The part that is unfair is that no one but Apple gets to have an App Store or process IAPs, which has always been the problem with iOS. Trying to make it about ATT just seems like a red herring.
The part that is unfair is that no one but Apple gets to have an App Store or process IAPs, which has always been the problem with iOS. Trying to make it about ATT just seems like a red herring.
Think of this: 1.Fb shows an ad for angry birds 2. user installs the app 3. user opens the app and makes a ping to fb to tell user with idfa xyz opened the app.
The problem is not that only apple gets (2), but it is that because it gets (2), it thinks it should be able to dictate how (3) happens. Since apple is the only one doing (2), it puts everyone else at a disadvantage.
And since apple doesn't have web ads business, it sees no problem killing that altogether through att as well.
Matching the ad to the user is just more difficult as it requires more in the way of user signups, as opposed to e.g. cookie-based tracking which is more ubiquitous and requires less integration.
There are policy restrictions that you won't be able to get around which is what att is.
the only way to do cross app tracking in ios without the user opting in and without violating apple policy is via explicitly associating accounts across apps either via oauth or some kind of account linking
Imagine if you are less monetizable user, in theory, app should be able to restrict what you can do in the app. It's a business transaction after all
But apple gets a say in this too.
Also apple uses it's app store moat to restrict tracking on websites too, similarly.
To be fair, so does the GDPR which Apple is subject to
You can see a lot of the tracking and correlating that apple does within their own legal documents, which I commend them for at least writing them out clearly : https://www.apple.com/legal/privacy/data/en/apple-advertisin...
Apple also uploads a lot of logs, etc from their devices to their servers, and opting out of apple level tracking at some basic level is often just not an option. Ex, they upload battery behavior info and use it to improve the battery perf of their devices, or upload people's locations and other location adjacent data like wifi networks with location services and so on.
Apple cares about privacy from third parties, not privacy from apple itself. Which is very apple of apple. Apple also does not let you turn it off in some key parts. And they know they work with security services & authoritarian governments that force them to hand over any data that they have access to, in secret, which gets thousands of innocent people killed, tortured and jailed every day at their scale. Yet they still collect it.
Key parts of apple doesn't really like the existence of third parties in many ways, and if they could, they would rather have full locked down control, from what I can observe from external actions over the decades.
Any large group of people will of course have different actions and motives, and I do commend part of the company for caring, and funding efforts like lockdown mode and keeping %95 of the company thinking and caring about privacy at some level. But that key %5 that does not basically ruins it for many. The best we can hope for is to slowly change that last %5, although with this Services & Ads push, I feel like that bad part is only going to grow worse.
This nothing to do with advertising.
Long game, a successful Apple ad business creates bad incentives and is likely bad for customers. As evidenced by the AppStore really being a front door for the worst kind of skinner-box gaming, Apple will choose cash over any overriding principle.
As Ben Thompson has been shouting, it's because Apple has a very convenient definition of "tracking".