Apple is becoming an ad company despite privacy claims

by Doolwind • 4 years ago

111 70 4 years ago

You can be an ad company and respect your users privacy. They’re not mutually exclusive as the headline seems to suggest.

smoldesu3• 4 years ago

Can you be an ad company and respect your users, though? Google and Microsoft failed to do this, not because they didn't protect their user's identity but because they kept squeezing for more and more cash when the UX was already hurting. I'm not confident that Apple can resist those temptations (judging by the way they treat their own native advertising).

Someone2• 4 years ago

Adding advertising likely will cost them hardware sales. if so, their hardware branch might have enough clout to keep their advertising branch under control.

Phrased another way: adding a few billions of advertising revenue wouldn’t make Apple an advertising company, just as selling smartphones hasn’t made Google a hardware company

colordrops2• 4 years ago

Unsubstantiated claims can be responded to with unsubstantiated replies.

Being an ad company and respecting user privacy are completely at odds. The incentives are misaligned.

noizejoy7• 4 years ago

How about companies that purely advertise via:

* bill boards and similar

* printed media ads

* ads that respond to keyword searches - without relying on any other user data

* display ads on topical websites (e.g. guitar ads on guitar related websites) - without relying on any other user data

UncleEntity• 4 years ago

Had anyone actually substantiated the claim about the unconfirmed non-disabling device ID beyond a single packet and theorizing about encrypted packets?

Because the whole article is based on this evidence and peoples’ desire to dog pile on apple.

uoaei3• 4 years ago

Are there any examples of this being done?

fullshark• 4 years ago

Duck Duck Go?

kccqzy• 4 years ago

It's all a matter of definitions. For example, Google doesn't sell user data to third parties, does that make Google respect user privacy a lot better than other ad companies? Sure yes. But Google often takes user data from one product and uses it for targeting in a different product, and it doesn't respect user privacy as much as a non-ad company.

jks2• 4 years ago

https://www.ethicalads.io

I mean, I haven't audited their systems and haven't seen any reports from independent auditors, but at least they are making direct statements about privacy that the other ad networks aren't.

pifm_guy• 4 years ago

be an ad company and respect your users privacy

As an ad broker, you usually cannot. If you respect the users privacy, and another competing ad broker does not, then the competitor will make better ad placement decisions, get a higher click through rate, and give advertisers better ROI. Therefore, the ad broker that respects privacy will get less and less business and die.

The only way an ad broker can respect privacy is if they can prevent any other ad broker operating in the same marketplace. Ie. You need to be a monopoly in your niche.

Apple can do this by hobbling any other ad provider operating on iPhones or targeting iPhone user through their app store rules.

account-5• 4 years ago

I've always wondered how apple gets away with its monopolies when other companies don't/can't.

alexbeloi• 4 years ago

They aren't mutually exclusive, but their incentives are opposed, usually the incentives bringing in the money win.

ksec• 4 years ago

Context matters. In an ideal, sane, and rational situation, Yes.

But not when Apple has themselves contributed, if not started the whole Ads, or Tracking is evil campaign.

nawgz• 4 years ago

Ads are taking over the world because they're actually just a propaganda vehicle and control is the only thing worth money

Regulation is too toothless to do anything about it so I think we'll naturally see all corporations evolve this way

ogsalmanxx• 4 years ago

This makes sense…

medion• 4 years ago

Sad and true. Attention and value extraction from every aspect of human life is the only goal in corporatism. It’s never enough for these companies, endless growth is all that matters.

uoaei3• 4 years ago

control is the only thing worth money

Indeed. Look at anything you or anyone spends money on. It all comes down to controlling your environment. The environment that corporations inhabit is structured in such a way as to demand user attention and data exploitation in order to survive.

sfe22• 4 years ago

And why would government fix it if ads are propaganda tool? Shouldn’t it start using it to advance its interest and fix bigger issues?

UltraViolence• 4 years ago

You know Apple's mantra: "Don't leave money on the table."

I'm totally not surprised about this, although it will hurt their privacy USP (unique selling point).

denkmoon4• 4 years ago

Please no. There is no refuge from the ads. Not for all the money in the world, apparently. This is the worst timeline.

Can I pay 2x to get an ad-free iPhone? 3x? Surely there is some point where it makes sense to sell an ad free phone for those who _need_ to not see ads. They won't even take my money ;_;

shrimp_emoji• 4 years ago

The only way out is buying devices on which you can flash and use OS/software that was built without profit as a goal (e.g., free software).

Anything short of that and you're just sitting under the Sword of Damocles of value extraction, ripe to be used and abused (within personal tolerance or otherwise).

denkmoon4• 4 years ago

I know you are right, but I've tried doing the de-googled Android thing (when I was an Android user even). It sucks, hard. Android is a pretty bad UX platform to begin with, and trying to make it work with free software is just... awful.

I can't contribute because I only have so many hours in a day. I'd rather pay. I'd pay a boatload for an operating system that replaces Android with something that has a good user experience and has no ads.

reustle• 4 years ago

It sounds similar to movie streaming vs piracy.

rapind• 4 years ago

Nope. You become an edge case which now has to be supported which likely costs more than you’re paying (except to a smaller efficient business). If you pay more and more you just become more and more of an outlier.

the-anarchist2• 4 years ago

Sir, have some self respect. If you're willing to pay several thousands USD for a phone, I don't believe the ads are the actual issue here.

denkmoon4• 4 years ago

lol what.

I don't want to see ads. I will pay to not see ads. I earn well and can afford to spend a lot of money on making my life less bad/more good. Due to the way the world is, my phone is one of the most used items I own. I view ads as one of the biggest uncontrollable annoyances in my life. Yet I have no option to pay to not see ads.

In my humblest of opinions, those who accept ads are the ones without self respect. Please share what you think the problem is though.

stephc_int13• 4 years ago

With an accountant at the head of the company, what would you expect?

They also have too much power, too much money, not enough competition and a deteriorating company culture.

But aside from their dominance, they also have a few gems, their bet on ARM is paying off big time.

ml_basics• 4 years ago

a deteriorating company culture

Could you elaborate on this? Genuine question, because how Apple is so successful is a complete mystery to me.

I worked there during the pandemic and my experience was that there is no company culture, it's just a bunch of totally siloed small teams. Culture grows as a result of people speaking to each other, which I didn't really see happening.

Could be that I was in a particularly siloed part though.

NBJack• 4 years ago

Silo'd teams that don't talk to each other? That sounds like a sign the culture is already deteriorating, or the lack of communication is inherently part of the culture.

I'd be curious as to how the iOS team would be independent of the hardware team or the app dev experience teams. I suspect your team experience was a corner case.

frankjr• 4 years ago

Who is clicking on these ads? Or do companies pay for the ad to just show up? I have never in my life intentionally clicked on an ad.

seaal• 4 years ago

I just recently clicked on an App Store ad for the first time. It was on a desperate search for an IPTV that didn’t suck.

I was hoping it might be good considering the dev was paying for ads, it was not.

asadotzler• 4 years ago

Not all ads are about click-through. Impressions can be a goal by itself for some who are seeking brand recognition benefits in addition to or even as an alternative to clicks or installs.

jcadam• 4 years ago

I wish they would spin off their hardware business. Or at least their Mac business.

secretprocess• 4 years ago

Funny, if you make it to the end of the article the entire thing is an ad for Proton.

ViceCitySage• 4 years ago

Apple's "privacy" is really just data protection from other competing companies. It was just another marketing campaign to maintain their positive image.

yarg• 4 years ago

It's the carcinisation of the modern corporation.

noizejoy7• 4 years ago

Lovely free advertising for Proton. Very smart blog post, since numerous employees and fans of Apple competitors, as well as anyone who dislikes Apple for whatever reason, has plenty motivation to upvote this post.

Also: Calling someone an ad company when approximately 1% of revenue seems to be generated by ads would seem quite a stretch.

Also: Being tracked while on someone’s property isn’t exactly the same as tracking someone across unrelated properties.

Also: Every company with a decent CRM system and culture has been tracking all kinds of (often personal) details about their (potential) customers gathered from their interactions and whatever sources they could get their hands on. This has been going on since before the Internet was widely used.

But while this blog post (attack ad?) doesn’t seem to have that much meaningful substance, it’s also kind of just doing the same to Apple as Apple often does to others.

politelemon• 4 years ago

Also: Yet I see many comments rushing to perform mental gymnastics on their behalf.

There are several attributes here that match up exactly with other companies that are somehow vilified. The blog post is on point, the user have been in denial for a long time and will continue to be.

noizejoy7• 4 years ago

Also: Yet I see many comments rushing to perform mental gymnastics on their behalf. There are several attributes here that match up exactly with other companies that are somehow vilified. The blog post is on point, the user have been in denial for a long time and will continue to be.

I’m all in favour of calling out Apple on their crap. But Apple’s evils aren’t the same as Google’s and Meta’s evils.

I just prefer my conversations and criticisms to be more nuanced, rather than brushing everyone with the same simplistic brush.

Also: Calling users to be in denial is a cheap attack. The reality is, that all of us users live in a world filled with nothing but imperfect choices. — So all we can do is pick our poison according to our personal priorities and preferences at any given time.

paulryanrogers3• 4 years ago

Also: Being tracked while on someone’s property isn’t exactly the same as tracking someone across unrelated properties.

Do you consider Apple-made devices property of their buyers or do they forever remain property of Apple?

noizejoy7• 4 years ago

Do you consider Apple-made devices property of their buyers or do they forever remain property of Apple?

The original post talked about advertising on cloud properties, not devices. And that was the context of my post.

So I’m puzzled why you’d be moving the conversation to the topic of devices.

mrmister00• 4 years ago

Proton mail doing a little advertising of their own through a blog post. lol

jks2• 4 years ago

NextDNS has a "Native tracking protection" blocklist for Apple. Looking at my logs, it has blocked iadsdk.apple.com and many subdomains, and supportmetrics, securemetrics, books-analytics-events, weather-analytics-events (all under apple.com).

kaba04• 4 years ago

Is there any actual substance to these posts, or is this just the usual scare tactics? Because something similar is posted almost daily.

Besides perhaps an Apple Music “ad”, I haven’t seen anything factual.

irtefa• 4 years ago

This is sadly the beginning of the end of Apple.

grahamjperrin• 4 years ago

A somewhat careless, reactionary blog post.

"… On Nov. 20, a pair of iOS developers known as Mysk discovered that Apple has a specific identifier (a “directory services identifier” or DSID) for every Apple iCloud account. …"

– as if Mysk discovered this. Not so.

DSID-related analysis was performed more than seven months earlier – by a group of five researchers, including four at the University of Oxford.

Konrad Kollnig, Anastasia Shuba, Max Van Kleek, Reuben Binns, and Nigel Shadbolt. 2022. Goodbye Tracking? Impact of iOS App Tracking Transparency and Privacy Labels. In 2022 ACM Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency (FAccT '22). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 508–520. https://doi.org/10.1145/3531146.3533116

(Version 1 was submitted on 7th April 2022.)

Apple is becoming an ad company despite privacy claims

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