Apple's iPhone privacy changes signal desire to enter advertising -RBC | Hacker News Reader

Apple's iPhone privacy changes signal desire to enter advertising -RBC

reuters.com

43 pointsghostpepper33 comments

I once would say Apple will never re-enter advertising. I still don’t think they will, but their continued push to make a car makes me think that they have lost focus as a company. Instead I will say why they shouldn’t from a business perspective:

1. Apple is a premium brand. Ads aren’t premium. By beginning advertising as a service they destroy a key differentiator, erode trust, and ultimately open the door to a competitor.

2. Advertising as a Service at scale would require a whole new division of Apple with significant investment and resources. This takes away from other work. Other work would have to consider how advertising will fit into the product. There is an opportunity cost here.

3. As a company, Apple doesn’t have the stomach to be in the ad business. To make money on ads they would have to give creative freedom to advertisers to design their own ads and Apple will hate this. Advertisers will design ugly ads or write click bait headlines and they will constantly have to police this. Facebook tried to do this with their no text in photos rule and eventually just gave up. It is a never ending battle.

The article main point is that as apple has delivered privacy features, it MAY use that to enter online advertising. The article is full of conditional and does not specify how.

Facebook MAY sell your info for profit. But Apple never will. Google MAY use you info for profit but Apple never will. Apple removed all competition so they can charge me 5x the price and they will NEVER sell my info to profit, NEVER.

yeah add to that the fact that icloud backups aren't e2e encrypted (no SV infrastructure services are). we need zero-knowledge systems now.

They developed a system to do that. The Feds stepped in.

https://www.theverge.com/2020/1/21/21075033/apple-icloud-end...

Of course, you've always been able to do encrypted backups to your local computer.

i'm referring also to the near zero-portability of a person's data. the multiple lock in mechanisms of most platforms.

why can't i download a git archive of my google docs? the versioning feature only works on the proprietary web app - google's platform.

these are all inter-related problems, and all strategies used on purpose to lock people in and make them dependent so as to be able to extract economic rents.

https://tribunemag.co.uk/2019/01/abolish-silicon-valley

A more accurate statement would be that Facebook/Google do sell your info for profit and Apple haven’t yet (at least to the same degree).

Track records are important.

> and Apple haven’t yet (at least to the same degree)

Do you consider Apple's participation in the NSA's PRISM program to be worse than selling info to advertisers?

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jun/06/us-tech-giants...

No.

I'm not in the US, so I have no level of influence on the NSA.

However, my Member of Parliament is tech-savvy (ex-developer although I don't know how good he was), he has a monthly surgery where anyone can raise issues with him or they can message him (or at least his office) directly.

And he can (and has previously) raised privacy issues in Parliament and with members of the Privy Council (who have access to national security matters and regularly meet with agencies like the Security Service and GCHQ).

Even if I didn't have this particular MP, it would be part of any MP's duties to report my concerns to Parliament - so there is some level (no matter how small) of accountability.

I have no influence whatsoever with these private companies that gather and sell data on me.

Do they sell your data, or does your data allow them to profit by showing you more targeted ads?

They productise my data into targeted ads which they then sell, but I’m assuming that’s what OPs post meant by “selling data” considering the article doesn’t imply that Apple would literally sell customer information directly to another company (nor does this privacy change allow that).

Your statement purporting to be accurate is completely inaccurate.

It purported to be more accurate, not 100% accurate.

I wanted to reuse the language in the first post to make the broader point that there is a difference between a company which has already been doing something for 15 years and a company which has never done that thing but could feasibly do it in the future.

Apple already builds an advertising profile of you (without consent), and allows ad buyers to target ads against people with specific profiles. They reportedly do billions of dollars per year of this business. Sure, they don't sell your raw information to anyone, but neither do F/G.

https://www.apple.com/legal/privacy/data/en/apple-advertisin...

Track records are, indeed, important. Why are you giving Apple a free pass on theirs?

This is such a weird article.

As others mentioned here, Apple already entered advertising. It failed, because it does not want to sell users’ data like others do.

Why would they enter into the same waters again?

I’m fairly sure they also won’t restart Ping, music based social network.

Sure it doesn't WANT to sell user's data, but does it collect it anyways? And if so -- why? For a privacy focused company, that is quite strange, I think.

I don’t think there’s evidence that Apple collects more data than it needs to. But obviously the potential to collect substantial more is there.

Even what Apple does collect out of necessity (such as iTunes purchase history, Apple Pay transactions, Push Notifications (if the dev isn’t encrypting them) etc) would be incredibly valuable to advertisers.

Fair enough. The future will tell us.

You don't think they'd play that card if necessary?

Apple is heavily active in advertising. There are ads all over the App Store and Apple News.

The failed iAd network notwithstanding, haven't they already?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24109695 (1 year ago, 75 comments)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26019427 (8 months ago, 0 comments)

The interesting thing about iAd was that it failed because Apple refused to sell out everyone's privacy.

>According to advertisers, both Apple and Amazon have levels of detail about customers that would be extremely attractive to ad agencies, but refuse to hand it over, citing privacy concerns.

In Apple's case, the sheer volume of information it has about its users frustrates advertisers because they can't access it. One unnamed source said that in terms of attractiveness to potential advertisers, Apple is "the best-looking girl at the party, forced to wear a bag over her head."

https://www.infopackets.com/news/8939/advertisers-amazon-app...

On other words it's a question of money (as in:do we make more by using said data ourselves vs. selling it) and a way to change course without loosing users (an uproar is OK, as long as churn is to high).

Apple users need to be ready to leave the platform if they sell out, and to make this clear.

Things I'd want to consider at are 3rd party app support, privacy and security.

Where to you think would be the right place to move to right now?

Last time I asked I was told that Linux based phone software is still a bit work in progress and the Google stripped Android distros are both a bit DIY and also unverified privacy wise.

It’s tough. For laptops there are decent options but anything Android as you say is either half baked or much more of a privacy tire fire than Apple.

Mobile has been profoundly user hostile in the slimiest possible ways for many years. It’s about surveillance and addiction. Apple has been the only moderately acceptable option, but I don’t trust them completely and I do suspect they will eventually sell out.

The market for privacy focused phones is tiny both because most people don’t care and because they would have to be more expensive. They are not being subsidized by surveillance.

I am so happy that the mobile paradigm has not been able to invade desktop very much. It’s horrible and dystopian and we at least need to keep it at bay.

Their streak of blunders(1) has already made it challenging to convince myself to give them money this upgrade season. Polluting my experience with even more(2) ads has a really great chance of being the final straw.

1: mismanagement of bug bounty program, declining software quality, ham fisted CSAM efforts, endless series of App Store fiascos... off the top of my head right now.

2: their push notifications pushing [to me] useless services, noise in the Settings.app, parading Apple Music all over iTunes Store, Maps.app editor's picks seem like glorified ads, App Store search is both useless and has ads. It's already bad.

Metaphor is on-brand for advertisers. Maybe she wears the bag to go about her life unmolested by advertisers.

I think this is all FUD spread by the existing advertising companies. I recall reading here on HN several times that the pervasive tracking and "personalization" doesn't really increase conversion rates all that much; targeting the ad based on the content it's being presented with is generally more than good enough. (For example, if someone is reading an article about DIY home improvement, show ads for power tools.)

It just feels like these companies are addicted to the power of tracking people all over the internet, even if they'd do just fine if they weren't able to do that. So any time an ad platform comes up that attempts to respect privacy, they get all up in arms and spread misinformation about how it will destroy their industry.

I really hope Apple doesn't launch an ad network for the web but it won't surprise me. That would be the point where I would move on from their products and ecosystem.

The App Store ads are atrocious enough when they already take 15-30% of the revenue. Plus those ads make for a bad user experience which Apple claims they are all about.

Apple has entered advertising before with iAds. A bit odd Reuters doesn’t even mention that.

They are already in the advertising industry, am I right? How about the ads you see in the app store and other sections of the phone.

Speculation and conjecture, interesting but eh

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