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Comment by curiousllama | Hacker News Reader

Initially, I was skeptical of the "good!" reactions. It's worrying/annoying when one company alone has the clout to massively impede a potential competitor (or legitimate service they simply dislike) in arbitrary ways.

And then I read the subheadline of the article: > The social-media company says Apple’s privacy changes will affect its Audience Network business, which connects users’ Facebook identities with their off-platform activities

Holy sh*t - GOOD! Go Apple

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I hope you realize what this means is that ads as a monetization model for apps is getting decimated. These apps will now have to explore alternate monetization models such as either making themselves paid or subscriptions. And guess what, Apple takes a 30% cut of it. If you are thinking Apple is a benevolent savior of privacy, you are absolutely wrong. All they are doing here is to hurt advertising so that more apps move to other models which lets Apple extract more value.

Get ready, as a user, to pay for these apps which were once free.

“Free” as in “you pay with your data”?

As someone who routinely asks myself how the fuck random useful utility apps and websites will pay for their costs. Good! More damn stuff needs to cost money so we have a damn choice.

I’m sick of being the product when I have the damn money to buy services and products but everyone from startups to solo devs seem hell bent on pursuing advertising driven revenue models. If this drives some more developers to build more sustainable products and services then as far as I’m concerned Apple did a good thing.

I’m not going to comment on the validity of Apple’s 30% cut because I don’t think they deserve 30% however that doesn’t change the fact that I think this is a good thing.

>All they are doing here is to hurt advertising so that more apps move to other models which lets Apple extract more value.

Sounds like a great business incentive to be pro-privacy to me. You can count on profit motive.

Additionally, this literally pushes more data into the hands of FB. Our FB advertising rep is already asking us to share more data with them to mitigate the impact of this change.

People have become accustomed to ad measurement. Performance marketing is a thing for a reason. How will ad performance be measured now? FB is already rolling out a tool to do that, but only if you share more data with them (lifetime value estimates, etc).

Sounds like Apple needs to crack down harder.

Don’t be silly this doesn’t take away advertising-supported apps whatsoever. They’re just taking away the ability to target users based on activity outside of the app, perhaps reducing the effectiveness of the targeting.

Plenty of industries survived for centuries without these kinds of ads.

Facebook is literally saying that their Audience Network product will see 50% reduction in revenue. That means apps will see less revenue from using AN. This is likely a pattern across apps.

That reduction is based entirely on their prediction of how many users will not give consent to be tracked.

FB is going to use less accurate forms of tracking, so they simply won't be able to charge as much. I'm not going to feel bad for a company that has to work harder to circumvent the users wishes.

I would rather pay for software with money than with privacy. Which is the precise option Apple is offering by allowing users to opt out of sending private data to Facebook and other advertisers. If you like giving your private data to advertisers, by all means, opt in.

> Get ready, as a user, to pay for these apps which were once free.

A user will prioritize apps by value and pay for those that provide most value. Developer of valuable app will get paid. Is this a bad thing?

If it was user choice - this is fair. But a platform is making this decision for the users and in the process trying to extract value.

iOS 14 prompts for consent.[1]

[1] https://techcrunch.com/2020/06/22/apple-ios-14-ad-tracking/

"User choice" is still a thing?

The change Apple is making will finally let users make the decision. Currently FB decides on behalf of users.

This seems like a straightforward example of something you should be applauding.

What you’re describing is the dream scenario, creepy ad tech being replaced by things like micro transactions and new innovations along those lines. Maybe this can make it happen? I for one would gladly pay the minuscule amounts of money facebook makes from me seeing their annoying ads.

It's not free if you're paying with data. I have no problems paying for apps that I use daily in exchange for not having my data sold off to the highest bidder.

Doesn’t this change simply require for the apps to ask for permissions to use this data? I’d gladly pay for an app vs. giving away all my info. I would assume there are people on the other side of the fence as well.

(1) yes, this decimation is what I want, unironically. I want to pay up front and then trust the app isn't doing shady sh*t, rather than not pay and hope that whatever shady stuff they're doing doesn't bite me too hard. The reason every app does shady stuff is because you can't compete as a legit app when Shady Shaun over there is "giving" it away. I want the ecosystem to be paid.

(2) Apple's margin (from their distribution channel) is not unreasonable, imo, given that most apps would simply not be successful without the trust and technology Apple provides.

(3) Apple is obvi not benevolent; they're a _self-interested_ supporter of privacy. [Company] does [thing I like] so I pay [price] is how companies work, why I back Apple here, and ultimately why I'm willing to pay $60 or whatever for a charging cord.

Fine - you might be ok to pay it. But think about 100s of millions of users who aren't ok to pay for it. Now they don't have much choice since Apple took it away.

I guess I view Apple as a luxury ecosystem: I pay extra and get locked into a secondary ecosystem, and in return, they make lots of marginal improvements all over the place (privacy, camera, etc.) that make my life ever-so-slightly easier.

It's more than just $-for-product; 100s of millions of other users have Samsung, Google, etc. to buy from.

Very, very few of those users had a choice in the first place. Few apps have both ad-supported and premium versions in the first place (especially not the big ones - you literally can't pay for a Facebook subscription), and extremely few users were even aware of the trade-off that existed. Some premium apps (e.g. YouTube Red) engage in data harvesting anyway.

Apple did not take a choice away - they just changed the only option.

Quite possibly the least polarising move Apple has ever made.

I can’t think of a single reason as to why adding the prompt is a bad idea.

Not a single one? By reducing the effectiveness of advertising business models, Apple can force apps to use in-app purchasing and gain that 30% cut.

Additionally they do not have to display the permission modal for their own user tracking.

It’s good to display prompts and make users aware of what is happening.. but it should be mandated fairly by a third-party not the company owning the App Store.

Google is heading down a similar route with Chrome. Nuking other’s ability to target ads while improving their own business in some way (in this case improving their ability to track users while negating others).

Google take 32% of the Adsense money so 30% sounds like a bargain.

I'm so tired of ad sprinkled apps. All I wanted was to play a cheap Tetris clone not look at some ad load screen. Any ad app feels like 90s ad-ware and you know it spies on you so atleast it is a good warning sign to delete it. I wish there was a filter option "no after purchase purchases, no adds" in the app stores.

I'd still rather have to cough up cash than give in to tracking by default, though. So generally this isn't a negative for me.

Naieve as you may think me, I think Apple want to get data so they can sell me products they sell (both Apple products and third party software) - I'm ok with that because I like their products and software. I'm consciously buying into an ecosystem that is purchase driven rather than making money off data sales.

They don't have to display the modal on their own user tracking because I've already signed up and bought in.

I understand why everyone's instant reaction might be "good," but if you are in the business of making an app, you will eventually need to get users for your app. Advertising is how that happens. That's because app store discovery was nerfed years ago, to make store search ads a revenue source. This Apple IDFA change will likely force you to redirect your ad spend from the Facebook Audience Network to Apple search ads.

> but if you are in the business of making an app

that's your mistake, right there.

So you don't use a smartphone? With apps? That people make?

Advertising existed before detailed tracking, and can exist perfectly well without it.

Perhaps it will be a little less effective, but we do not need to optimise our society to increasing the effectiveness of advertising.

Would you not call Apple Search Ads targeted? This looks similar to Facebook's ad targeting system: https://searchads.apple.com/advanced/

Haha no.

No, Search Ads is keywords targeting, not "we build a whole profile of you and then use that". It has its own issues, but they're not the ones you have with Facebook's solution.

Conflating contextual and targeted advertising isn't even the worse intellectually dishonest offenses of the social media apologists.

Except you don't get people buying fake ovens offline. There isn't a great analogy I can think of but there is a huge amount of ad fraud where it's profitable to fake an install, fake app use to generate more fake ad revenue ad fake installs, etc. So long as it's profitable for someone to fake installs and fake user traffic there will be a need for better value conversion tracking

yeh don't fk individual privacy for ads, and let a sht company like FB make billions of profit

The actual UX of this is very telling. Apple haven't actually clobbered this, they've added a modal "This app would like to track you across apps, Y/N". Apple haven't actually said no to this, they've given the user the ability to say no.

I find this an interesting distinction, because the only logical way to extrapolate "the user now has a choice" to "apple have ruined this for us", is to admit that given a clear and effective choice, the user will opt out of this almost every time.

Which is why this one is a "good!". If every user wants to opt out of this, perhaps it should never have been viable in the first place.

I've never had an IPhone, this will make me consider it next time my upgrade is due.

In what market are Apple and Facebook competitors?

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