I'm looking forward to the discussion on how Apple's ad business is more ethical and good for us.
With regard to Apple not tracking us with PII, that is good however.
https://www.apple.com/legal/privacy/data/en/apple-advertisin...
> We create segments, which are groups of people who share similar characteristics, and use these groups for delivering targeted ads.
> We may use information such as the following to assign you to segments:
> ... The music, movies, books, TV shows, and apps you download ...
> ... The topics and categories of the stories you read and the publications you follow, subscribe to, or enable notifications from ...
> ... Your name, address, age, gender, ...
> ... your App Store searches and browsing activity ...
> ... information stored on your device, such as the apps you frequently open ...
There's a lot more, that's just a sample of the data they use. The only thing they promise explicitly either not to have or not to use is:
> No Apple Pay transactions or Health app data is accessible to Apple’s advertising platform, or is used for advertising purposes. Apple does not know or make available to advertisers information about your sexual orientation, religious beliefs, or political affiliations.
My take is that this information is used to give you some sort of cohort identifier that is itself devoid of PII.
Besides, depending on how many segments you are assigned to, you're probably the only one in the intersection of all of them.
Apple can at least enumerate the ways it profiles you in plan text, and most of it makes perfect sense. (Though I'd be happier if they excluded age and gender.)
The other companies profiling information requires a massive spreadsheet, or even a JSON dump that no human being can make sense of. And that's just for their internal data, not the data they sell (oops, "share with trusted partners").
not saying it's good, but it's probably the least intrusive way to do it; and many users like it. I'd rather never see an ad, but if I do have to see any, I'd prefer to see ads for watches or cycling gear (which I like) rather than clothing or pick-up trucks.
They do that also:
> When selecting which ad to display from multiple ads for which you are eligible, we may use some of the above-mentioned information, as well as your App Store searches and browsing activity, to determine which ad is likely to be most relevant to you.
> We may also use local, on-device processing to select which ad to display, using information stored on your device, such as the apps you frequently open.
(emphasis added). They don't track your activity across the web, since they can't, but they do track your activity on Apple properties, including your iPhone.
Next, Apple’s cohorts and interest information about audiences is not nearly as detailed as Facebook or Google. And even at a far less detailed level, they have started asking users for permission to personalize in a modal. The other ad networks have never asked in that way.
It seems like you have a problem with how Apple personalizes ads, but that’s a different conversation than whether they track and if tracking without consent is acceptable.
I don't have a problem with how Apple tracks people for ad targeting. They're not a particularly bad actor, but they're not a particularly good actor either. And a thing I do have a problem with is people thinking that Apple isn't doing all of this and giving them a free pass.
> Apple’s advertising platforms receive information about the ads you tap and view against a random identifier not tied to your Apple ID.
In other words it isn’t tied to your Apple ID, or the information linked to it, or the PII you enter for non-Advertising purposes. If you go into the News or Stocks settings, you can also reset that identifier at-will, and as you pointed out, you can also just turn it off. Completely opt-out. Facebook’s entire business model is predicated on not letting you opt-out of tracking and being able to link it to a social profile they host, whereas Apple can take it or leave it.
Apple isn’t trying particularly hard to hide that it personalizes ads. It puts up a modal telling users about it and giving them a choice in the apps where it advertises. I’m not sure why you imply that Apple is fomenting confusion.
But meanwhile Apple doesn’t have to buy it. Apple Card and their wallet gives them access to it directly, without having to involve third party.
That is a weird definition of tracking! By that definition, a single party that follows what you do over time is not tracking you?
That is separate from the question of whether or not Apple is actually doing this and not telling us (I'd bet they are), I'm just saying that that definition of tracking reads like it's from a parallel universe.
The problem has been the micro-targeting / retargeting at the heart of Facebook and Google's surveillance capitalism model. That model enables a lot of direct to consumer small business, but it also turbocharges polarization, misinformation, and radicalization (as does the algorithmic feed). That's what consumers are increasingly looking to opt-out of, and Apple is catering to that interest.
They absolutely are better if it’s true they don’t do any tracking
Governments exist to regulation the actions of economic entities like companies. It’s an infinite regress to argue about apples privacy stances in china.
> We never sell your personal information
Both of them hold on to your data and allow advertisers to target based on it. Just like Apple does.
Google tracks you to allow for highly targeted ads while apple doesn’t.