Apple does not have a tracking pixel on half the popular web. Apple's main source of income is through luxury hardware and subscription services. Facebook sells your information and attention to willing buyers.
https://www.wired.co.uk/article/apple-is-an-ad-company-now
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1330127/apple-ad-revenue...
> By 2022, Facebook's ad revenues had hit $135.94 billion.
$4.7B is not a small number but no where close to Facebook’s.
I think most people would agree that velocity hardly matters here, what’s been actually done is generally what gets judgement, not where you will be in some time if you do everything the same.
What you are describing is essentially pre-crime.
Displaying an app ad in the appstore upon searching for a similar term is very different than displaying ads based on your whole life, collected in malicious ways.
Do you know what has ads in settings? Xiaomi. A relative bought one and I helped him set it up, and you literally had to see an ad to listen to your ringtone!!!
What's really annoying on iOS is that persistent notification badge to "finish setting up your account" even when I choose not to use some apple services.
My personal hope is that Apple course corrects at some point that they do not need to extract the extra cash while damaging the customer experience. The company feels much less customer oriented now and has lost a lot of the premium feel. I have already stopped using their TV app because they have made it nearly non-functional with the amount of promoted content. The News app has an exceptional number of subscription only items in the feed to where I am about to go back to pure RSS. The feeling is like what Google would have done with Google Reader if it was still going stuffing in promotions.
I agree first party apps should be advertisement free if they are advertised as being included in the price of the phone. Otherwise it is a hidden bill you are paying with hours or days of your life that you can't get back.
I would pay for a service that just disabled all first party promotions advertisements. Give me the real price instead of wasting my valuable time with advertisements I would never click.
Because it's useful.
It helps users discover apps that the developer believes is relevant to that keyword.
I can't think of a better mechanism for doing this without an auction style system.
Or show a button to open separate window which shows related apps.
But instead, we always want to bring everything instantly under our attention [in same screen, close to the line of sight].
They are taking the risk of repelling their customer who paid $1k+ and still sees ads and they are entitled to the courage of their conviction to take that risk.
If Facebook were Apple's size they'd be doing 450 billion in ads.
AFAIK it also includes ads in the News app and apps that load articles from the News app (e.g. Stocks app).
Their fine print also mentions the TV app, but I haven’t seen ads there, so perhaps they’re referring to content suggestions.
This seems to be confirmed further down the line in the fine print when it says:
> We create segments to deliver personalized ads on the App Store, Apple News, and Stocks.
I’d say the main difference between Meta and Apple is that the latter doesn’t combine data from different source and only relies on their own data (what Apple calls “tracking”):
> 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, and does not share user or device data with data brokers.
It’s the only ad on a streaming service that has never annoyed me (I also like the fact that it’s not targeted). Zero ads are better but their implementation on tv plus is the least irritating I’ve experienced.
A news paper ad? A builtin board? I think advertisements that hijack your attention are always unethical. You should have to look for ads to see them.
Our society depends on advertising for promoting new services, gaining new customers, and building trust. I would call it a social necessity which makes it very ethical as long as it is truthful. The hijacking that occurs is consensual as you should not visit sites if you disagree with their advertising habits. Even with the App Store almost never open it directly.
The ones that cannot be avoided are in the outside world. I would celebrate if every billboard, postal mail item, and other real world advertisement were banned completely as that is the part I have no direct control over.
Disagree on this one. Blogs, media, social, word of mouth, etc. would still exist without advertising and would serve the purpose of all of those things. PR teams would become as large as marketing teams, things would get exploited (they already are), but we wouldn't be subjected to distraction and manipulation.
I don't think ads are the most evil thing there is, but society would be fine without them and you would probably see a much smaller imbalance of power in wealth and companies. I'll take 1000s of small forums compared to one big Meta.
The Verge? Nops. Techcrunch? Also not. AnandTech or Business Insider? No and no. Hackaday? Dead. NYT and Bloomberg? Maybe, and likely not. And what about your top 20 favorite YouTube creators? The majority would be gone.
Sure, the long tail of quirky small bloggers would be unaffected -- they don't really make any money today from advertising. But a lot of them are bottom-feeders; they consume content produced by others, and re-hash to add their own takes.
And we're not even talking about the second order effect -- all the ecommerce companies that would be wiped out without qualified leads and traffic. Go to any site - The Verge, Hackaday, Daring Fireball - and see the ads. Most of those companies would disappear.
Is this really the web you want to live in? A web with only a handful of publications with large followings who can command premium subscription (read: The Information, NYT, Stratechery, etc), and the top x% of privileged wealthy folks who can afford paying for a bunch of subscriptions?
Yes, I would call advertising a social necessity. It's like a multi-dimension version of prisoner's dilemma - it may not feel you're winning, but the alternative option is much worse.
I've actually found furniture I'm looking for on websites I didn't know existed on Instagram. Why is targeted ads a bad thing?
Years ago it was google fanboyism with 'don't be evil'. Now it's the unbearable apple privacy fanboys and the insufferable tesla/spacex cult members.
So why not keep it that way? I understand the temptation of veering from the path of 'do no evil' but Apple are not exactly short of revenue?
Apple, Google and Meta are currently all three sides of the same coin. Take your pick but don't claim any virtue for doing so.
Because capitalism incentivizes unsustainable growth at all costs.
Maybe if you had an already rich individual keeping his company private and making an active effort to not be evil. But come on, let's be real...
That's like asking "This company's stock is doing well. Why not dump everything you've got into it?"
Apple is diversifying their income stream, and leaving money on the table if they don't take it.
That ceiling number varies according to how well they can target.
On the other hand, Apple has some amount of iPhone et al. sales that occur because they respect privacy.
Eventually, increasing the former will decrease the latter. I think Android shows us the link is weak (because most people don't care, if tracking is hidden), but it exists.
My impression would be that right now, Apple is targeting far less than their customers would allow (while still buying equivalent amounts of hardware).
The issue is +5 or +10 years, when Apple has a few bad product launches and needs to find a revenue stream, and selling a piece of their privacy soul to juice revenue is an easy bargain to make.
Google's central evil was allowing ad revenue to metastasize and dominate the company, which in turn meant that ad execs have more pull than is healthy.
Apple doesn’t.
It’s really that simple.
Displaying an ad next to search results based on the search query for example is similarly benign.
Enough with carrying water for a megacorp that makes money from selling advertising services.
On the other hand, I very much await sideloading to be forced out of Apple by the EU.
This is true, but many criticisms are valid. Apple News is user-tracking adware that cannot be uninstalled on MacOS. You cannot install an app on any of the iDevices without telling Apple. You cannot get your GPS location on an iDevice without telling Apple. Apple is spending considerable resources growing their ad business, so expect this to grow worse over time; and combined with Apple's inclination to deny user control, there is no way to opt out without opting out entirely of iDevices.
So Apple's privacy perspective is way better than Android's. Could it be better? Of course, and I'm fine with trying to pressure them to do more for protecting our privacy, but between the 2, it's not even close, Apple is WAY more private with your data than Google will ever be.
The difference is you can avoid the tracking easily. This is a direct result of prioritizing user control. You can install apps without telling anybody, you can get your GPS location without telling anybody, and so on. Apple, by denying user control, makes privacy worse for users who care, and it will only get worse as Apple ramps up its services business.
Many of the same people who see no issue with this mock and insult Microsoft for promoting Edge etc., in Windows. And will pretzel themselves into explaining how "that's different".
Billboards still require tracking. If you had the option of putting a billboard up in 1 of 2 neighborhoods and it would get 10k impressions in either location which one would you choose? The optimal strategy is not to pick randomly. The optimal strategy is to predict the conversion rate of both locations. In order to do that you need to investigate who is likely to see your billboard and learn about their interests to see if they would be likely to be interested.
I don't doubt that billboards are placed with some careful thought, but tracking is certainly not "required" - some aggregate stats about an area should work, especially as there isn't much feedback on who saw the billboard and bought a product etc.
What billboard is tracking individuals?
Billboards that identify car types are still legal AFAIK.
https://www.bmediagroup.com/news/vehicle-recognition-billboa...
I haven't seen a billboard that would follow me around before. Placing them at popular location depends on existing data (or often just plain-ass thinking, like obviously a hub in the middle of the town will have more people see it compared to the middle of nowhere), and only very very indirectly generates any sort of new data (e.g. if you only place a single ad in a specific place and can correlate that placement with an increase in product sales.. but that is thoroughly unrealistic and I only write it to be nitpicky with myself).
I've never seen a png file follow me around either. It's the people who are selling the advertising space that are doing the tracking. They want to show how valuable of a location they can offer you.
> Starting in iOS 14.5, iPadOS 14.5, and tvOS 14.5, users are prompted to decide whether to opt-in or out of IDFA sharing before apps can query it. This choice can be altered in Settings.[2][3] In May, 2021, Verizon-owned advertisement analytics company Flurry Analytics reported that 96% of US users opted out of IDFA sharing.[4]
And since you brought out the opt-out option, one can also block Facebook's trackers through uBlock and/or DNS filters.
The defaults are what matters. From the same Wikipedia article,
> Users can opt-out of IDFA via the "Limit Ad Tracking" (LAT) setting (and an estimated 20% do).
80% users never change the defaults.
Apple’s own apps don’t need to display the prompt because as per their privacy policy they don’t collect or use information for tracking purposes (which is also visible in the privacy labels of their apps in the App Store).
This is the privacy policy [0] of an example of their app, Apple News. I quote:
"Advertising
In order to deliver great content to you from leading publishers, Apple News is ad supported. If the Personalized Ads setting is on, Apple’s advertising platform may use information about your account, the topics and categories of stories you read, and publications you follow, subscribe to, or turn on notifications for to serve ads that are more relevant to you. We may also use information about your subscriptions to personalize your ads on the App Store."
In this case, you're referring to "Data Linked to You". "Data Linked to You" is based on the account you used to sign in to the News app + your activity within the news app - to create suggestions within the News app.
This does not allow Apple to track you from the News app e.g. access the IDFA of the device, sharing it with third parties or other apps.
They claim they do not share this data with other third parties but they sure as hell use it for their own advertising ecosystem.
Trust me bro.
If it's so clear that users don't want to be tracked online, why don't we just ban it altogether? It would solve a lot of problems.
Apple doing it unilaterally on their platform might invite anti-trust concerns.
There has been a setting to turn the IDFA completely off for well over a decade.
Previously, apps on iOS or Android had access to the unchanging hardware ID number of the device.
> Apple notes that it will be phasing out access to the unique device identifier, or UDID, on iOS devices such as iPhones and iPads.
This is a big deal, especially for any mobile ad networks, game networks or any app which relies on the UDID to identify users.
https://techcrunch.com/2011/08/19/apple-ios-5-phasing-out-ud...
Apple replaced the hardware ID with a random number (the IDFA) that could be reset by the user at any time, or turned off completely.
Google eventually followed suit, although any app that received the. READ_PHONE_STATE permission was immune to the protections.
> READ_PHONE_STATE is one of the Android permissions categorized as dangerous. This is because it “allows read only access to phone state, including the phone number of the device, current cellular network information, the status of any ongoing calls, and a list of any Phone Accounts registered on the device”.
... it is often requested and misused by other types of applications that do not have any reason for needing it, including malware.
https://file.scirp.org/Html/1-6101658_80235.htm
The recent changes at Apple were to make the IDFA opt out by default and to track the permission to use it per app instead of per device.
Facebook on the other hand, creates a grand central repository of everything there is to know about you and sells it to whoever wants to pay. Just like Google.
So tracking might not be their business but they can very easily start a big business.
the way i see it, the worst case scenario is you get an Ad for something you might actually like...
I Myanmar fingerprinting helped the military find dissidents, the the US Cambridge Analytica managed to get enough data to influence an election, and there’s many more examples.
Besides, if a private company can sell access to you through ads, less benevolent actors can use that access for other more nefarious practices.
It is 2023 and you don't need ads to influence people. E.g, TikTok not acting on dangerous trends.
https://www.vox.com/technology/2023/6/1/23742757/kia-hyundai...
That's hardly the worst case scenario when there are countless stories like "Facebook Allowed Advertisers to Target Users Interested in “White Genocide” — Even in Wake of Pittsburgh Massacre"[1].
There's also the time Facebook's targeted ads were used to facilitate genocide in Myanmar[2][3].
[1] https://theintercept.com/2018/11/02/facebook-ads-white-supre...
[2] https://www.globalwitness.org/en/campaigns/digital-threats/r...
[3] https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2022/09/myanmar-faceb...
What's wrong with that? The more interests available the better ads can be targetted.
>There's also the time Facebook's targeted ads were used to facilitate genocide in Myanmar
The article doesn't mention ads were used. It just sounds like Facebook was connecting people based off a common interested people shared.
There are more important things in this world than money. Surely we can all agree that "better ad targeting" isn't worth human lives?
Data is also shared with data brokers (Acxiom and the like) which collect unknown quantities of data about you, linked to your actual identity. That data can then affect whether you get a loan or a job.
Most importantly, we don't know what's done with the data and have no control should we want it to be forgotten.
2) Someone following you around writing notes about everything you do doesn’t stop being creepy-as-fuck harassment just because it’s online and “at scale”. And actually a lot of this transcends the Internet and gets connected with real world activities, blurring the difference even more. It’s wrong when someone does it to a single person for some personal reason, and it’s even more wrong when a megacorp does it to everyone to make a buck.
3) It harms the function of markets. Massive nearly-impossible-for-a-small-business-to-attain data-moats protect monopolies and discourage competition. It adds to the already-harmful-to-market-function information imbalance between individuals and companies.
If someone showed up at your house with a folder about a loved one, turns out they had been following them around town, tracking their movements, taking pictures, reading their emails, etc. I don’t think you’d be two thrilled, but hey they’re only going to use that info to target ads…pinky swear…
What's the worst that could happen... sheesh why don't we not find out for a change.
Watch the 10hr long interview documentary called Shoah and listen to how trains, buildings and institutions were used to do 'the deed'.
It was impossible to tell what was going to happen ahead of time for the victims, they assumed they were heading to a labour camp and being assigned a block of soap and sent to the showers was a good thing...
Why does this even need to be said! Do we not know our dark european history?
Conserving the known good we have, is not an 'immediate fail', as many futurists would indulge in saying...
At least you know now where you can discover one reason (of many) as to why some people are wary of collective control.
Your question is either super naive or you have a stake in facebook or apple.
the things I don't want getting into anyone's hands are things like: financial info, address, phone number, social security, my middle name, birthday, etc. none of those things are stuff I share with a social network.