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Comment by buzzerbetrayed | Hacker News Reader

For some reason I have a bad feeling about this update actually getting released. I'm worried that FB is going to convince some judge to tell Apple they can't do this, and delay it for months or years. Maybe (hopefully) this is an irrational worry, but you never know the extent to which people will go when billions of dollars are on the line.

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I think what's more likely than any kind of legal injunction is that FB and Apple will come to a "mutual understanding". Maybe Facebook will license Apple Maps (for a princely sum) and make some symbolic compromise on data collection that lets Apple water down the permission dialogs.

I’d argue that Apple executives realize that privacy is one of the unique USPs of Apple compared to their main competitor, since the value exchange between Apple and their customers is simpler (customer pays Apple money, Apple delivers hardware/software).

Now that so much news has spread about these privacy additions, Apple selling out will actively hurt this image they have spent a lot of time building. It’s going to have to be an extremely lucrative agreement between them and Facebook for it to be worth it.

I thought that until I realised Apple also have a billion dollar ads business

The problem is Apple relies on hardware sales. FB's entire business from the top down is ad money. And source for a billion dollar ad business? That sounds way higher than my initial impression. (And google paying to be the default SE is not advertising imo)

https://9to5mac.com/2019/11/15/apple-ad-revenue/

Well..

> Apple’s most recent earnings report revealed that it earned $12.51B from Services in calendar Q3/fiscal Q4, though there is no breakdown on how much of this comes from ad revenue.

Notice the 'could's:

> Samik Chatterjee argued the company could leverage the millions of users who search its App Store and Safari browser daily to generate the stellar growth seen by Facebook and Google in recent years.

> he launch of Apple TV+, coupled with Apple Inc’s foray into digital services, could help the company increase its income from advertising by more than five fold to $11 billion annually

This article is literally just speculation. Actually, it's quoting someone's speculation.

> The report seems highly speculative…

There’s a lot of guesswork there. It’s even worse than that actually, they assume that their advertising operation will grow as Facebook’s. It is extremely implausible under current conditions (no tracking and ads limited to the stores). So yeah, if Apple were Facebook, ads would be important to them.

And even the wildest estimates put it far short on the actual money maker, which is hardware sales. When push comes to shove, if they have to choose between ad and devices, they won’t hesitate long.

I saw a few articles when I searched from the previous year which also projected growth to the $2b number the next year but as Apple bundles it all in services who knows?

At 2 billion it’s < 1% their revenue (265b)

Yes I'm hoping that should be enough to dampen their ambitions

Here's a nice source of revenue from google ($9 billion/year): https://finance.yahoo.com/news/google-reportedly-pays-apple-...

Does Apple's ad business track users though? It seems to me that an ad business shouldn't need to in order to be effective.

It does - it provides advertisers data on which users have downloaded their app after seeing specific adverts.

Please provide links or citations showing what information about a user is shared with advertiser.

This is honestly pretty reasonable. Apple already knows which apps I download and this is made fairly clear (you're logged into the App Store and your account lists all apps you obtained).

Apple also knows which App Store ads I saw given that their server sent them to me in the first place. The ads are (at least for now) limited to the App Store and don't carry over across the web or other Apple apps.

Thus I don't see the problem with Apple using the data they've already got to provide anonymized conversion metrics to app developers.

> advertisers data on which users have downloaded their app after seeing specific adverts.

No it doesn’t.

It provides aggregate statistics on downloads, just like any analytics server.

No data on users is shared.

I see what you mean, but iPhone says are something like 150x that. If privacy concerns weaken even 1%, that wouldn't be worth it. Maybe that's unlikely, I'm not sure.

An ad business that doesn’t rely on accumulating user data for targeting.

Ads do not always mean user tracking.

This looks like simply naive thinking. Without evidence to backup your statement about Apple, everything about it breaks the cardinal rule of the ads business.

Not really.

Google built a super successful ad business on search terms alone, long before they got into user tracking.

Do you have any evidence that Apple tracks users for their ad business - which only sells ads for apps when users search for them?

Check their ad business brief - https://searchads.apple.com/

As requested, evidence of tracking in iPhones - https://www.forbes.com/sites/kateoflahertyuk/2020/11/16/appl...

> As requested, evidence of tracking in iPhones

That isn’t evidence of Apple tracking anything.

IDFA is used by Facebook and ad-tech companies.

Apple are switching IDFA to be Opt-In rather than opt out.

That’s what Facebook is complaining about.

> IDFA

The mechanism for tracking users is already present. What more proof do you need?

Even if you manage to toggle 3rd parties out of your phone. You cannot toggle the Apple out of it.

> The mechanism for tracking users is already present. What more proof do you need?

Evidence that Apple uses it.

The mechanism relies on libraries which send user behavior from other app to Facebook. These are correlated by the ID.

The identifier is not the mechanism. The mechanism is Facebook’s library.

Apple has no such mechanism.

> You cannot toggle the Apple out of it

False.

There is a toggle for the entire feature.

On the contrary—I’m not sure if you’ve ever watched Mad Men, but there are some pretty good examples of ads in there that didn’t use tracking at all.

Calling tracking a cardinal rule of ads is like calling HTML a cardinal rule of communication. Sure it might be ubiquitous now, but if HTML were to suddenly disappear I guarantee communication between humans won’t stop — it would adapt. Tracking isn’t a foundation, it is merely what has worked this past decade or so.

I enjoyed Mad Men. But comparing web advertising today to the 70-80s is disingenuous.

Fact of the matter is, advertising today / web marketing relies on user tracking. I'm yet to see anyone debunk this.

I think what is disingenuous is calling what goes on in the modern internet as 'advertising'

Let's call it what it is -- stalking.

> advertising today / web marketing relies on user tracking.

It’s ‘disingenuous’ to claim that as some cardinal rule.

It’s not - it just happens to be the most popular business fad of the 2010s.

What works in business changes over time. That is a cardinal rule.

My point is that advertising right now uses tracking because it can be used, and it makes money.

But in no way does it need it. We could easily go back to untargeted, reasonably effective ads that appeal to broad markets instead of extremely specific ones.

I don’t think Apple would bat an eye if Facebook decided to not publish their software on their platform.

I think they would. Facebook products are a huge part of any app ecosystem, and without them, Apple customers would be pissed.

Ecosystem concerns aren’t as relevant today, since both Android and iOS have everything you’d want, but in the olden days of Blackberry, Microsoft, and many other mobile operating system vendors trying to compete, they were always seriously hampered by their lack of ecosystem.

You’d be surprised how many fb users (mostly less technical) just use a browser to access fb.. They don’t need an app in the App Store to do so.. So this might actually be a fight against the strange people working at Facebook that will get them to rethink what it is they do everyday..

I think this is a good case for what Apps bring to the table and highlighting what the cost is privacy wise. As a developer I think apps are cool, the way they're leaking data is awful. This is something the platforms need to step up control over and I think that because this isn't the case there's an incentive to keep things as they are. Like automotive and the iterative improvements.

I tell my mom she needs to use FF containers for FB. I set it up so she can't do anything else. She's happy & gets to see her extended family pics/updates.

Isn't this done automatically now in Firefox? As in, you don't need to even install the containers add-on as Facebook and related properties are automatically opened in a default Facebook container?

Wow that'd be great news - when did that happen?

Not true. Facebook doesn't do any of this automatically, manner of speaking, unless the user explicitly informs the addon to do so.

This is me - and Facebook does not miss an opportunity to ask me to download messenger.

I use the low bandwidth option if I need to get on there. mbasic.facebook.com no nagging about apps and you can actually use the messenger web interface.

I’d be delighted as it would give me an excuse to not use WhatsApp

The looks people give you when you say you don’t have WhatsApp are gold. In France in particular.

Utterly baffled.

I would be delighted to have that sh-t gone from everyone's iPhone,

because it would create an obvious a compelling opportunity for someone to finally break the stranglehold of FB's monopoly.

I miss my friend and family connections, but most people in my community won't go near that ecosystem with a flaming 10' pole any longer, and many friends like me, despair that our loved ones' reaction to e.g. the Social Dilemma and ongoing revelation after revelation of sociopathic corporate amorality is "yes that is sad but I have choice" because "all my friends are only insta" or "my cottage business depends entirely on my pages" etc etc.

I cannot wait for them to go down in flames.

Bring it Apple.

Apple customers generate a large chunk of the content there is to see in Facebook products, so losing them would diminish engagement across all remaining platforms. If competitors can capitalize on the opportunity, that could very well trigger a death spiral that would destroy Facebook within mere months, whereas Apple could weather that easily.

Few things could flat out annihilate Facebook, but punching a large hole in their network is probably one of them.

Facebook could not afford not to as they would lose a huge amount of users. Apple is just doing to them what FB does to people: Accept these terms, be tracked everywhere, or miss out on all the people providing us free content on our platform. Many people accept that because they don't want to be unable to communicate or view things in their garden. That is leveraging their huge scope to push less favorable terms.

So FB has Apple with some leverage over them saying accept this or else. FB is in a weak position because it would be hard to tell your users hey leave Apple because they won't let us take all your data without permission. I don't feel for them at all.

Unless FB is preparing an incredibly ironic antitrust/market competition case against Apple, I'm not sure what they'd have standing on.

They are almost certainly doing this; question is whether they will file it.

FB's noise around this feels very out of character, even for something that's devolved into a personal conflict. They may be truly scared of the update.

FB undoubtedly knows enough about powerful judges and politicians to get what they want. J. Edgar Hoover's wildest dreams didn't contemplate what Facebook can do.

Facebook has been reported as assisting Epic Games in its lawsuit and been preparing for months for lawsuits against Apple. For the kind of company it is, it might pull a “Peter Thiel on Gawker” move, though it won’t reflect well on its name. But not enough people seem to care much about Facebook’s practices or what it does. After the uproar over WhatsApp’s upcoming policy change on data sharing with Facebook, several people moved to other chat platforms. But I still see those people stuck with WhatsApp and also using Facebook and Instagram even while knowing that these are all part of the same company.

The more likely scenario in the long run is that Apple is forced to allow alternative App stores, which will probably be riddled with malware and spyware.

I know nothing about legal system, but it seems like Apple could make an argument that they are helping their apps be GDPR and CCPA compliant? That could explain the strange wording "Ask app not to track" - apps can still track, just not as much as before, so perhaps more of a compliance permission. Just speculation.

I think they say “Ask app not to track” because, if they say “Make app not track you” or something similar, they open themselves to huge lawsuits if (much more likely when) any app turns out to keep tracking users.

I don’t have the link handy, but Apple’s policies on this require apps not to track users across apps through other means if a user chooses “Ask App not to Track” at the prompt. The prompt text is just to show that Apple cannot technically prevent tracking even when a user tells the app they don’t want to be tracked across apps. There are a lot of shady practices being spread through common/popular SDKs used by apps.

What would be Facebook's legal argument in the US?

That Apple is unfairly privileging its own ads business. It's a tough cookie though; the offending behavior is simply Apple's truthful (if arguably hyperbolic) notice and consent popup.

It could work if they demonstrate that Apple does track its user across apps for advertising purposes without showing consent dialogs. I am more than a bit skeptical, but you never know.

iAds will definitely be privileged. If you read the documentation on what is available to Apple vs. others, you will see Apple's own ad business will definitely benefit from this.

iAds will definitely not be able to track user behavior within apps the way Facebook does.

If there is some documentation you claim shows iAds being privileged, please post a link.

You mean iAd that was discontinued in 2016?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IAd

Wikipedia said iAd have been discontinued. Did I miss something?

Is that illegal though?

Apple isn't a monopoly -- they're a walled garden.

I'm all for regulations that force Apple to open up their hardware so that people can install different software on it, or to disable the walled-garden mode of their software platform akin to how you can install lineageOS or freedroid on android devices but I don't think it's reasonable to mandate that Apple must allow Facebook to do something with their software simply because Apple does it with theirs.

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