of Apple.
- What was/is your business?
- Which customers were you going after?
- What other marketing / advertising approaches did you try?
Edit: I’m guessing weather forecasting (https://skysight.io/) is the business.
That's what you're made to think. :)
Apple's and Facebook's approaches are totally different. Facebook vacuumed up reams of data from themselves and third parties and spat it back out into the industry indiscriminately. It _did_ likely allow some niche businesses to reach target audiences. It _also_ created and enabled a rube goldberg machine of third parties to access behavioral data in a way that likely made it personally identifiable. The same was true of most third party platforms. Cookies were fundamentally broken and users have no idea what data they were creating and no meaningful control of how it was being consumed (or by whom). All sorts of harm was done in ways that was difficult to quantify.
Apple giving individuals meaningful control over their data within Apple's ecosystem and protecting anonymity at the boundary of their platform is a net good. Apple's segmentation and targeting of users is fundamentally different than cookie based targeting utilizing 3P data. The fact that this hurt parties who unknowingly relied on 3P data in good faith is a sad externality, but nobody should lose sleep over it. I wouldn't feel bad about mom and pop groceries losing revenue from cigarette sales either.