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A comment on Apple's privacy push cost Meta $10B. Parent comment

Re:Apple's privacy push cost Meta $10B by d12bb on Friday February 04, 2022 @07:03AM (#30205729)
This is double bullshit:

1. All Apple did was giving users a choice (and they should've done that ages ago). If users didn't mind being tracked, or liked the "more relevant adverts" tracking provides, they would not have opted out.

2. Google is subject to exactly the same rules as Facebook is. Their apps have to ask for permission to track as Facebook's do, and Safari (which enforces privacy in many ways, too) is the same for google.com as for facebook.com.

They pay Apple for being search provider in Safari and Siri the same way they pay Mozilla, because searches mean data and displayed adverts.

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Re:Apple's privacy push cost Meta $10B by strulovich on Friday February 04, 2022 @09:47AM (#30207364)
Part of the issue is the language. Apple used the “ask no to track language”, but when it came to their own services chose “turn off personalized ads”:

https://9to5mac.com/2021/09/02/apple-personalized-ads-target...

Not saying tracking shouldn’t be stopped. But remember Apple is much less privacy aware when it’s their wallet.

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Re:Apple's privacy push cost Meta $10B by brimble on Friday February 04, 2022 @10:41AM (#30208195)
Is the issue the language? It's not clear from the language or the article that Apple's version disables any tracking at all. It seems like two different things.
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Re:Apple's privacy push cost Meta $10B by thebean11 on Friday February 04, 2022 @10:49AM (#30208322)
How could you possibly server personalized ads without tracking?
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Re:Apple's privacy push cost Meta $10B by brimble on Friday February 04, 2022 @11:28AM (#30208922)
Why would disabling personalized ads necessarily disable tracking? [EDIT] Consider: toggling the display of something does not necessarily change the underlying data, or data collection, behavior.

Why would all data used to personalize ads have to be tracking? It could also be things like purchase data from the very service that's advertising to you. Halting collection—not use for ad personalization, but collection—of that would go beyond what even I would consider tracking (and I think most of what goes on in the ad world today should simply be illegal). It would be possible to personalize ads only based on this kind of thing—in fact, that's what the article seems to imply is going on, at least in part.

So there are at least two ways that setting might mean something different from one that disables tracking.

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Re:Apple's privacy push cost Meta $10B by thebean11 on Friday February 04, 2022 @11:32AM (#30208991)
I think we are coming at it from different directions. You need tracking for personalized ads, you don't need personalized ads for tracking.
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Re:Apple's privacy push cost Meta $10B by brimble on Friday February 04, 2022 @11:49AM (#30209230)
Sort of. Again, it's possible to personalize ads without tracking, unless tracking means "collecting literally any data, including order history for a logged-in user" or things like selecting ads based on geography for an address that you provided, not even GPS tracking or something like that.

It is entirely possible that the settings do totally different things, so the different language isn't some kind of trick. I think it's likely that picking either of those phrases and using it for both would result in the description of the respective settings being less accurate.

Swap the one that applies to applications to "disable personalized ads", rather than "disable tracking".

But it doesn't do that—does it? It disables (a certain kind of) tracking. The tracking may not even be used for ads. Apple has no way to guarantee that. You may still see personalized ads based on other data.

Make the Apple one "disable tracking" rather than "disable personalized ads". But the setting might not do that at all, while still disabling personalization. In fact, the ad personalization may not have been based on tracking in the first place, and even if it were, disabling personalization could very well leave the tracking in place.

The accusation was that Apple's describing the same thing two ways to give themselves an advantage, but I'd say the settings very likely do not do the same thing.

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Re:Apple's privacy push cost Meta $10B by shuckles on Friday February 04, 2022 @11:46AM (#30209193)
No you don’t need tracking for personalized ads. Apple defines tracking as sharing information about the user between distinct 3rd parties, while it personalizes ads based on your behavior within Apple’s own services.
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Re:Apple's privacy push cost Meta $10B by brimble on Friday February 04, 2022 @11:57AM (#30209338)
Right. Consider:

>>>

What do you do for a living?

"I track animals."

Oh, cool, like you're a hunter or in animal control or something? Trekking all over the wilds, keen eye for detail, grand adventures, lots of mud and amazing stories?

"No, I manage a zoo. I track the zoo animals in a spreadsheet. I sit in an office."

>>>

AFAIK Apple means the hunting kind, when they write "tracking". As in following a user around and watching them while they use services & apps that you don't operate.

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Re:Apple's privacy push cost Meta $10B by pessimizer on Friday February 04, 2022 @10:47AM (#30208288)
That's definitely not why they pay Mozilla. Being the default search engine in a browser that a minuscule percentage of the market uses, and then the vast majority of those only use because they're hostile to Google, isn't worth shit.

If I go to my bodega once a month to spend $80 on sticks of $2 incense, it's because I'm buying drugs.

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Re:Apple's privacy push cost Meta $10B by treis on Friday February 04, 2022 @09:38AM (#30207248)
Google doesn't really have apps though. Their users see ads through the browser and so, from what I understand, are unaffected by the change.
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Re:Apple's privacy push cost Meta $10B by falcolas on Friday February 04, 2022 @10:01AM (#30207570)
Not counting gmail, calendar, or the docs/drive suite, Google has >12 applications on the app store. Apple's "search" is pretty crappy WRT seeing what a dev has released (or at least the Google LLC "dev"), hence the range.

And ads definitely show up in YouTube and such.

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Re:Apple's privacy push cost Meta $10B by treis on Friday February 04, 2022 @10:39AM (#30208158)
I didn't say they had no apps. I said they don't really have apps and they don't. Their main product is search and it's accessed through the browser.

If what FB is saying is true then the move by Apple helps Google. There's more or less two options for online advertising. So if companies spend less on FB then they're probably going to spend those dollars with Google

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Re:Apple's privacy push cost Meta $10B by falcolas on Friday February 04, 2022 @10:54AM (#30208400)
I give you Google, the app:

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/google/id284815942

Google search, in an iOS app. Not everyone uses it, sure, but has over 341k reviews. Facebook, as a point of comparison, only has about 4x more reviews at 1.2M. 4x is a lot, but it's also a lot less than I'd expect over something primarily used in the browser.

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Re:Apple's privacy push cost Meta $10B by reaperducer on Friday February 04, 2022 @10:04AM (#30207607)
Apple's "search" is pretty crappy WRT seeing what a dev has released

Click on the dev's name and it shows everything that dev has published.

https://apps.apple.com/us/developer/google-llc/id281956209

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Re:Apple's privacy push cost Meta $10B by falcolas on Friday February 04, 2022 @10:20AM (#30207841)
I did (on my phone, fwiw), and it only showed 12, and not their big ones.
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Re:Apple's privacy push cost Meta $10B by reaperducer on Friday February 04, 2022 @10:38AM (#30208151)
Perhaps because on your phone it shows only phone apps?
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Re:Apple's privacy push cost Meta $10B by falcolas on Friday February 04, 2022 @10:50AM (#30208328)
Well, it didn't show Gmail, Calendar, Drive, Sheets, or Docs. All of which are Google apps available on the phone.
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Re:Apple's privacy push cost Meta $10B by oarsinsync on Friday February 04, 2022 @07:11AM (#30205790)
> 1. All Apple did was giving users a choice (and they should've done that ages ago). If users didn't mind being tracked, or liked the "more relevant adverts" tracking provides, they would not have opted out.

The choice existed for a long time. What Apple did was make that choice front and centre for everyone, as opposed to being buried in a settings menu for privacy-conscious people to hunt down.

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