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A comment on Apple's privacy feature costs ad companies millions.

Re:Apple's privacy feature costs ad companies millions by samsonradu on Tuesday January 09, 2018 @10:18AM (#16106705)
Pop the champagne bottle on this news. The ad industry has been consistently sucking money out of smaller content producers and consolidated behemoths like FB and Google. Apple being the only browser player who can afford to do such a move, how is this not good news?

Edit

Waiting for Microsoft to move next

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Re:Apple's privacy feature costs ad companies millions by nopriorarrests on Tuesday January 09, 2018 @10:35AM (#16106878)
Microsoft started doing ads in Windows 10 and, more importantly, they have bought LinkedIn. One of the most obvious ways to monetize it, other than paid services of course, is to deliver highly targeted ads. They know your age, your occupation and can guess your income more or less precisely.

I won't hold my breath.

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Re:Apple's privacy feature costs ad companies millions by user5994461 on Wednesday January 10, 2018 @02:04AM (#16113052)
Linkedin has companies and recruiters pay a huge premium to reach you. They shouldn't need stupid advertising.
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Re:Apple's privacy feature costs ad companies millions by clarkenheim on Tuesday January 09, 2018 @10:23AM (#16106755)
The features in Safari only harms the smaller companies who's domain is not in the visited sites list. the behemoths like Google who always have a first party cookie dont have a problem with the feature and therefore get even more control over online advertising.
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Re:Apple's privacy feature costs ad companies millions by drb91 on Tuesday January 09, 2018 @08:23PM (#16111824)
This attitude is exactly what makes the ad networks money. You really think thise small sites will continue without a sustainable source of real, verifiable revenue?

People who make content worth something to me should get that money honestly, not baiting me onto the site to get ad revenue and subtly lowering my quality of living and happiness.

Nobody deserves ad revenue.

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Re:Apple's privacy feature costs ad companies millions by IBM on Tuesday January 09, 2018 @02:58PM (#16109368)
The consolidation of online advertising is a real problem, but I don't think Apple should be making product decisions to preserve competition in the ad market. Preserving competition is literally the job of antitrust regulators and that is the avenue to address concentration in markets. Fortunately they seem to be waking up to this.
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Re:Apple's privacy feature costs ad companies millions by samsonradu on Tuesday January 09, 2018 @10:41AM (#16106930)
I agree that it harms smaller companies (though some are not that small), but I see this as a big step in the right direction. I think the big players can only be stopped by legal means anyway.
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Re:Apple's privacy feature costs ad companies millions by ThorAndZeus on Tuesday January 09, 2018 @10:51AM (#16107013)
I agree this is definitely a step in the right direction. At very least it (hopefully) makes the public at large aware of the issue.
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Re:Apple's privacy feature costs ad companies millions by scarface74 on Tuesday January 09, 2018 @11:04AM (#16107104)
Not if people install a content blocker in Safari. Especially since the same blockers also work in the newer WKWebView that's embedded into apps.
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Re:Apple's privacy feature costs ad companies millions by eridius on Tuesday January 09, 2018 @06:31PM (#16111166)
Nitpick: The blockers work in SFSafariBrowserViewController, but they're not installed in WKWebView (you can of course install your own blockers into your WKWebView, but you don't get the ones from the app store; this makes sense because otherwise there's too much potential for screwing with webviews that show content curated by the containing app).
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Re:Apple's privacy feature costs ad companies millions by goalieca on Tuesday January 09, 2018 @12:07PM (#16107663)
Highly recommend installing Firefox focus. It will integrate its blockers into safari.
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Re:Apple's privacy feature costs ad companies millions by jasonkostempski on Tuesday January 09, 2018 @03:23PM (#16109645)
What do you think is holding Firefox back from doing the same?
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Re:Apple's privacy feature costs ad companies millions by starsinspace on Tuesday January 09, 2018 @03:36PM (#16109793)
Good question... I often wonder why Mozilla talks so much about privacy and user-rights, but then in reality does so little in Firefox to implement them by technical means. Why isn't their tracking-blocking the best among major browsers? Why is Firefox still so easily fingerprintable, as confirmed by EFF's Panopticlick?

But then again when you know the recent stories like Firefox+Cliqz... it doesn't really leave questions open...

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Re:Apple's privacy feature costs ad companies millions by stinkytaco on Tuesday January 09, 2018 @04:11PM (#16110122)
Well, they are transparent about it: https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/privacy/firefox-cliqz/

I agree that setting default options that respect privacy is good, but I also feel Mozilla has struck the balance between "best customer experience and a revenue stream", plus "informing the customer so they can make decisions".

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Re:Apple's privacy feature costs ad companies millions by starsinspace on Tuesday January 09, 2018 @04:22PM (#16110232)
> but I also feel Mozilla has struck the balance between [...]

My impression is that those who don't care about privacy have already switched to Chrome long ago, and see little reason to go back. And from those who do care, an increasing number (including me) is considering leaving FireFox due decreased trust in Mozilla's self-proclaimed privacy standing. I do wonder which target audience will be left to use FireFox after all then.

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Re:Apple's privacy feature costs ad companies millions by stinkytaco on Tuesday January 09, 2018 @04:52PM (#16110496)
I'm not sure what's left after Chrome and FF. Safari if you are on a Mac and IE on Windows (though IE seems imperfect). I suppose you can use a FF derivative like Ice Weasel. For my money, Mozilla is still the best option and with so many free options out there, it's hard to keep up unless you play the game somewhat. Mozilla's most important role is a seat at the web standards table and if they wither on the vine because users jump to Chrome because it "just works", they will lose that seat.
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Re:Apple's privacy feature costs ad companies millions by manmal on Wednesday January 10, 2018 @02:58AM (#16113230)
The number of people who care about their privacy in the general population is quite small. We in our tech bubble believe that everybody cares, or should care, but most are satisfied if they find a searched page by entering it “into the Google”.

Those with FF installed it 10y ago when it was sexy, and stuck with it because they are resistant to change.

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Re:Apple's privacy feature costs ad companies millions by aphextron on Tuesday January 09, 2018 @03:36PM (#16109787)
>What do you think is holding Firefox back from doing the same?

Probably the fact that Google pays them billions of dollars.

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Re:Apple's privacy feature costs ad companies millions by Chaebixi on Tuesday January 09, 2018 @04:10PM (#16110109)
> Probably the fact that Google pays them billions of dollars.

Isn't that over? Their default search engine is Yahoo now, IIRC.

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Re:Apple's privacy feature costs ad companies millions by 2xlbuds on Tuesday January 09, 2018 @04:27PM (#16110268)
No, they made a new deal with google and ended theirs with Yahoo late last year.

http://www.zdnet.com/article/googles-back-its-firefoxs-defau...

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Re:Apple's privacy feature costs ad companies millions by ovao on Tuesday January 09, 2018 @04:25PM (#16110257)
Google is now the default search provider in U.S. and Canada.
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Re:Apple's privacy feature costs ad companies millions by samsonradu on Tuesday January 09, 2018 @03:34PM (#16109766)
That’s a good question. I’d assume they have to little of a market share and is too fragile to piss off anybody. But this is just a guess so looking forward to other opinions on this.
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Re:Apple's privacy feature costs ad companies millions by sercand on Tuesday January 09, 2018 @07:02PM (#16111373)
Firefox has "Tracking Protection"* setting under "Privacy & Security".

* https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/tracking-protection

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Re:Apple's privacy feature costs ad companies millions by dingdongding on Tuesday January 09, 2018 @06:40PM (#16111219)
Firefox is doing it but as a separate browser for iOS. Wonder why not on desktop yet. https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/focus
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Re:Apple's privacy feature costs ad companies millions by Avamander on Tuesday January 09, 2018 @10:41AM (#16106936)
pop

Though, Google getting hit and Google making internet specs, I don't have any doubt they'll add something there to track.

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