Is Apple Banning Free Analytics SDKs?
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There's a reason that there are profitable companies dedicated to building stuff like this. It's really hard to get right in a scalable way.
Unless you're already a multi-billion dollar corp (and how did you get that big without analytics), it's a no-brainer - this is something to buy, not to build.
As well as the SaaS packages like Amplitude and Mixpanel, you also have great open-source tools and platforms for mobile and product analytics like PostHog (https://posthog.com/), Countly (https://count.ly/) and Snowplow (https://snowplowanalytics.com/).
Disclosure: Snowplow co-founder.
How does your solution compare to Matomo ? I feel the interface is extremely dated and not intuitive but that just might be me.
Why is Matomo so rarely cited ?
I welcome the competition.
But funnels are nothing more then how many people did Y after X.
If you record everything (say every single web request) you could easily do a query to find out that type of data and shove it in a table.
> Small bootstrapped HTML page to view the stats, no pretty graphs or anything, just numbers.
Maybe I want to see the number of some custom event per week, ok, now show me number per session, then break it down by country etc etc. I guess you could export the data to some BI tool and create a bunch of reports, but that is a bit of a hassle, especially since in anything but a very small company the people who most want to do this analysis are going to be non-technical. Are you going to assign engineering resources to sit around making reports full time? Much easier to just use google which 1) has all this built in 2) people already know how to use
There's this thing called SQL that the oldies used to generate such reports ... Jokes apart, I agree with the suggestion to build your own analytics, or host one using some popular open source analytic software. There is more privacy awareness among users now, and sharing your data with Google or Microsoft or Facebook is the easiest way to hurt your reputation with these individuals. Has everyone forgot that webservers still generate their own visitors logs? Moreover, if you think the data is important enough to collect and analyse, it seems quite foolish to trust a third-party with it, especially a free one.
Think about what kind of analytics you need, and then decide if you should buy something complicated or just build something simple yourself.
For example, for us crash reporting and knowing wich system version to support is important, so we built our own analytics system for that.
We don't need detailed usage statistics. It's just not very useful for us. We know that people use features that we build, the question is which features are missing! Why are people not able to use our app?
No amount of analytics on our existing users is going to tell us that, so getting powerful analytics is just not important for us.
You can do whatever tracking you like, however you like using whatever SDK you like, as long as you obey basically two rules:
* If you are tracking identifiable information you must present an opt-in dialog. It doesn't matter if you roll your own or use an SDK to do it.
* If you are doing 3rd party tracking, and generally these SDKs are designed to do that, you must indicate this in the App's privacy information.
Honestly, that's all there is to it. The whole article, and the "de-factor ban' narrative being pushed so hard on this forum are predicated on the assumption that doing either of these things is simply inconceivable. However if you are willing to do them, all the restrictions melt away. It's really as simple as that. Ask the users and tell them the truth. That's all that's being required.
The only complications come if you want to weasel your way out of doing these things. That's why the blog post author, and the 'de-facto ban' crowd here think this is such a fiendishly difficult problem.
Edit: Per Apple's definitions of tracking, it also includes sharing user or device data with data brokers.[2]
[1]https://firebase.google.com/docs/analytics/configure-data-co...
[2]https://developer.apple.com/app-store/user-privacy-and-data-...
And that shouldn’t be an issue for analytics anyway because using the IDFA for anything other than advertising has always been prohibited. IIRC Apple checks if your app accesses this value and your app will be rejected if your app does and not contain any ads.
Exactly. I hope this is true as this is exactly what I'm planning to do.
Do you think Google will do some kind of tracking with the user's IP address? I'd bet on "Yes".
> Tracking refers to the act of linking user or device data collected from your app with user or device data collected from other companies’ apps, websites, or offline properties for targeted advertising or advertising measurement purposes.
How will Apple enforce this? You can, for example, turn off data sharing in Google Analytics to disallow Google to use the data you collect for their own advertising purposes.
This isn't a ban on Free analyics SDKs at all.
Compare that to Mixpanel for example, where they don't power ads, you can skip showing the opt in and have a useful analytics SDK.
Effectively the free SDKs need the data to make money for their owners, the opt in kills that and it might as well be a ban.
Could you please quote the relevant section of the article you're referring to?
If it's just "the article title", that seems to be quite a stretch to me.
"Apple is also enacting a de-facto ban on these free analytics SDKs. The setup looks like this:"
If so, that seems hypersensitive and defensive IMO.
A "de facto ban" is not a "de jure ban", so it's already a pretty weak statement.
Advertisers could invest time and money in explaining to users what their data is being used for and the benefits it brings. Making it seem like Apple is preventing analytics by simply asking users what they want is disingenuous at best.
I don't have any analytics whatsoever in my apps.
When I make the "cake or death?" analogy, do you seriously believe I'm defending the "death" option?
But if we continue with this analogy, it's important to remember that Apple has been allowing "death" in its App Store for 12 years and is only now getting around to asking users whether they want death. Moreover, the App Store "race to the bottom" intentionally undermined the previous business model of selling upfront paid software. App Store devalued software and propped up the alternative of making everything free and turning customers into products. Apple has a lot of "blood" on its hands in this matter.
I personally install Little Snitch on my Mac to block apps from phoning home. Yet Apple doesn't allow a similar tool on iOS. So I don't buy Apple's "privacy" BS for one second, because they don't allow me to protect my own privacy.
This whole argument seems like a variation of "Guns don't kill people, [X] does." If Apple puts a (metaphorical) gun in every user's hand and points them at the analytics SDKs, it seems ludicrous to claim that Apple has nothing to do with the analytics SDKs getting killed. Regardless of whether or not they deserve to be killed. At the very least, it's passive-aggressive, if not incitement to "violence".
Now, the article says, "Apple did not – and from a legal perspective likely can’t – explicitly ban the Google Analytics, Flurry, Facebook, and Firebase SDKs." I'm not clear on what legal perspective the author means. Antitrust? In any case, from your perspective, why wouldn't Apple ban them if it could? There are plenty of things that Apple does ban in the App Store, without giving the user a choice. I still don't get why you think "ban" is a dirty word.
The thing is “users ban collection of their personal identifying data, killing tracking SDKs” is an inconvenient narrative for Facebook, Google and developers that use these SDKs for that purpose.
What's wrong with banning? Why is that such an inconvenient narrative for you? Why is it inconvenient for Apple? This feels like just a game where Apple is trying very hard to avoid personal (or legal?) responsibility for its choices by pushing the choice onto users. It seems to me like a cop-out. Again, Apple takes away choices from users in many other areas, so why give the choice here, knowing what choice almost everyone will take?
But there is a third party here who's opinion is the one that actually matters. If you considered their existence and role here for even a second, the reason why it would be wrong for Apple to decide with a direct ban would be immediately obvious - that third party is the users.
My position, and that of Apple, is that it's none of Apple's business, and it's none of Google/Facebooks business to decide these things. It's the user's business how their data is used, they should be making these decisions. That's why it would be wrong for Apple to impose a ban.
After all the Google/Facebook narrative is that their use of PII brings value to users in the from of relevant ads and personalised services. Well ok, make that case to users and let them decide.
I've been banging on about this through the whole comment thread, but you just seem flat out unable to even see that users have any role at all in this. You ignore their existence and role implicitly without the slightest consideration; their right to choose is _the_ consideration here. It's not some incidental, inconvenient factor to be dismissed as a 'de facto' input to be taken for granted so you can point the finger unerringly at Apple.
This is silly. I said, "Apple takes away choices from users in many other areas". iPhone is an extremely locked down device. Users do not have the right to do what they want with it. (Which I complained about earlier, not being able to install software like Little Snitch on iPhone.) I've been a Mac user for a long time, since before the App Store, before the iPhone, before Gatekeeper, even before code signing existed. I'm very aware of what user choice is about, and iPhone is definitely not at all about user choice.
So, please start over without the fake moralizing, which cannot be taken seriously in this case. The right to choose is almost never Apple's consideration nowadays. There's currently legislation under consideration in North Dakota that would give users the right to choose, but Apple is complaining that it would "destroy iPhone as we know it". Exactly. iPhone is not about user freedom. Everyone knows that... except apparently you.
> so you can point the finger unerringly at Apple
The funny thing is that a lot of iPhone users would praise Apple for banning the SDKs. Only you seem to think that the iPhone is all about user choice. The majority opinion seems to be that Apple's lockdown is good, for the user's "protection". So I'm still puzzled why you even think using the word "ban" is a criticism of Apple.
I can speculate that perhaps an explicit ban would get Apple into antitrust trouble, which may have been what the article author was referring to. But if your argument is, "It's not a ban, because a ban would be legally problematic for Apple", that would not be very convincing argument.
It's strange that you think this issue can be discussed as if it's sui generis and completely unrelated to anything else. What you call "a tangent", I call the broader context. So I guess we are done.
It's not a ban on the usage of SDKs, what it is, is a "ban" on their business model, and if you don't provide enough value to users for them to pay for then it's a "ban" on your business model. Basically, it just means that your service is asking too high a price (the user's privacy) for the market bear. This is only giving user's agency and insight and after that the market functioning as intended.
The answer will be to show ads that are made relevant using signals other than collecting personal data. I get that the digital ad industry is not set up well to do that now, but the idea is to force them to adapt. They will have to eventually if major applications of personal data are closed to them by changes like Apple’s.
Many of us are actually okay with first-party data collection. But it is ridiculous how user data is being packaged and sold to so many faceless third parties whose you don't know and whose policies are not clear.
Yes this makes some business models harder.
Oh no, people are allowed to decide what their computers do, instead of being spied on without knowing. The horror!
What's next, people being allowed to uninstall the app?
Seriously, if your business model depends on doing things the user is not aware of and wouldn't agree with, you deserve to fail.
Is this really the only criterion for requiring an opt-in? Tracking is bad for many other reasons other than selling targeted ads.
They don’t care.
They don’t have to care. They don’t care. If you are hurt by this decision, you can either change or give up. You can complain on web forums and try to convince other developers but the fact is that you are a force against one of Apples core values, user privacy. They have barely anything to gain from you and one of their core values to lose.
You’d need some serious leverage to make them care and you don’t have it. And even if you had, Apple would simply build their own framework and use their control over the platform, the tools, the stores and the rules to completely crush you. And if you imagine you have an antitrust case, it will take years and you will probably lose.
But I will take being able to stop them from tracking every time I open third party apps even if I don't log in with Facebook. Even if I have to be prompted every time I install an app.
But maybe similar too what happened with iOS 14 and the clipboard alerts, this will force a change on the App Store and finally remove Facebook and Google's stronghold on the web and apps.
Apple hasn't put any restrictions on IDFV, only on IDFA, which was designed, well, for advertising and needs to be reined-in due to abuses in the Wild West everything goes world of the AdTech surveillance-industrial complex. In fact the existing opt-out "Limit Ad Tracking" setting that already implements what will become opt-in with iOS 14.5 does not apply to IDFVs.
Back in 2010 Steve Jobs himself had banned analytics altogether when Flurry's VP of Marketing blabbed and disclosed the existence of the then secret iPad:
According to Apple, the opt-in API is also required for other activities, including:
> Placing a third-party SDK in your app that combines user data from your app with user data from other developers’ apps to target advertising or measure advertising efficiency, even if you don’t use the SDK for these purposes. For example, using an analytics SDK that repurposes the data it collects from your app to enable targeted advertising in other developers’ apps.
So as a developer, you need to ask: even though we don't use IDFA, is this analytics SDK repurposing our data to fingerprint and target our users? Certainly for the default setups of these adtech-backed free analytics SDKs the answer is "presumably yes?". But we don't yet have a clear answer from Apple or the vendors as to what exactly will trigger an App Review rejection here, and what exactly the SDKs do with the data they receive in different circumstances.
Hence the uncertainty.
Whether that's good or bad is a subject for separate debate. But the main question of the article is whether developers can still use these SDKs, and the author speculates that it will no longer be possible for developers to use them. That sounds like a de facto ban to me. Again, I'm not even commenting whether that's good or bad.
If you read other comments here, some people would be very happy with an outright explicit ban. Are they "Apple bashing"? No, of course not. I still don't see how talking about a de facto ban is bashing, it's just a natural consequence of the iOS changes, at least according to the article author.
OMG. I can't believe you just wrote that, you're just proving my case for me.
Yes, developers will be able to use whatever SDKs they like, Apple won't lift a finger to stop them, in fact it's extremely simple for developers to use those SDKs. Not impossible at all. All they will have to do is indicate third party tracking in the App description and present an opt-in dialog.
But apparently, this option of letting users decide appears to be literally inconceivable. Under the new rules "...it will no longer be possible to use them". No rhetorical device is too contrived to direct the responsibility to Apple rather than the people actually choosing not to enable tracking - users.
If most users opt out, then an analytics SDK becomes effectively useless. You're ranting about the possibility of using an analytics SDK - which nobody is denying, because it's a "de facto" ban, not a "de jure" ban. But an analytics SDK that gathers almost no analytics is not even worth having. So in effect, it's a ban.
> All they will have to do is indicate third party tracking in the App description and present an opt-in dialog.
Oh, that's all. And then get no analytics. But they can still "use" the analytics SDK... to do nothing.
You know, I don't even have any analytics whatsoever in my apps. I have no horse in this race. But I've got no problem with the phrase "de facto ban". It seems like a reasonable description of the situation. And again, some people would love a de jure ban, so it's not like the author of the article is using a "naughty" word.
Apple and the EU's approaches to privacy and security are diametrically opposed. Apple has reasonable technical defaults, and is not to intrusive. EU is massive annoyance and intrustion, and limited technical competence.
My guess - if you let users flip a bit in their browser to never have to see a cookie popup again with an auto agree to all forms of tracking, a huge number would do it.
The EU has done more to damage the attention people pay to privacy and security than almost anyone out there.
They seem to not realize that:
1) Users have control over cookies, persistence etc via their browser directly, which would be a great place to start making changes.
2) Popping up a notice for every damn innocuous and obvious use of a cookie is totally annoying to just about everyone.
3) THe amount of time wasted on cookie policies alone is just nuts. The mismash is ridiculous. ICO, CNIL, German and Spanish DPA, UK and EU laws on cookies.
As a user, I want to have the option to globally disable all tracking. Random advertiser IDs every time one is requested, no sharing of vendor IDs, just quit it. Gather your statistics from people who don't care about privacy or people too tech-illiterate to disable the checkbox, but don't force your terrible tracking down the customer's throat. Or rather, disable the tracking by default, make it opt-in per app. If your app is crap but useful enough, people will want to improve it.
Now, if Apple did that, all the Silicon Valley startups around app optimisation would cry foul, Facebook and Google would sue Apple and there'd be a massive PR campaign against Apple, so they can't do ever what I'd like them to do.
Lots of developers seem to act as if they have a god-given right to track people to gather analytics rather than doing some costly end-user research. These were probably the same developers who proclaimed that the GDPR would end all computing as we know it because now they have the legal obligation to care about their customers' privacy.
I absolutely LOVE that apple is slowly turning the screws on advertisers with these pro-privacy moves. It's been slow and incremental, but also increasingly hostile towards people and services that attempt to identify and market to end-users.
This is to be taken with a grain of salt, and I'd love to see somebody more savvy on the matter confirm this...
OR access IDFA being the key there. If you can't honestly and easily answer the question "does this 3rd party SDK track my users?" then you probably should not be using it.
I don't develop in this space, but... Firebase is considered an analytics/tracking API? What happened?
Still I dont understand discussion that these would be banned they are still different binaries for different service allthough for super lazy people there is this one mega binary loading the "whole firebase"
But, putting "Apple Banning XXX" in a headline is a sure-fire way to get clicks, so...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headline...