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Comment by viktorcode | Hacker News Reader

It's weird that former Apple engineers don't explain how IDFA which is blocked by answering "ask app not to track" works. It is the only thing that's prevented by Apple, and the rest lies on the developer. Try to circumvent it, and risk ban (of course some apps are still trying, driven by their risk/reward calculations but bans aren't unheard of).

Another thing, the "ask app not to track" doesn't mean that data won't be collected. It means that this particular user must not be identifiable across different apps / web sites, even if personally identifiable data is being sent. Authors completely ignore this point.

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It is the only thing that's prevented by Apple, and the rest lies on the developer.

It is the major visible prevention method.

App developers who track anyway live in fear of Apple finding out and executing its nuclear option: banning them from the App Store.

Smart companies don't risk $10,000,000 in app revenue in order to sell $10,000 in user data.

When your company makes Apple $3m, you cease to become someone casually banned by Apple, and rather a quasi-partner with some leverage. Epic’s ban from the App Store was deliberately engineered by that company’s leadership to force a legal challenge and to garner public attention; most companies of that size with apps on the App Store are met with more kid glove treatment by reviewers.

I'd imagine the threshold is a lot higher. Remember that Apple is in the end a hardware company and it makes sense to give up revenue/pay a fair bit for the legwork of their privacy marketing.

You're not much of a partner at 0.0008% of yearly revenue. Now if a Netflix or Spotify was caught with a hand in the forbidden cookie jar, I'd expect the solution to be more diplomatic than straightforward perma-ban. If not for directly financial reasons, because their iOS user base would feel the void of these apps missing, unlike "Casino Slots 3D - Dolphin Edition".

Fine, the numbers should be inflated a bit, but the original post was most likely referring to Netflix and Spotify anyway, as opposed to whatever mid-tier companies make $10m annual app revenue somewhere in the vast gap between FANG and Casino Slots 3D.

Sorry I was just being snarky with the trash app mentioned, I could've done without it I just had a talk [0, fun one] in the back of my head when writing. There must indeed be hundreds (dozens?) of companies which fall in a grey area that Apple wouldn't be inclined to ban straight up at first offense.

0: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E8Lhqri8tZk

Nah, I quite appreciated it. It amuses me quite a bit how bizarrely specialized a lot of trash software are, which mobile platforms tend to heighten. From blatantly fraudulent ads that depict bogus gameplay, to Dr. Phil shilling Solitaire Grand Harvest on his show, the plain tawdriness of the trash app game ecosystem is fascinating. And who even wants to play slots on their phone anyway?

Those Dr. Phil 4 minute sponsors for Solitaire Grand Harvest kill me just thinking of it with those "live demos". I find it absolutely hilarious, yet simultaneously depressing to think how many people watching him will fall into a trap like and proceed to burn their money on - which is assuredly an unfathomable amount given his show's size and the duration of the ads.

I also have no clue why those apps work (aside from the vague notion it triggers our lizard brains to gamble even with fake money), but I'd sure recommend you listening to the linked talk if the subject entertains you, I had found it really interesting and the speaker is a great story teller (IMO anyway).

The vast, vast majority of money made on the AppStore is made by mobile games. Everything else is just a rounding error.

Uber was famously caught trying to circumvent reviewers to hide their device fingerprinting and the result was a phone call from Tim Cook threatening them, but not outright removal. At the time I'm not sure if any profit from Uber actually flowed to Apple either.

https://www.theverge.com/2017/4/23/15399438/apple-uber-app-s...

I do think these ubiquitous "mega-apps" (whatever the word is) hold leverage on Apple as well. Telling their billion users they can't access an app like Uber because they broke some privacy rule or stood their ground on the Apple tax could be a hard sell. Although obviously not impossible like we've seen with Fortnite (not that I'd rank it alongside the Uber/Netflix/Spotify/YouTube and co of this world).

Even a threatening phone call is at least Apple treating an app developer with enough regard to actually include human interaction in the process (from the CEO, no less), as opposed to a boilerplate two sentence non-explanation for rejection. That only applies to the makers of apps with enough users to warrant a personal touch.

I doubt any company who abused data tracking on App Store would be surprised by a rejection email. The only question they will have is "what exact part of our tracking they noticed?"

So, FWIW what Uber was doing was flagging if banned iPhones had been wiped and reset. Apple actually gave Uber specific APIs to persistently flag iPhones as banned (as part of DeviceCheck).

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