Hacker News Reader

Comment by ghj | Hacker News Reader

To be fair if you add an opt-in step to anything, it will kill that thing. No moral judgement, just human laziness. If it doesn't kill it, it still becomes something everyone loathes (e.g., how you need an extra click to accept cookies on every site you use).

View on HN

I think in some situations if users see value in the opt-in then it can be ok. E.g. your phone asking you if you're happy to share your location with an app. I sure as hell want my mapping app to know where I am, but I also feel very comforted that I still get a say in the process. The thing about this tracking opt-in is that no user would ever want it because it's solely there to exploit them. So in this case I think you're 100% right.

Wouldn't the value in this situation be "you get to use Facebook"? If they didn't make money off their users, Facebook wouldn't exist.

Would you be ok if they did it that way? A warning that says "by using Facebook, you are agreeing to be tracked", at which point the user could either continue or uninstall the app?

This is a bullshit tradeoff. Facebook still knows a ton about you by your friends and activity on Facebook, and they can still show you a ton of ads on Facebook that are highly targeted to your demographic profile, and make a shit ton of money doing it. They could also make a ton of money showing you ads on a partner app if, for example, you logged in with FB to another app.

The only thing Apple is preventing them from doing is making an even larger shit ton of money by essentially knowing every app you ever use for anything that includes the Facebook SDK.

Note the same thing is true of Google. Google can (and did, and does) make shit tons of money by showing you targeted, relevant ads just based on your search keywords, or alternatively on a partner site by showing you ads just based on that site's content. But no, they need to make even more gargantuan shit tons of money by tracking your every move in Chrome and Android.

I think the new changes will hurt facebook competitors more. Everyone knows Facebook and it has a brand. They want to collect some info? Most people won't care - they just want to use the app like they always have. They might think twice with a new app that they don't know

I hope it might have the effect that those newer apps instead choose to innovate with their business models and pursue directions that don't require the user to sacrifice their privacy.

The change Apple is making keeps Facebook (and others) from using the advertising ID to track users between apps. Facebook's ability to notice that you have suddenly started posting a lot of baby pictures and choose to serve baby-related ads is unaffected.

Aren't they free to make their app not work at all without this setting? If so, then they must still find enough in letting you use facebook without it, even if less than they would like.

IIRC, Apple’s rules say an app is prohibited from not functioning if it’s denied permission.

Oh you may be right, sorry. I guess it's supposed to offer what functionality it can, like voice calls but no video if you decline camera permissions.

That wouldn’t fly in the EU because if the GDPR. https://ec.europa.eu/newsroom/article29/document.cfm?action=...:

“If consent is bundled up as a non-negotiable part of terms and conditions it is presumed not to have been freely given.“

If you add an opt-in step to anything people don't want, it will kill that thing. If people were opting into getting an actual cookie rather than a tracker for advertisers to understand and target their behavior, you'd have 100% uptake.

That people won't opt into something that they didn't ask for and isn't primarily for their benefit is unsurprising.

I think it’s a stretch to call Apple’s solution opt-in. It is answering to a Yes/No question where your reply to allow tracking is no more obnoxious than to prevent it.

> To be fair if you add an opt-in step to anything, it will kill that thing.

That's like saying if you put a price on something, it will kill that thing. No, it doesn't.

It will certainly kill anything users wouldn't normally want. If my business model depends on stuffing a shit sandwich into my user's pocket without them knowing, and then something changes so I now have to ask them "Would you like a shit sandwich?" my business model will be in big trouble.

Most people gladly opt in to use their webcam for Zoom.

That's the key feature. That's why they're using the product.

I opt-in to using my car to drive, and I opt-in to using my laptop to write code.

I don't opt-in for tracking, advertising, or other negative externalities.

I think that was the parent commenter's point. That is, "opt-in never works" is only true if the thing you want the user to opt in to is something someone would never want in the first place.

And I don't even think it has to be the primary feature. As someone else mentioned about maps, map apps are still plenty useful without location tracking (indeed, analog maps worked well for millennia without it), but I know if I opt in to location tracking while using a map app that I'm going to get a lot of additional useful features, so I do it.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com