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> But it crushed FB, Snap, and 1000s of small businesses in the process.

Ironically, this is far more of a narrative than this guy’s idea of Apple’s “narrative.” The idea that banning user tracking hurts small businesses was FB’s narrative to try and get backlash against Apple for its tracking crackdown. That genuinely is a narrative because from Apple’s decision we have seen that consumers (1) prefer not to be tracked (go figure!) but also (2) are spending more than ever.

What he calls Apple’s “narrative” is actually their substantiated history of privacy-protecting technologies. Not just tracking, but iCloud Private Relay, Hide my Email, iMessage E2E encryption, keeping many things on-device only. Even the example he gave as a gotcha - personalized ads - has an opt out button right there! Try opting out of FB’s tracking and ads network and see the difference.

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While this is a "narrative", there is quite a lot data back that this is a fact. You can argue that you trust and fell comfortable to give apple the power of crushing any other small businesses they don't care based on Apple's own company decision.

BTW, you can here the same story from small businesses' narrative: https://www.npr.org/2022/03/17/1087425495/tech-giants-and-ti...

Yup. Facebook ads were evil. And now that wiener-dog ramp guy can't spend pennies to buy millions of impressions on cross-app-accessed data, he has to be smarter and work harder to get his ad dollars in the right place.

This remains a Facebook privacy story.

Two seperate facts:

1. Apple did use their market power crush small companies. 2. Facebook does have an awful privacy history.

So the question is, do you think improving Facebook's privacy must hurt small companies? Another example, Google is working very closely with UK's Competition and Markets Authority to make sure the plan of replacing third-party cookies won't punch other companies at their faces.

> to make sure the plan of replacing third-party cookies won't punch other companies at their faces.

Companies using third-party cookies deserve much more than a punch. They deserve corporate euthanasia.

These are not separate facts. FB and Google have a global surveillance network to track people which is 1) awful for privacy and 2) makes it easier to serve niche ads to people. Apple is prioritizing user-privacy which necessarily means it is more difficult for advertisers to place their niche ads.

You can frame it as "crush small companies" if you want. But that framing is just as valid as "Apple's narrative".

Third-party cookies should have never been a thing. Google shouldn't get kudos for barely rolling back this privacy nightmare they created while Apple gets punished for being more pro-privacy and pro-user.

> Apple is prioritizing user-privacy which necessarily means it is more difficult for advertisers to place their niche ads.

…while rolling out their own alternative, complete with user tracking.

But if apple's tracking is not sold to third parties, is secure, and people trust apple from a security standpoint, is it actually bad for individual privacy?

1. Lots of ifs…

2. Facebook (the comparison here)/Google/etc don’t sell to third parties either.

3. Is tracking customers the issue, or is facebook tracking the issue. Most people seem to indicate they don’t support tracking writ large

> FB and Google have a global surveillance network to track people

> Apple is prioritizing user-privacy which necessarily means it is more difficult for advertisers to place their niche ads.

Google provides the exact same privacy preferences on Android / Google ecosystem: the ability to enable/disable personalized ads, deviceId which is unique to the device, can be reset. The ability to delete your data automatically. It does not sell or share your data.

I don't like personalized ads, but we can't hail Apple for being a champion of privacy when its basically doing the same things Google does.

> FB and Google have a global surveillance network to track people

Please help me with this - what is Apple doing with its ad network that Google is not?

"Privacy" is a marketing angle for Apple to monetize data - they do it in exactly the same way as Google. But why Google bad Apple good to you?

> 1. Apple did use their market power crush small companies.

What small companies? The ones buying/selling my data without my consent? Yeah, they can take a long walk off a short pier.

Also, TBH some FB and those "small companies" poor performance cannot be taken with a grain of salt - cheap cash is no longer there given the interest rate hikes and collapse of crypto - so maybe the performance has more in common with all those startups that lost runway this summer than Apple's rules.

Yeah, I read about Ramon and his wiener dog ramps when this was first submitted to HN months ago and I said the same thing then as I am now. It’s bullshit. If Ramon wants to sell wiener dog ramps, then the system to do that should be “buy adspace when people search for wiener dog,” advertise on wiener dog enthusiast forums, sponsor videos/meetups, etc. Not “create an all knowing digital surveillance system tying together user profiles across devices and networks and embedding tracking pixels in websites.”

So Ramon wants to sell a niche product and that means I have to be tracked across the internet so companies can sell a digital profile of me? Get real.

I mean, wether this is a bullshit won't affect "Small business were crushed by Apple" is a fact? It's a statement based on data. How you or apple justifying their behaviour is another story.

Well so be it, we value more privacy than some random businesses. Get along.

Let's say a chemical is found to cause cancer (outside of the state of California), then Walmart pulls all offending products from the shelves. Would you say Walmart is "crushing" these manufacturing businesses, or would you say Walmart is keeping their customers safe?

For that analogy to be accurate Walmart would have replaced the offending product with their own in house brand of the same product.

Which is exactly the justification Apple uses. What I don't understand is why people paying upwards of $600 to buy those shelves from Walmart and use in their own homes are ok with Walmart insisting that those shelves actually still belong to them and putting up their own products in the shelves you bought from them and installed in your home.

In this analogy, Wal-Mart isn't happily selling other harmful chemicals for a 30% cut, so I don't think your metaphor matches up with reality. I don't trust Wal-Mart to make my decisions for me in the first place, this scenario would be entirely circumvented if the government just had a list of all the chemicals you're not allowed to sell. Why do we need to let private corporations be the authority on which chemicals are harmful to sell and which are not?

But of course, Apple will fight to the death avoiding regulation. US authorities don't seem to care, but the EU is getting pretty pissed off.

I can't for the life of me why Apple people will go to all lengths to justify their standard corporate predatory behavior. Apple, like Amazon, Google, Facebook, etc. is a business that operates ruthlessly for money.

What an insanely illogical but also misplaced metaphor. Apple didn't "save" anyone - they found a new revenue stream and tightened control over data their platform produces to monetize it further, just like Google. What is the "saving" nonsense you all believe?

Yea but people don’t spend a lot of time on weiner dog forums, even weiner dog owners.

People want to advertise to customers where the customers actually go. Customers actually go to Facebook not weiner dog forums.

Don’t use Facebook if you don’t like the value proposition. I’m guessing most people who complain about tracking on HN don’t use Facebook properties anyways.

If you want to be tracked, go ahead and turn it on! That’s up to you.

> People want to advertise to customers where the customers actually go

But do those customers want to see the advertising? People primarily go on Facebook to connect & keep up with their friends.

Being able to advertise is not some kind of right, nor is being in business. If your business isn't sustainable without stalking people (or paying a third-party to do that for you), maybe you shouldn't be in business.

This is a bad arguement. People who want products and services go to Google and search for them. Then, after the purchase has been made, your web experience is filled with ads for the product you already bought.

This is because Google wants to sell ads for impressions advertisers don't want and restricts their ability to filter out users who LOOK like people who might but stuff, but are actually people who bought stuff already. No advertiser wants to advertise a product someone already bought to that customer... And yet that's the default (and nearly impossible to eliminate entirely).

This wiener dog guy story is not compelling. The guy starts umpteen businesses with either little value to society or little ability to execute, as evidenced by him being paycheck to paycheck after starting numerous businesses.

Nobody owes him an audience for ads.

I mean, isn't it "people's desire not to have personalized ads driven by cross-site tracking crushed a bunch of small business"? This is a market effect, basically.

Of course the maker of a platform used by the majority of high-value users would have power. That in itself isn't a damning fact. Nor is the narrative that Apple wanted to expand its services revenue. FB and Shopify want to grow their revenue too. Turns out they're competing on opposing principles, and Apple is winning.

A better question is whether or not anyone who isn't in the ad business actually gives a flying f about the shift in power dynamic. Is it an ABUSE of power? To the majority of consumers (by a wide margin) the answer is "NO". They don't want to be tracked and have their data exhaust vacuumed up for capital gains of billion dollar titans.

So this is the underlying motivation on why nobody cares that Apple is flexing hard on ad companies.

Facebook likes to demonstrate how useful they are by showing traffic/revenue of people who advertise through them vs people who don't, and then say "look! The people who do it are making way more money!" Ignoring the fact that they intentionally suppress businesses who don't pay them.

It's like if the mafia came by your business every week to collect their $1000 to not break your kneecaps and say "look at all the happy businesses who pay us walking around, and the people who don't do business with us dragging themselves across the floor with their hands. We're an important factor in keeping people walking!"

Except now you have to pay Apple for the privilege of protecting your app store rankings.

If someone decides to purchase ads for "HBN App" searches, you're out of luck on your own trademark. You have to pay for ads too.

Let me count the ways that we're now beholden to app store mafias:

- Downloads are no longer free to distribute

- You have to obey draconian and arbitrary rules, and your engineering team has to jump through the hoops constantly

- You can't deploy on your own time. No emergency hot fixes.

- You can't leverage JIT engines and dynamic code (WTF!?) to solve for a bunch of headaches.

- You have to learn multiple platforms

- You're taxed (15+%!) for the privilege

The whole concept of app stores and walled garden downloads is so inherently broken that the DOJ needs to break up the party wholesale for all of the major players.

While I'm happy Apple removed tracking, I also want the government to prohibit Apple, Google and the rest from doing these other godawful things.

This is harming innovation and productivity massively. This is bad for small, medium, and even large businesses. Startup founders, engineers, and business people alike should be up in arms.

We live in the crazy times Stallman warned us about. And as a capitalist, I couldn't agree more with Stallman.

How do they suppress businesses that don’t pay? By not advertising for them for free? That’s a stretch to compare it to the mafia…

If I have a page for my business and people explicitly follow my page to get updates, Facebook will still not surface content from my page as frequently to my followers without paying them.

The mafia metaphor seems pretty on the nose to me. If you have a page, its posts will not regularly appear in followers' feeds — that is, the feeds of people who've explicitly signaled that they want to see your content — unless you give Facebook their vig.

Most people probably subscribe to more pages (and therefore more posts) than they can actually consume the content of. It seems pragmatic that something should help the user surface more meaningful content. Suppressing commercial pages for friends content seems reasonable, and business v business is a decision where there will always be a loser.

Just a quick fyi - On the nose means something different.

https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/on_the_nose

Above, I’m using it to mean “appropriate”.

You can look at many accounts from the mid 2010s but the one I can recall the most clearly was FB updated to the algorithm and everything was fine. They then began actively suppressed people who were posting YouTube links a few months later. They told at least Phillip Defranco that the reason was they should advertise. They then came back months later and instead said why not post your videos here. This failed policy years later re-emerged as the video push for news organizations where FB intentionally deceived them into pushing into video to on the platform only for them to later update to honest video view tracking and make all of the media companies realize there was much less viewership than they were initially told was there.

At some point they decided to basically stop showing updates to your own followers. Affected pages reported a drop of 90%+ in feed views, and the only way to reach your audience again was to boost your own posts, which is a paid service.

I run a business. Our reach per post , on FB, is 30-40% of our followers.

The reason for this is we don’t just post 24-7 about how amazing we are.

We post 1-2x a week, and our followers genuinely like us and are fans of the business.

So… the changes on FB haven’t impacted all businesses in such a negative way.

> ... consumers (1) prefer not to be tracked (go figure!) ...

And that means from Apple too!

Note that "tracking" includes data collection. And this is where Apple's duplicity on privacy really annoys me - Apple has never stopped data collection of their users data. Instead they mislead their users by just informing you with a popup that your data can be used for personalised ads, but you can opt out it - opt out of personalised ads, not from the data collection part ( https://9to5mac.com/2021/09/02/apple-personalized-ads-target... ). And even this happened because French regulators started an anti-trust investigation into how Apple gave itself an exception (by ensuring that the "Personalised ads" options is enabled by default on ios) while blocking everyone else ( https://9to5mac.com/2021/03/09/french-antitrust-complaint-al... ).

So let's not be under any illusion that Apple is "protecting our privacy" by blocking others. They are just protecting their bottom lines by blocking their competitors. All this PR spin on how Apple blocking Facebook and Google from tracking is good for the consumers is bullshit, when all you are doing is replacing Facebook and Google for Apple! Remember that once they have our data, all they have to do in the future is to update their terms of services to use it as they want. This kind of creeping encroachment is why we need to strong data privacy laws and regulations to prevent even companies like Apple from abusing their consumers trust, and create a more fair market.

I have interviewed a lot of small D2C brands, either a single person company or a family. To say that the banning user tracking hurts small business is an FB narrative is not the complete story. Businesses still need to do marketing, the amount of money is just diverted away, in a less efficient manner so they budget has increased and the end users see less relevant ads (just like back in early 2000 where all ads were penis enlargement/real estate/viagra).

Not justifying what FB did / does, but what apple did, does impact the small businesses and end users negatively and it did stem from Apple wanting to get a cut of FB's business, there is a published email thread for this, it's a known thing.

The terrifying truth for the future is that advertising revenue is addictive and inherently corrupting.

Google makes strategic decisions that are user-hostile, because they can't wound their golden cow.

How much more ad revenue expansion at Apple before suddenly user privacy's priority decreases a few notches? And on a much more locked-down, controlled-platform, no less.

No end user agrees with you that it affected them negatively. They all made the choice to turn it off and still have the choice to turn it back on.

We like the trade offs.

> What he calls Apple’s “narrative” is actually their substantiated history of privacy-protecting technologies. Not just tracking, but iCloud Private Relay, Hide my Email, iMessage E2E encryption, keeping many things on-device only.

All these so called "privacy" features are also designed to help Apple data mine your personal data too ... the more data you funnel through Apple servers, the more they know about you and the less data their competitors have.

Remember that once they have our data, all they have to do in the future is to update their terms of services to use it as they want. This kind of creeping encroachment is why we need to strong data privacy laws and regulations to prevent even companies like Apple from abusing their consumers trust, and create a more fair market. Otherwise all that is happening is that you are cheering for the replacement of Facebook and Google with Apple ...

What data do you think they're mining from people using iCloud Private Relay?

Internet activity including Safari browsing, all dns queries and all insecure http connections.

Yeah, I know Apple claims that they cannot "see" the data as it is funnelled through some other third-party - CloudFlare, Akamai etc. ... would Apple be willing to reveal the terms of the contract they have with these third-parties? How can anyone be sure Apple hasn't outsourced datamining or made another PRISM like deal with the US government to provide their users data, but through a third-party? We'll never know because there are no US laws and regulations preventing Apple from doing so.

(And when it comes to privacy that's the key thing - in the absence of laws and regulations, it is incredibly foolish to believe BigTech's word. They exist only to make money, which is their right. Hiding the truth, and exaggerating through marketing is an established practice in their world.)

Another thing to note is that BigTech are interested in promoting these kind of technology only to become gatekeepers of collecting and mining users data. Currently, some ISP's collect and store their users history. And make money from selling it. In effect, these ISP's are potential competitors to ad companies. Techs like these (https://blog.cloudflare.com/oblivious-dns/) are designed to disrupt these kind of data collection from the ISPs and undermine their business of selling data. With techs like these, BigTech now again get the upper hand in collecting, mining and monetising user data.

It's bad for distributed internet as a whole (where users have more control) because now BigTech are forcing themselves to be another intermediary, another step between accessing the data we users want.

Politically also, such techs are designed to tighten the grip of US / BigTech on the internet over that of a country's government. That is a big no-no for any democracy as a citizen loses the power to question its government's policy on the internet (including commercial and privacy laws related to it that a government may not be able to enforce because of such tech). It also weakens a country's security surveillance apparatus. Yeah, I know 'National Security' is a bogey that is used by all governments to try and curtail our rights. But would you really prefer that the usage of some of your rights be indirectly dictated by the whims of foreign BigTech or your democracy?

personalized ads - has an opt out button right there!

I saw something amusing last week.

It was an ad being played on a local TV station. It had one of those little blue swirly "Your Ad Choices" arrow icons in the corner that are displayed on advertisements on the web.¹

This was being transmitted by a television station over the air. What, exactly was I supposed to do with that?

On a related note, getting an ATSC OTA DVR is an awesome way to watch television with zero tracking, and 100% portability. Record video directly to a USB stick, and transcode to whatever device I want for free, and keep it forever, for free. No streaming. No tracking. No subscriptions. No network charges. Just $35 to Amazon for the box.

I know that not everyone has a lot of OTA choices, but in some cities, like mine, there are over 100 channels. About 40 if you filter out infomercials, religion, and non-English. I was surprised to find there's a 24-hour news,² and 24-hour weather station³ OTA these days.

1: https://youradchoices.com 2: https://www.newsy.com 3: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fox_Weather

> getting an ATSC OTA DVR is an awesome way to watch television with zero tracking

Assuming your TV isn't tracking what you watch.

https://advertising.roku.com/resources/blog/insights-analysi...

iCloud Private Relay, Hide my Email, all happened after the ATT (AppTrackingTransparency). And if you read ATT carefully it is designed fist and foremost against Ads. Not Privacy.

And the opt OUT of Personalised Ads? When did HN's narrative changed that opting out was ok? Or even Ads were not evil? I can assure you 95% of comments in the past 5 to 6 years on HN front page with Ads were all religiously Anti-Ads.

I agree that's it's not ok for this to be opt-out. And it's also not ok to show ads in system critical places like the App Store (at least without an option to disable them). I hope regulators come down hard on Apple and force them to open up the iOS platform. Their stewardship of the iOS app ecosystem is getting worse.

>I can assure you 95% of comments in the past 5 to 6 years on HN front page with Ads were all religiously Anti-Ads.

HN is full of Facebook and Google engineers so I doubt that's accurate.

> But it crushed FB ...

FB had $11B in profit in Q1 on $30B of revenue, and that's after massive drop due to R&D expenses; it's hardly crushed.

I own a small business that was crushed by iOS14. It sucks. At the same time I respect apple's dedication to privacy, even if it is profit motivated.

Can you elaborate how your business was crushed by iOS14?

tl;dr; Apple stopped Facebook from tracking (for privacy lol), now Apple gets more cash in the ad game because they are the only ones that can track. Well played Apple.

I actually would have no problem with that. The move on itself, clearly spoken out, ( or not ) would have been a great victory against Facebook.

I have a problem with Apple's hypocrisy of doing that but labelling it as a move of privacy. And this hypocrisy is only the tip of the Iceberg.

But the saddest thing is that most people dont see it. iPhone 14 will likely continues to sell like hotcakes.

If that's the story it sounds like an antitrust investigation might be in order. Which to me is ridiculous and makes sense at the same time...strange.

No, you are factually incorrect, but getting upvotes for a pretty populist view.

As with most centralization or “regulation” (this case from a private company), it hurts the smallest companies the most.

Large brand advertisers don’t care about granular targeting because they have the budget to just advertise to everyone. By definition the very smallest advertisers are the one who are getting restricted here.

Luckily ATTv2 will actually fix some of this, but that’s because apple has realised they’ve killed an entire ecosystem which actually hurts the iPhone in the end.

Small business were also crushed when the FDA started requiring clinical trials before you could market your drugs. The assumption here is that the needs of small businesses trumps any ethical or moral concerns. We shouldn't have prop up Big Brother so that little Johnny can sell graphic t-shirts.

Correction: personalised ads are opt-in, the same as IDFA tracking.

I’m surprised that people still call Apples stance a “story”

All they are saying is that tracking is ok as long as you just ask the end user first.

Here’s Steve Jobs in 2010

https://youtube.com/watch?v=Ij-jlF98SzA

Are they perfect? No. But at least they haven’t changed their stance in 12 years unlike Google et al.

People call it a story because it's an obvious lie. The CIA has declassified dozens of documents where they admit they can pull data right off iCloud/iMessage. Chinese citizens run a version of iOS that subjects them to perpetual government surveillance. Macbooks send telemetry back to Apple every time you launch an app. The App Store sells it's own personalized ads. Maybe Apple protects your security, but your privacy is something they don't give a rat's ass about.

The problem with that narrative is that apple does not apply the same rules to themselves. I actually agree with apple tracking should be optional, however why should apple get a free pass?

They do though, they've asked me on the iPhone if I want to have personalised ads, and I said no. Now I don't get personalised ads.

This implies collecting data for ad personalization is the only means through each Apple tracks you, which clearly isn't the case [1]. Some interesting keypoints posted here before: [2]

As it currently stands, there is no way to "opt out" of being tracked by Apple.

[1] https://www.scss.tcd.ie/doug.leith/apple_google.pdf

[2] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...

Apple does not track your activity across unrelated apps, websites, or the real world. They can offer personalized ads based on your interactions with Apple, which is not tracking, and they allow you to turn off that personalization. What rule are they exempting themselves from?

oh but they do. All of the apps you purchase, stocks you own, news stories you read, location of your phone/mac based on precise geolocation, your name, address, age, gender, oh and this too:

> 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.

But who's counting?

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

Your reference or comment doesn’t disprove my point, but with the way you wrote it, it seems like you think it does? When they say unrelated, they mean offered by different providers, not of different purposes.

That’s a pretty loose standard for the word “related”

If you play around with definitions enough, nobody is collecting unrelated data I suppose.

It’s not a pretty loose or arbitrary standard. For example, it’s a key basis on which data sharing is regulated. The claim that it’s a weak enough definition that it doesn’t matter is inconsistent with criticism that it’s a definition which has materially impacted Facebook’s revenue.

I just don’t agree that financial data and health data are “related” simply because they were both generated on a single platform. It’s pretty easy to link any type of data at that point. All you need is for Apple to develop two apps and literally any type of data can be “related”. At that point the word “related” loses all meaning.

I think you made a poor choice of words. You probably meant 3rd party apps not related.

Regardless - I also don’t think it’s meaningfully better that Apple links financial and health data to sell Ads vs. Google or Facebook linking the same data from two external sources.

Revenue and regulations are not relevant factors in this argument.

Tbh if you are charging $1000+ for handsets.. why are you trying to scrape my data as-well or show me ads ?

Forget personalized vs. non-personalized. I paid a premium, I want an ad-free experience.

> They can offer personalized ads based on your interactions with Apple,

Except apple has repeatedly claimed that everything on your iPhone including 3p apps is owned by apple.

Not sure what you’re referring to, and I doubt they’ve said they consider 3rd party app data as fair game for their own advertising targeting without invoking targeting.

1. Apple has claimed (from the epic trial) that since they owned the App Store, apps were theirs to sell.

2. Apple has claimed that any use of the iOS APIs is “apple’s data” (eg the Apple Pay system for in-app purchases)

3. Apples privacy policy claims that as long as apple’s data isn’t combined with 3P data, they aren’t “tracking” you.

4. Apple also lets you opt-out of personalized ads not data collection.

Ergo, apple will collect data about you from wherever and use it to target ads.

[1] apples privacy policy

Apple’s advertising platform does not track you, meaning that it does not link user or device data collected from our apps with user or device data collected from third parties for targeted advertising or advertising measurement purposes

>The problem with that narrative is that apple does not apply the same rules to themselves

What do you mean? Apple tracking is optional, they straight up ask when you setup your phone.

That's for apps to track you, not for apple.

they do apply the same rules to themselves; that's why they've been successful

Which rules? Because they very famously do not treat themselves the same way.

Between built in apps, changing defaults, different tracking rules, payment processing, access of hardware features, UI/UX guidelines, there’s a long list of ways apple priorities themselves.

> All they are saying is that tracking is ok as long as you just ask the end user first.

And yet, Apple only started informing users of Apple "personalised ads" only after a French regulator started investigating Apple. More info here - French antitrust complaint alleges Apple allows itself to run personalized ads on iOS without getting user consent - https://9to5mac.com/2021/03/09/french-antitrust-complaint-al... and iOS 15 now prompts users if they want to enable Apple personalized ads, after it was previously on by default - https://9to5mac.com/2021/09/02/apple-personalized-ads-target... ). Yet again proving how we need governments to step up and be more proactive to protect us from corporate abuse and create a fair market.

But the scoop; the story here is that Apple has.

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