Doordash and Thousands of Other Companies Passively Send Your Data to Facebook
onezero.medium.com
onezero.medium.com
But my god, they are SO pushy.
More on topic: I'm curious why we tolerate these horrible experiences on the web. Technically savvy people can't be the only ones infuriated by these dark patterns, yet I don't often see my non-tech friends complaining about it.
I also don't understanding the motive on Reddit's part. Let's broadly categorize users into two buckets: those who actively don't want to use the app, and those that do.
In most cases a native app experience "feels" better than a web app experience, so your average user is probably happy to see the "please use our app instead" popup. Those users will probably click it on the first try, and never have to deal with it again on the web.
The remainder who specifically want to use the browser version are doing so probably for technical reasons: don't want to be tracked, etc. Those people are never going to click to download the app, no matter how many times Reddit nags at them to do it. So why continue to force-feed the popup? All it's doing is creating ill will from the people who see it every time, and those people are arguably the more technically savvy and know it's intentionally being annoying. It's just making technical people dislike the platform and the company.
I guess I'm missing where the benefit of trying to force people into the app is. Is the disdain from techies worth the tiny amount of people who initially click no and then eventually click yes?
Its fast and lightweight. A superb third party reddit client.
I don't know what made Apple switch gears so hard and focus on promoting native. It could be they just wanted that App Store revenue and 30% cut, as well as in-app purchase revenue.
It could also be Apple was interested in promoting apps that only work on iOS, or work best on iOS.
I do think they made the wrong choice for the user's benefit however.
In 2007 many developers wanted a native SDK, similar to the one that Apple used internally, and were extremely disappointed at WWDC when Jobs announced Apple's "sweet" solution of web apps on the iPhone. In retrospect, two things have become clear:
1) the iPhone's support for web apps was surprisingly good and pointed to a future of responsive, standalone web apps that look and feel like native apps, and web technology as an alternative for implementing standalone apps
2) devs asked for a native SDK, and Apple said no; a year later, Apple gave them the App Store, which wasn't just an SDK but a new marketplace for mobile apps which led to "there's an app for that", millions of iPhone apps...and eventual complaints about Apple's terms
> until the day they have them, (like mice with two buttons, or phones with working antennas)
The trackpad on my Apple laptop actually has zero buttons. The clicking feature is a haptic and auditory illusion.
Jobs was technically correct that the iPhone 4 antenna worked properly when you didn't bridge it with your finger, and as I recall the low tech fix was a piece of insulating plastic to prevent you from doing so.
What you do want to be careful about is following links from browsers that load applications, because they are typically tagged with information that links the app to the browser (and from there to everything else).
This is where they went wrong, as unfortunate as it is. Aside from the massive amount of third party analytics and tracking and so on, there's many more out-of-band ways that others will find out about what they did, for example by purchasing credit card transaction history (Google, many other institutions), reading and automatically parsing your receipts sent via email (Google), making generalizations about your Internet activity (phone/Internet provider) and many others.
I love it when companies exclude this info from email and make me log in to see the details, but then run a bunch of trackers themselves.
I wonder if the tracking companies pay more if you exclude the info from emails, which I generally find annoying.
(I assume this is in the context of somewhere like the USA, because it would very clearly not be legal under privacy laws in places like Europe.)
Is it a straight-up cash transaction, or is it a discount Facebook gives Doordash on its ad spend, or something else?
Or is it just a side effect of using Facebook Analytics, that most companies aren't even aware that they're sharing data that gets used for advertising too? So they're getting free analytics software but that's it?
Just very curious what the business deal structure here is.
This data is used to create a feedback loop for ML models powering FB's ad auction and delivery. Marketing campaigns all have objectives that can be monitored via this data. FB will adapt auction dynamics to maximize the value for all parties, and this data helps FB properly set the auction bids or artificially inflate/deflate the price for individual users based on the predicted likelihood of a campaign objective being met.
It's used for campaign measurement - DoorDash reports an action in their app, and FB says "that person saw or clicked on a FB ad before taking that action. give us credit for it!" Facebook is effectively grading their own homework here and ignores other marketing campaigns that may have contributed to the action, but there is a deeper science around interpreting this measurement (marketing mix modeling) and third-parties who can help validate.
The data can also be used to create Facebook campaign audiences. "Show this promotion to customers who ordered from DoorDash 4 times last month." "Show this promotion to those customers' FB friends who do not have the app installed." "Show this promotion to users who have installed the app, but haven't placed an order yet."
So no money is being exchanged for the data, but both parties are able to maximize their partnership value from it.
> Facebook is effectively grading their own homework here and ignores other marketing campaigns that may have contributed to the action
One thing I'd add is that FB is _still_ incentivized to accurately attribute actions. Over-attribution (and thus over-estimation of ROI) would give FB more spend in the short term, but would hurt them in the long term by causing auction inefficiencies.
This is the reason direct action campaigns on Google are perceived to be low(er) value: last click attribution disproportionately favors AdWords.
Take note, developers; it's as simple as this:
if (!navigator.doNotTrack) { // Tracking code }It's easy to go about your daily work and forget about the ways in which you're opted into various data-collection frameworks.
Regarding comments pointing out the Facebook integration on Medium, I think it's okay for people to criticize a system from within the system.
Amen: there'd be virtually no critics left if people couldn't.
It's as simple as:
if (!navigator.doNotTrack) { // Tracking code }I've wanted for some time to see a couple of variations of things like the Fair Tax Mark (https://fairtaxmark.net/ - a cert that a company isn't using tax evasion tactics), especially one for privacy. FTM is trademarked and therefore able to police its logo's usage, a Privacy Mark could do the same, and enhance the market for privacy respecting services.
Maybe it is time to start on efforts like these. Who'd be interested?
What should be shocking is how many people dismiss such information because "I have nothing to hide," or "but Facebook connects me with friends and family."
Saying that drugs make you feel good doesn't make it less bad that the pushers want you to get addicted.
Fair, everyone has an approximate idea of how much FB is sucking down about you, but I still get surprised now and then by some of the stuff they do. Like I've always avoided using FB login for anything for obvious reasons, but I never knew that just the act of including a facebook SDK in your app was enough to phone home to that company every time I use it.
If you subsequently make an account, as soon as they can connect the two you’ll start seeing stuff in your feed based on what they already know about you. Though that’s not the reason they do it, it’s for advertising.
[1] https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/external/readwri...
Privacy has relied on the good-nature of service-providers for so long, that we don't know half the things that shady operators were upto (fingerprinting etc.).
Apple appears to pushing industry in a direction that's going to change things for the better.
It's used for campaign measurement - DoorDash reports an action in their app, and FB says "that person saw or clicked on a FB ad before taking that action. give us credit for it!" Facebook is effectively grading their own homework here and ignores other marketing campaigns that may have contributed to the action, but there is a deeper science around interpreting this measurement (marketing mix modeling) and third-parties who can help validate.
The data can also be used to create Facebook campaign audiences. "Show this promotion to customers who ordered from DoorDash 4 times last month." "Show this promotion to those customers' FB friends who do not have the app installed." "Show this promotion to users who have installed the app, but haven't placed an order yet."
So no money is being exchanged for the data, but both parties are able to maximize their partnership value from it.
After that, who cares what is done with it? Best not think about those things lest it bother your conscious.
Your question probably is more along the lines of why would someone want to buy that data? You add that info to the buyer's enormous trove of data profile. This person bought an Apple device = they have lots of disposable income (send them ads on other superfluous crap). This person bought a baby crib = send this person lots of adds about diapers, formula, toys, etc.
The reason they don't do it yet is it's more expensive to host that traffic. The good news is, I don't think enough people will ever use privacy extensions to ever make it profitable for the DoorDashes of the world to go this far.