Facebook’s ad campaign shows how worried it is about Apple's privacy changes

> Why couldn't facebook instead facilitate that same small model railway business advertising on the railway group pages, and non-facebook pages about model railways? Why not just tie the ads to the content of the page visited?

Because google adsense has already effectively captured that market.

> Why not just tie the ads to the content of the page visited?

Because then page-owners would have more power, instead of being relegated to the bulk commodities that Facebook and Google user-tracking systems are designed to limit them to.

That's a fascinating point-- but I wonder if the counterpoint also holds.

Right now, you can theoretically make a page with arbitrary "real" content and populate it with reasonably lucrative ads, stuffed based on external profiles and tracking. This seems to be the model for non-premium news media in particular-- because you can't really expect to have super-relevant ads on stories about car crashes and vaccination schedules, they lean in heavily to stuffing the site with externally-targeted ads and begging for tracking cookies.

If the ads were solely tied to page content, what sort of site design would we end up seeing to woo the highest yielding ads? I can imagine four line news articles floating amid a 500kb sea of mesothelioma and life insurance copy to reach for the priciest ads.

Personally, after dumping Facebook and Twitter, I made a Mastodon instance to chill out on.

While it is arguably just as much of a time waster as any other social media, it doesn't track me, throw ads in my face, show me an algorithmic feed designed to manipulate me, "suggest" people and pages to follow, and since it's my instance I can choose what other instances I do or don't want to federate with.

The end result is a form of social media that's much better for my mental health. We've all seen the studies by now about the stress and other negative effects of Facebook. None of that applies to Mastodon and the fediverse in general. Or at least, much less of it. Ultimately, of course, it depends on how you choose to use it.

But yeah it's still just as easy to spend all day on there instead of actually getting shit done. Mostly.

One thing Mastodon doesn't do, which Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, Instagram, and the rest do is bug you with notifications telling you what you're "missing out on" if you don't use it for a while. I've had Instagram go nuts sending me constant notifications telling me nothing except "this list of people posted recently, check out what you're missing!" Then, when I disabled its notifications, instead I get emails saying the same thing.

I'm probably gonna delete IG soon because it's Facebook owned and I don't use it anymore, but point is, these mainstream social networks are designed to pull you back in constantly. Federated networks are not. Much easier to not use Mastodon for a few days, nothing will bug me about it.

i used to do this before the pandemic. i would have limit my screen time and it worked wonders

the struggle is real. but for people that want to talk to me there is Signal. I have seen a lot of people jumping on it lately. The tide is turning

FWIW, I clicked the link in this thread (twice). First time was a 404, second time it worked.

And the refresh button disappeared in the latest Firefox (v84.0.2)? I have to use F5, but still 404s 80% of the time... looks like a similar problem that Twitter has been having for months (sometimes it says "content is not available to you" unless you refresh).

I noticed the same thing. They're so petty they'll cancel the video mid-stream when you choose not to let them cookie themselves all over your browser. Think about it: Some engineer (maybe even someone who reads HN) programmed that business logic. Thank you, developer #48814 for being part of the problem rather than part of the solution.

It's about four paragraphs into the article.

Here's a direct link: https://www.facebook.com/watch/?ref=external&v=3746028369157...

Highly unlikely, that’s just a lie marketeers tell themselves so they can sleep at night.

You can say that about almost anything.

for the "products and services you want to buy", metric is maximum revenue for facebook. There is no chance these two initiatives can be aligned, as long as there is "bid" part in the equation. If you have 0.01% interest in my product but I have deep pockets, you will see my ad all the time.

(NOT a FB supporter) At least one can block/unfollow certain people/pages. I assume that would finally leave them out of your sight. Yes you would have to block-list 99% of their junk so you can only be shown what you really care for. It's a never ending battle against their machine.

In a similar note (show/block/hide) I despise that Netflix is (not) doing, that does NOT create the "I don't want to see this ever again" option, and it keeps pushing the same stuff I have already watched (either within or outside Netflix) or the stuff I will never watch.

I don't know. When I first heard people talking about dark patterns in UI design, Facebook was the platform that immediately sprung to my mind.

It was always laughable (?) the hoops you had to go through to turn on various aspects of privacy in their settings. And it was constantly changing, requiring users to constantly go back into settings to turn off yet another flag that was introduced default-on.

They seem to have known very early on that user's would not appreciate their crap.

I'm a bit of an ideologue on this point, but I would argue it's not just Facebook -- nearly all modern advertising is divorced from the idea that ads need to provide value to consumers. At best, ads are treated as an annoyance that users put up with in order to access content that they want.

But the advertising industry desperately doesn't want to acknowledge that. They want to stick their heads in the sand and ignore that most users don't want to see anything that they're making. They want to argue that most users are benefiting from ads, even though that's clearly not true.

A system that aligned incentives between advertisers and consumers, where advertisements themselves actually needed to justify themselves and inform/entertain users enough that they provided positive value to the viewer -- that system would look very, very different from the advertising world we have today.

I think that disconnect is why you see people in the advertising industry fighting about ideas like users' Right to Filter, or why they're so paranoid about users having more control over which ads they see. Advertisers know that nobody likes ads and that for the average consumer, their ads aren't providing any kind of actual value. There's no incentive for most online advertisers to make ads that improve the quality of anyone's life -- the biggest incentive in the current system is to alter consumer behavior against their will regardless of whether that ad helps or hurts the viewer.

It’s very possible to personalize ads without personal information.

It’s not possible to de-personalize Facebook, its whole knowledge graph is built around identities. Permission to use that data can be managed internally but it’s always gathered and processed initially as personalized.

It's OK to be angry that Apple exempts themselves from privacy requirements, but that doesn't mean that users aren't showing their true preferences when they opt out of tracking. The options in regards to Facebook are still being presented on equal terms.

It would of course be good for Apple to call their own behavior "tracking" as well, because that's what it is; that is the most accurate word for what is happening. "Personalized ads" do not accurately reflect what is happening because ads can be personalized in lots of different ways, only some of which involve user tracking.

But I don't think that has anything to do with Facebook's argument. Facebook's argument here isn't "everyone wants to exploit users, but only Apple is getting to do it", their argument is that users like tracking, that the tracking Facebook does is not exploitative. Well if that's the case, then if you show users a dialog that asks them whether or not they want to be tracked and there's a "yes" button and a "no" button, then users who do want to be tracked will click "yes."

When I say that the options are shown on equal terms, I mean that neither option is privileged for Facebook. It's exactly the same amount of work for a user to opt into Facebook tracking as it is for them to opt out if it. That means that Facebook can't blame application defaults for consumer behavior, consumers are actually making a real choice here.

Calling it tracking is more honest. Maybe personalized ads is a derivative of tracking data. It since it requires tracking to produce personalized ads, asking if you want to be tracked is the honest approach. Apple is trying to avoid dark patterns that Facebook was essentially built upon.

That’s because Apple’s ad personalization doesn’t revolve around cross-site tracking. It’s based on demographic information you provide them and preferences you select within Apple’s universe of services. The only place it arguably starts to cross into the realm of tracking your activity is when it determines your genre preferences based on which movies/music you buy on iTunes or which publications you subscribe to in Apple News. But I don’t think anyone would be surprised by or offended about Apple Music recommending you more music that’s akin to other music you like.

The distinction Apple makes is that iAds don't "track" you because they don't use cross-site or cross-app tracking in third party services the same way Facebook or Google do.

Apple is of course still performing data collection for targeted iAds, but that's the reason they don't call it "tracking."

If you go to Settings > Privacy > Apple Advertising on iOS it tells you so:

"The Apple advertising platform does not track you. It is designed to protect your privacy and does not follow you across apps and websites owned by other companies. You have control over how Apple uses your information."

Note that I'm not necessarily agreeing that what Apple does doesn't fall under the description of "tracking." Just pointing out why Apple calls what Facebook does "tracking" but not their own iAds.

So this argument reduces to: “People might not understand a question which is important that they understand. So let’s just not ask them in case they misunderstand and assume they answer in a way that is beneficial to us.”

Does that sound right?

In general this is a an argument that users shouldn't be given a choice because "you" know better than some/many users. So "who" knows enough to force an option on everyone because some users might not understand this choice between having Facebook track information about them or not?

Would you argue that increasingly targeted advertisement is enough of a net good that the choice to avoid it should be gone?

That could be a good argument for Facebook explaining why they ask for a permission before prompting, as many apps do. but it’s hard to believe this is their reasoning when they’ve strenuously avoided both asking permission and honestly explaining what they intend to use it for. They’ve had years to be more transparent and have presumably thought about why they’ve spent millions fighting it.

That’s also an argument against allowing everyone to vote.

Facebook has regularly taken the position that users know what they're opting into when they use Facebook.

If they want to take the position now that their users don't understand what "tracking" even is, then Facebook was lying before when they said they had informed consent from their users to do that tracking.

The advertising industry regularly wants to have its own cake and eat it too on this point. They want to say that users understand and consent to the system, but also that users are too uneducated or lazy to acknowledge that consent in any way.

And to a small extent, there is a grain of truth here: most users don't understand the full extent of what tracking is and how companies are targeting them. But that's not a point in the advertising industry's favor. Companies like Facebook acknowledging that users don't know what they're opting into or out of only makes it more obvious just how inadequate their click-through TOSes and privacy FAQs always were.

We don’t know whether Apple’s apps will ask yet do we? Not until the next iOS update.

And when an app doesn’t ask, does that just mean there is no tracking going on or is it some nefarious scheme to achieve who knows what?

The nefarious option will probably become most popular on the interwebs, obviously. I can already see the HN posts: “Pages caught loading an asset from apple.com, violating their own tracking policy! Is Apple doomed?”

So who investigates whether Apple’s apps do this sort of tracking or not?

> their apps do not display ads

Except for the App Store and Apple News, AFAIK.

At least not 3rd party ads. The App Store has ads for apps plus non-stop Arcade+ advertising. The News app is full of ads for News+ and loads of restricted links as well.

This is, however, very different, as you point out.

To be honest some of their apps, like the Podcasts app do much more tracking. It is kind of described in the privacy policy but you can’t turn it off.

Exactly.

> I don't really see how it matters. The benefits to us as consumers are the same regardless of motivation.

This issue/debate doesn't take place in isolation. Consider it like casting a pebble in a pond: the waves cause all kinds of 2nd and 3rd order effects re-shape the environment in which things can happen.

For one, the comment section already hints at how the perception of Apple as a brand is being re-shaped. The million dollar question is in what direction this will prompt both Apple and many other stakeholders down the line. If Apple gauges customer sentiment, what does it take away from that? And how will it act on changing sentiments? How is Apple going to capitalize on those changing sentiments? Not just purely in it's short-term commercial proposition, but also in it's long term vision and strategy. How will changing perceptions shape the relationship between Apple and public authorities scrutinizing Apple?

Zooming out, this Apple adding a new feature: mandatory customer permission before sharing data. It sounds earth shattering novel but it really isn't in and of itself. That's what the GDPR has been enforcing since 2018. The key difference is Apple taking direct control over this transaction, instead of passively delegating things to the app developers.

It's quite questionable if this move is going to create more awareness or change the playing field to a point where people stop installing the Facebook app and reach out towards alternatives.

Far more interesting is seeing Facebook creating an ad as a response to this. You might think that this implies Facebook conceding defeat, but I don't think that's what's going on here. As far as FB is concerned, spending money on an ad is just a blip on its radar. It's above all a token display of dismay/disagreement towards Apple (that's what the article got right) and not much more.

In the short run, this won't change much and it will mostly be business as usual. What matters is how this fits into a bigger power play between Facebook and Apple. The present fog of war makes it hard to make out right now, but the significance will become clear in the future.