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Comment by fancl20 | Hacker News Reader

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...

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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.

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.

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).

> 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.

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

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.

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.

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?

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.

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

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.

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

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?

> 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.

> 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.

> 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.

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.

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.

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.

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