Why should platform makers consult the advertising industry? It's not like the advertising industry consulted anybody before they started collecting every bit of data they could.
Is there no case of FB screwing over its partners? Like locking or limiting an API that they had offered in the past, etc.
One thing that comes to mind immediately is that Facebook Messenger used to be accessible through XMPP and then they blocked that.
Eventually Facebook closed all that access down and basically deprecated the concept of FB as an app platform entirely. That is a way more dramatic change than what Apple is doing to Facebook here.
So yes, it's funny to me that Facebook is calling out Apple for changing their platform when Facebook does it all the time.
One day, Facebook just killed that endpoint for "privacy reasons". Anyone can still open a web browser and visit the event page, but accessing the data programmatically is now gone.
I guess they wanted to be the only event viewer, and since everyone only adds their events to Facebook and nowhere else, there is now no way to get event info.
[1] https://developers.facebook.com/docs/plugins/oembed-legacy
This is what Mark Zuckerberg says at government hearings.
Any given platform succeeds or dies based on its applications.
In the case of mobile, many of those applications survive based on advertising.
The idea that privacy needs to be conceded in order for a healthy ad market to exist is false.
However when app developers include libraries from foursquare or facebook, what they are doing is violating the users' privacy and selling their information to third party aggregators who will apply data analytics to build a full predictive model of your behavior and then they will sell it to anybody who wants to spy on you. Do you remember Cambridge Analytica ?
https://web.archive.org/web/20200826162402/https://www.faceb...
I love that this is a category of people. (I'm one of them.)
Yes they would certainly prefer a "UN of ad-tech" that doesn't do anything rather than Apple's unilateral action.
What could go wrong if we give them another spot at the table?
I mean, PRAM has already released so many good plans, like... a mission statement. But that counts! I mean, come on, it has 'Responsible' right in its name!
And then Google found a loophole in the P3P syntax, and abused it to bypass it entirely. Fun times.
Left the guard clause in, in the end, because of some misguided need to "do the right thing". It's just dead code. I'd just get rid of it now.
Despite online Internet attention, users don't care about this stuff so long as it's wicked fast (response times < 20 ms) and doesn't interfere with the thing they want. They want the thing it enables and they'll happily pay the price.
People online who talk about all this stuff visit whacky sites, get angry at being infected with god knows what from some shit Forbes.com or some crap or some porno site and then flip out at "Google for tracking me" or some crap.
Glad I'm not in that industry anymore. No one outside it knows what it does or enables.
My guess is that this partnership is very similar to a hypothetical Foxes’ Partnership for Responsible Henhouse Interactions
https://twitter.com/eric_seufert/status/1291730115253145600?...
I mean, still in iOS 14, Google can use your data from e.g Google Maps / Chrome to target ads in the Youtube app on the same device without requiring any accounts by using identifierForVendor [0]. AFAIK this wouldn't require them to show the scary pop-up either, since they are only sharing the info with themselves?
But yeah, even without "tracking" the users, the ASA is of course in a privileged position, both in its prominent position in the (only) App Store, and by the possibility to charge per e.g app install. Doing reliable app install tracking without IDFA is next to impossible. Taking it further by restarting iAd now would be highly problematic imho.
[0]: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/uikit/uidevice/162... [1]: https://searchads.apple.com/privacy/
You'll love this: https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/microsoft/windows-10-h...
The big money at stake in this particular change is ads promoting the installation of apps. Facebook’s current tracking allows them to show that a particular ad FB displayed resulted in spending on an app. Apple taking over this business with their own ad service is just another aspect of their efforts to capture an ever-expanding chunk of commerce that occurs on every iOS device. Keep in mind the context that Apple is banning apps for allowing users to use subscription services without paying Apple 30% of the subscription revenue.
For what it’s worth, Google is guilty of some of the same issues on Android. I hope any regulation cracking down on these abuses will be equally applied.
>Yes. Apple has a detailed answer but essentially says that's not so, and is a misreading of its policy.
[1] https://techcrunch.com/2020/06/22/apple-ios-14-ad-tracking/
Notably, it omits the line saying they won't use the prompt in their own apps (which they'd be required to do whether or not they used IDFA) and omits the advice that implies their customers should figure out other ways to gather identifying information
nice
(sarcasm, in case it wasn't obvious)
Previously, Apple and third-party tracking were both controlled by the same opt-put setting. Using your power as platform owner to turn your competitor’s ad tracking off by default while keeping yours on? Sure seems abusive to me.
It's not of the app market or the mobile phone market, there are strong viable competitors in both.
No one says Toyota is a monopolist of Toyota cars and yet Apple is called a monopolist of the App Store, iOS, and Apple phones.
Facebook is playing in Apple’s garden here. Remember when Facebook made their own phone and app store, and nobody wanted it?
Translation: The iOS changes are making the platform more like a printed newspaper. So please continue to spend your ad budget with Facebook because we have X monthly active users and we’re the top in social media.
> We expect less impact to our own advertising business, and we’re committed to supporting advertisers and publishers through these updates.
Translation: We will do everything in our power to track users and collect more information from our already invasive apps. While we’re happy to keep making money here, please continue to advertise with us on our platforms because we have X monthly active users and we’re the top in social media. Innovation is at the heart of what we do. Did you see our TikTok clone in Instagram lately?
If it came to destroying advertisers or free open computing I want free computing.
There are hundreds of phone manufacturers who are more than happy to take your money.
But if you buy an iPhone you need to understand that you are in the minority i.e. that most of us want Apple to make changes like this.
I'm all for bashing Apple for some of their more restrictive policies but what about THIS decision is making you uncomfortable?
You never had control of ios devices to begin with, the iphone always has been everything but "free computing"
Seems like Apple is really backing up their rhetoric with real action. Awesome news for anyone that values privacy. Kudos to Apple.
Sometimes it’s hard to communicate tone through text alone, but I really think you managed it there. Looking forward to more of your witty comments.
Thank god.
https://www.facebook.com/audiencenetwork/news-and-insights/p...
Translation: Facebook will find a way.
Facebook is getting scared of the prompt (shown by Apple) saying FB will track you, and whether you would like to opt-out. More importantly, they are putting the opt-opt right below the opt-in (yayyy!)
Almost every app will have to ask this kinda prompt now. Not just FB.
Good move by Apple
Sure removing IDFA will help protect user privacy, but let’s not kid ourselves that there will not be collateral damage. Being a third party publisher will be that much harder and walled gardens (FB, Google, Instagram) will be further cemented as the only viable business model.
> All publishers (news sites, indie games, etc) are going to see huge drops in CPM. It could easily be a business ending shift.
Your second statement might not imply the first. It could be that publishers are going to see business disrupting shifts in CPM, and we are aware of that fact, and still support the changes.
"Why is everyone praising this? Don't they realize that it will make it harder to track them?"
At the same time, there's something really telling that after all of the years of the advertising industry talking about how users actually want to be tracked and targeted, they are nonetheless terrified of something as simple as a prominent opt-out button.
If advertisers sincerely believed that users wanted what they were offering, then they wouldn't view it as an existential threat for users to have the ability to turn the offer down. If the take is, "users having control over their own data will be devastating for the advertisers", then honestly that's kind of a big signal that the advertising industry is out of control and needs some business disrupting shifts.
I actually gave it a chance. The problem was during that time the ads (from Google) were more irrelevant.
Back in the old days you could often see how ads were relevant to the topic of the web site you were visiting or the topic you searched for even if they weren't always relevant to me (e.g. selling expensive software while I was a broke student, living outside the US).
The next years - sometimes after the Double Click acquisition it seems - I started seeing almost only irrelevant ads everywhere.
I don't have anything against companies making money - in fact I liked it when Google were earning good money before Double Click. But when they add invasive tracking and the quality goes way down at the same time something has gone wrong.
I hope every company that makes a living by trying to spy on me goes out of business.
And what is it that you publish that helps humanity?
Maybe with time there can be a shift in the economics, but I would not bet on it. I can’t imagine people will start paying for email, search, music streaming...
Business models come and go. This one isn't as bad as slavery or child labour, but but I'd happily tap-dance on its grave.
Mind you; I don't think Facebook is less evil, just that they seem to have understood better than Google that users need to be treated with some amount of respect, at least for now.
I mean, I can see a viable anti-trust action for the Hey.com/Epic fiascoes and the ongoing 30% app revenue fees...
On the browser side one company has really been using their market position in a different market (ads) to outcompete at least two commercial browser engines while the independent open source one has been reduced to fraction of what it once was.
right for people? by people they mean shareholders and zuckerberg not users
Google, FB, et al would love it if these shitware ads disappeared because fewer people would feel the need to block ads. But there's really nothing they can do about it without being shouted down (or worse) as being anticompetitive, regardless of whether that's true or not in this case (and there probably is some truth to it).
How is that so many anti-Apple comments in this thread? Are we already in a stage when giant Ad Corps are intentionally distorting public discussions?
As to your last question: Of course, why wouldn’t they?
At first, I thought it was a long-game strategy of chipping away at Google + Facebook while developing a walled-off user base that only Apple (and their affiliates/partners) can monetize. But there has to be something more substantial.
Assuming it costs $X to develop these adtech walls, Apple must require $Y in return... where is this $Y going to come from?
Of course, while it's possible that Apple can keep themselves away from those "free" services but it means that they also need to give up a part of their control on customer relationship. Since it is the core part of their long term strategy, I don't think they can easily give it up. I think they will eventually foray into the advertising business rather than giving up user control.
Here, the only major advantage of their services is platform control. The major disadvantage is their perception of privacy-friendly company, so their options on ad network level optimization are significantly limited. The only relevant ads service from Apple is app search ads because this is the only area they can get user information without privacy troubles; this clearly demonstrates their strong and weak points.
The only logical conclusion that can be derived from this situation is utilizing their platform control to "level the playground"; even if Apple cannot use the same user data, they can force others to give up. This will neutralize Apple's disadvantage while retaining their platform advantages, which likely give them some time to catch up their competitors in service businesses as well.
Privacy has always been a core tenet of Apple's value proposition. They ask for more money, and in return you get assurance that the system you're using values your privacy more than other ecosystems.
I don't necessarily think there needs to be anything more to it than that. Apple knows it can win privacy conscious people and monetize them in ways Google can't, and that's what it does.
Yet their rhetoric is "tracking is great and people love it! they're going to be so sad once tracking is gone!"
I would not characterize Facebook's post that way. Facebook's post doesn't mention the impact on/reaction from the end users at all.
My interpretation of all this is that no reasonable user would consent to the tracking anyway and the marginal benefit of users who do consent is outweighed by users who are creeped out and decline the tracking.
I can't think of any basis on which they wouldn't be quickly dismissed, though.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-08-26/house-ant...
Push the person until they crack, then call for discretion and dialog about the 'problem' so you don't get what's coming to you.
But that would probably conflict tremendously with the corporate interests that inform our public education system.
Also, Devos is publicly in favour of eliminating public schools in favour of private schools / voucher systems and has attempted to drastically reduce her own portfolios budget; so the malice is openly on display here.
Or unions.
While teachers unions have been great for teachers, they've been lousy for teaching.
User consultation is more critical, but Facebook doesn't really have "users", per se - they have products.
Apple Store apps might well be sandboxed from third party store apps, but there are no guarantees apps within a store ecosystem would provide the same privacy, that would be up to the store provider and Apple would have no say in it.
The forced-to-accept "welcome" screen (which shows up before the main desktop and disregard every single accessibility option the user might have (even the mouse scrolling direction!) starts with:
> "Apple's ad platform is designed to protect your information ..."
A few interesting things. First, I doubt any Advertising platform was or will ever be designed "to protect you information". They are designed to generate revenue by ensuring people see Adverts.
Second, I think it is the first time the words "Apple's [Advertising] Platform" was ever shown to Apple's end users.
Lastly, what's up with using "ad" on a somewhat legal document you are forcing me to accept? It is not a word.
'Ad' sure seems like a word to me :)
I actually think there are more people that would prefer contracts, terms and conditions, and legal documents be written more in plain English, not less. Things that reduce friction of being able to take in that information without reducing clarity seem to me like a net positive.
