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Facebook says Apple’s iOS 14 changes could hurt its ad targeting

194 points by nojito 6y ago

jeremiahlee 6y ago
Good! Working as intended.
- kgwxd 6y ago
  But what about small businesses? Targeted advertising is their lifeline in these trying times. /s
  - EGreg 6y ago
    What’s this /s ? /s
    - dvtrn 6y ago
      Used to indicate sarcasm on other sites.
yjftsjthsd-h 6y ago
That's... The idea, yes. > Our view is that Facebook and targeted ads are a lifeline for small businesses, especially in the time of Covid, and we are concerned that aggressive platform policies will cut at that lifeline at a time when it is so essential to small business growth and recovery," Wehner said. "We need to trample privacy to save small businesses because covid!" is a take I did not expect to read today. Also Facebook acting like it's altruistically helping those poor little businesses - how terrible that Apple is making it harder for them to give Facebook money!
- bryanrasmussen 6y ago
  I am surprised that they didn't turn it into a think of the children thing instead.
  - yardie 6y ago
    "If you take our ads away only the criminals will run ads!"
    - classified 6y ago
      One could argue that this is exactly what is happening already. Except that what FB does is still considered "legal".
  - willis936 6y ago
    That wouldn't be as brazenly Orwellian. They have appearances to maintain.
  - isoprophlex 6y ago
    Will somebody please think of the children errrr no i mean small businesses!!
    - other_herbert 6y ago
      How will the children buy ice cream if we don't tell them where their local ice cream shop is!
  - noisy_boy 6y ago
    Small business are run by people with small children.
- princevegeta89 6y ago
  I'm sure the Facebook paid some random guy to say these words.
  - the__prestige 6y ago
    It's not some random guy. It's their CFO.
- ucha 6y ago
  That's somewhat true. The advent of targeted ads allowed lots of niche companies to thrive and compete with the established behemoths that have an oligopoly on shelf space. Internet advertising essentially launched the direct-to-consumer model that's so threatening to the P&Gs and Unilevers out there.
  - MrGando 6y ago
    The big companies also use targeted ads, but with orders of magnitude bigger budgets. It's the big companies who have forced the small business to spend on targeted ads or die. Disclaimer: Worked on a successful ad-tech company for ~2.5 years.
    - AlexandrB 6y ago
      Love it when big companies spend money on targeting ads towards users searching for their smaller competitors and those competitors now have to spend money to get their own search results back. I'm sure there's a Facebook equivalent of this bullshit.
  - donkeyd 6y ago
    It's also a lie, because Facebook forces these companies to buy ads by not showing their posts to followers.
    - Phanyxx 6y ago
      Slowly killing off organic reach on business pages was a dirty move, but still, Facebook's not "forcing" them to do anything.
      - krn 6y ago
        Well, if a company wants to reach its own followers on Facebook, it is forced to pay for that.
  - xondono 6y ago
    Real online communities like specialty webs or youtube channels are a WAY better value compared to running fb ads
- 12xo 6y ago
  They have such a perverted sense of purpose.
- dbbk 6y ago
  I mean, both positions have merit. I don't see targeted advertising as this evil notion that it seems a lot of people do. For small businesses, being able to get your message to the right people for as cheap as possible can be make-or-break.
  - sroussey 6y ago
    So the ends justify the means, whatever that may be?
    - CathedralBorrow 6y ago
      > So the ends justify the means, whatever that may be? Do you honestly believe that is a fair summary of their words?
      - toiletfuneral 6y ago
        well op said they don't think tracking is evil because it helps businesses...so that's pretty much how I interpreted it as well what are we missing?
      - yjftsjthsd-h 6y ago
        Yes; the claim was that targeted ads are important because they let small businesses survive. That seems exactly like arguing that the ends (help small businesses) justifies the means (targeted ads, with the prerequisite tracking).
        CathedralBorrow 6y ago
        You left out the "whatever it may be" part.
        sroussey 6y ago
        What ever fingerprinting, dark pattern, technical trick, lie, etc
- hughw 6y ago
  Their complaint isn't that it won't be possible to track you. It's that it won't be possible to track you without your permission.
  - ViViDboarder 6y ago
    Exactly! If they really believe that their ads product is in the best interest of their users, they can convince them to opt in. The subtext here is that they know it’s not and many users will opt out.
    - lightgreen 6y ago
      Each 100ms delay, each form, each extra page makes service lose percents of users (any service, Google, Netflix, Amazon). A company can convince users to opt-in, but it will lose quite a lot of people, even those who don't really care if they are tracked or not. Simple because users want to use the service, not become legal and technical experts. Understanding how all of it works is really hard. Their ads product is indeed beneficial to users: users get relevant personalized localized ads (instead of boring ads which can still be seen on TV or paper magazines) and they get better service because the company gets it's revenue from ads. But most users don't want to know that. They simply want to use the service. (And I suspect vast majority of users would not really care if they are tracked or not if they really knew how tracking and how ads personalization works; I mean really knew technical details, not boogey man explainations from tabloids).
      - xondono 6y ago
        Pretty much everyone that told me “I don’t care” changed their opinion when they saw the kind of tricks it allows knowledgeable people to do to them.
        lightgreen 6y ago
        Tell me about these tricks, and maybe I'll change my opinion too.
- criddell 6y ago
  I assume Facebook is leading the way by slashing ad and promotion fees for small businesses.
- cma 6y ago
  Plus a lot of the effectiveness of small business advertising on Facebook is zero sum between the competing small businesses. So the more effective it is relative to how well newspaper advertising, etc. worked in the past, the bigger a cut Facebook can extract from them. Which starts sounding more like a big business profit story, not small business.
- rpastuszak 6y ago
  Please, so Covid-19 will become the next excuse in the spirit of “but think of the children!”
  - Terretta 6y ago
    It’s already a crossover episode. In today’s congressional testimony on COVID, the ranking member’s go to reason for reopening schools was to “stop child abuse”.
- partiallypro 6y ago
  Of course it doesn't hurt -Apple's- ad targeting within its store apps.
  - zepto 6y ago
    Yes it does.
- ashtonkem 6y ago
  The idea that Facebook is acting out of genuine concern for small businesses is just laughable. At least come up with a plausible lie.
  - flixic 6y ago
    They are not optimizing for plausibility, but for “think of the children!!”
- mrweasel 6y ago
  If Facebook is that upset they could just pull their apps from Apples app store and let the user decide which they’d miss the most, the iPhone or Facebook and Instagram.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
api 6y ago
Makes me want to buy an iPhone for my next phone.
- jameshush 6y ago
  I work in the ad tech space, spent a lot of time on the publishing side. We've always had higher CPMs from Android users than iOS users. There's just more hooks in Android for tracking than their is for iOS, and it'll probably continue to be that way. If you're not a fan of tracking switching to the Apple ecosystem is a good in between. A more extreme route would be to have a rooted Android phone without Google Play Services but the hassle isn't really worth it for me.
marketingtech 6y ago
Not just Facebook, but the entire $80 billion mobile app advertising industry. [edit] To clarify, I'm referring to Apple crippling ads that drive net new app installs, not the ability to monetize your app via ads. The privacy angle is completely justified, but I think Apple is underestimating the second order effects here. Significantly fewer apps will be installed, harming both the developer ecosystem and Apple's App Store profits. https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnkoetsier/2020/06/24/apple-just-made-idfa-opt-in-sending-an-80-billion-industry-into-upheaval/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnkoetsier/2020/06/24/apple-j...
- cynix 6y ago
  > Significantly fewer apps will be installed Surely an app containing fewer ads would make people _more_ likely to install them, not less?
  - marketingtech 6y ago
    There will be fewer companies able to afford ads to drive installs for their apps. IDFA trades privacy for market efficiency. It's used by ad networks to allow me to optimize for either the cheapest or most valuable installs, and validate that my marketing spend is actually driving these behaviors with an acceptable ROI. Without it, ad networks will be much less effective and it will cost developers at least 2x to drive the same number of installs. IDFA has obvious privacy flaws, but Apple is making a mistake by crippling it without offering a privacy-safe alternative (and several of those have been proposed by the industry).
    - reaperducer 6y ago
      So... we get less low-quality, hardly works, just barely passes the App Store rules crapware, and less privacy worries? Sounds like a win-win.
    - coldcode 6y ago
      Driving installs is a giant business that also needs to die. At a previous employer we took one small app we had maybe at #150 in travel in the App Store. We paid $10K to some app install driver company as a test. I watched as people in countries we did no business in downloaded the app in droves and pushed it to #1 in travel in 24hrs - then the money ran out and we were back at #150 in a couple of days. The company that we were sold to by our parent company did the same thing on a regular basis and kept their main app in the top 5 for years. Not sure if they do it today (this was 6+ years ago). I wish Apple would find a way to stop these artificial App Store hacks (maybe they have I no longer pay much attention since our app's downloads do not affect our business).
Talyen42 6y ago
Good. Cross-site ad targeting/fingerprinting is digital stalking.
josefresco 6y ago
> Our view is that Facebook and targeted ads are a lifeline for small businesses LOLOLOL - I service only small businesses (hundreds of them) and 90% of them could give 0 fucks if Facebook disappeared from this planet tomorrow. The whole "targeted advertising" pipe dream sold to small businesses is tiring. Highly targeted Facebook ads work for a small percentage of business models - if you don't fit one of these models it's a giant waste of money or at least on par with print/radio/tv/un-targeted digital ads.
- wil421 6y ago
  Most small business owners I know have had more success maintaining a FB/Social media page than doing targeted advertising. Or even just doing simple SEO to get on googles results page.
  - josefresco 6y ago
    Organic Facebook (not paid) is still a viable marketing channel for many of my clients. However Facebook is decreasing organic reach to force these businesses to purchase ads. The ideal targeted-ad-scenario that Facebook and ad agency talking heads promote just does't apply to most small businesses. Unfortunately most are still FOMO'd into purchasing these ads. The same could be said about SEO/Google Ads. Google is essentially a paid search engine now so while SEO will work for some sectors, for most they will never be #1 because the top 3-4 results are ads disguised as organic results (hence why I say Google is a paid search engine)
    - freehunter 6y ago
      I ran a business where the target audience was on Facebook and the numbers were just shocking. We had about 3500 followers. If I didn’t run any ads, our posts would only be shown to maybe 200-300 people total, out of the 3500 people who actively make the choice to follow our page. As soon as I turned on $1/day ads (the lowest FB allows), those numbers skyrocketed to about 1000 people seeing each post. Still far short of the number of people who went out of their way to tell Facebook that they wanted to see my posts. Every dollar I spent per day increased that number. That convinced me that Facebook won’t give business pages the traffic they’ve earned unless that business pays Facebook to let that page’s followers see that page’s posts. It’s a racket and you have to pay to play.
move-on-by 6y ago
I am personally hoping this change will generate more evidence that targeted advertising is not as valuable as everyone believes. _I believe_ contextual advertising is effective and doesn't come with all the privacy nightmares and ethical issues like allowing targeting alcoholics with alcohol ads. Of course, that is just my own personal opinion. I've seen some articles agreeing with what I just said - but not being a statistician or even in the advertising industry I'm not qualified to say one way or the other.
- shripadk 6y ago
  > targeted advertising is not as valuable as everyone believes > privacy nightmares and ethical issues like allowing targeting alcoholics with alcohol ads These two statements are diametrically opposing each other. Either targeted advertising works or it doesn't. You can't say that it isn't valuable and then raise concerns about how it causes privacy nightmares and alcoholics to buy more alcohol. Alcoholics will buy more alcohol either ways. Targeting makes no difference to their behavior really. But your argument holds no ground because alcohol ads are highly regulated. You can read more about why here: [1]. More often than not advertising companies reject alcohol ads as it hurts their business more than it helps (due to stringent regulations in most parts of the World). It is not as easy as you make it out to be. Else your social media pages should be inundated with alcohol ads. It is not. I strongly believe that there should be regulations on the content of the ads that are pushed out (just like the alcohol ads). There should be regulation on how often an ad can be retargeted and to ensure that the placements don't hamper user productivity. Blanket bans on advertising methods just for sake of privacy is going to do more harm than good. There has to be some sort of a balance. For people who want privacy they can opt for privacy focused social networks. But if entire platforms move towards privacy then the advertising industry will collapse completely. Targeted advertising is the cheapest way for small and medium businesses to get new customers. It levels the playing field with corporations with big pockets. If you move towards privacy as a focus point with no proper alternatives to advertising it will cause a major shakeup. Many businesses will shutdown. You'll have more consolidation and less competition. Only those with big pockets can advertise their products/services. And in the post-Corona World, this is a lifeline to many small businesses. [1]: https://support.google.com/adspolicy/answer/6012382?hl=en https://support.google.com/adspolicy/answer/6012382?hl=en
geerlingguy 6y ago
Good. Targeted ads not only creep me out, they are usually laughably bad in terms of "I just bought product X from site Y, and now I'm getting lots of ads for product X, which I don't need now that I bought it."
saos 6y ago
Good!
newscracker 6y ago
Good riddance, I say. Small businesses can continue to focus more on what they tend to do better in general, like having closer relationships with customers, really listening to feedback, etc., instead of believing in an illusion that Facebook ads will bring them more customers and throwing money that will make Facebook richer and them poorer while they get misled by engagement analytics numbers that don’t translate into a better conversion rate. I hope Facebook’s relentless and shameless intrusions get more beatings that it truly deserves.
- bjtitus 6y ago
  I like this take. It's not like hyper targeted ads are the only thing the internet provides us with now. It's also MUCH easier to build and stay connected with your community. Focusing more on that could be much better overall than ads.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
3pt14159 6y ago
There is this parable about building a house upon sand versus building upon rock. When the storm comes the house on the sand gets washed away. Facebook didn't have to turn into a global ad platform that does tricky shit like spy on users with blue thumbs up buttons or weird hacks into webrtc to fingerprint users. They could have done the work to provide more direct value and charged for it, like Apple did or did something completely different like building something like Shopify that was still open to the internet but had first class support in Facebook. But they didn't and my hope is that their business model will wash away as security and privacy tighten up on our devices and through our democracies. Just imagine if Apple had taken a different approach and basically said "we're going to make phones that we monetize by tracking our users" instead. The institutional focus would have been warped and—eventually—someone would have come out with high quality phones and computers that don't track you and they would have lost in the long run.
- boring_twenties 6y ago
  > "we're going to make phones that we monetize by tracking our users" Google is doing exactly that and seems to have a market share of 75% vs Apple's 25% [1]. What am I missing? [1] https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/mobile/worldwide https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/mobile/worldwide
  - maxcan 6y ago
    Profit share vs market share. As a long term holder of AAPL, I’m grateful for their ability to capture the former.
  - ericmay 6y ago
    Market share is just one aspect. If you have 75% market share but you have 1% margins, and your competitor has 25% market share and 80% margins, the 25% is probably going to be the one you want.
    - boring_twenties 6y ago
      I don't see how this is relevant to the GP point that I was addressing? They seemed to be implying that consumers would favor privacy-respecting phones.
PedroCandeias 6y ago
Do they mean the ad targeting that shows me ads to help build a religious building (I'm an atheist) in NYC (I live in Europe)? That ad targeting is going to work less well? How? In all seriousness, good. Facebook is creepy enough as it is, and this kind of protest is disingenious at best.
crawsome 6y ago
I don't install any social media "Apps" into my phones. I use Firefox, ublock orogin, privacy badger, duckduckgo essentials, and facebook fence. It's overkill, but damn, it's trivial to setup, and platforms don't follow me whereever I go.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
shirshak55 6y ago
I think dedicated firewall can help a lot. Like if I use spotify i should be able to use firewall and tell spotify app can connect only to https://*.spotify.com https://*.spotify.com if there are other url it should ask permission for that. I think this would help a lot. Especially when facebook implants its tracker to most app using sdk
- progman32 6y ago
  Check out umatrix.
- kube-system 6y ago
  DNS blocking/filtering is a flimsy solution which is only effective if most people don't use it. If it ever becomes mainstream (which is starting to happen), trackers will just use CNAMEs or proxies (which is also starting to happen)
  - llsf 6y ago
    I believe pi-hole does support blocking CNAMEs: https://pi-hole.net/2020/07/15/pi-hole-5-1-released/#page-content https://pi-hole.net/2020/07/15/pi-hole-5-1-released/#page-co...
  - Terretta 6y ago
    Like pihole, the device friendly NextDNS.io service can follow/block the CNAMEs.
    - kube-system 6y ago
      And some trackers have already sidestepped that and switched to proxying requests server side. The only reason anyone is using CNAMEs is because pihole and NextDNS are of negligible adoption, and adding a CNAME is super easy to do. Once CNAME blocking is more prevalent, it will become mainstream to proxy tracking requests as well. example: https://developers.google.com/analytics/devguides/collection/protocol/v1/devguide#using-a-proxy-server https://developers.google.com/analytics/devguides/collection...
hiram112 6y ago
> With the update to its mobile devices, Apple will ask users if they want to let app developers track their activity across other apps and websites. I'm getting so tired of the bullshit coming out of tech companies. Listening to these tech CEOs lie and give non-answers to every question asked by Congress this week was disgusting. Would any user EVER want apps to be able to track them across the web and within other apps? Why would this not be off by default? I used Android for years until enough was enough with the blatant theft of my data by Google. So I opened up my wallet even wider to go with Apple, as I thought they took users' privacy seriously. Apparently not.
- Someone 6y ago
  “Apple will ask users if they want to let app developers track their activity across other apps and websites. […] Why would this not be off by default?” How does that _not_ describe “off by default”? Even if that doesn’t, FTA: “In iOS 14, each app that wants to use these identifiers will ask users to opt-in to tracking when the app is first launched.”
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
tehabe 6y ago
I think that is the point.
bastardoperator 6y ago
GOOD!
apazzolini 6y ago
Boo fucking hoo.
sarora27 6y ago
Good.
tempodox 6y ago
So, good news all around. Even FB themselves acknowledge that their predatory model is going to take a hit.
- JKCalhoun 6y ago
  Yeah, a little surprised FB would be helping Apple sell iOS 14.
  - tempodox 6y ago
    > FB … helping Apple sell iOS 14. That's exactly the right way to put it.
- SilasX 6y ago
  For the time being, sure. Until they find they next way to conceal their tracking, and Apple has to find a new OS-level mechanism to prevent it.
  - classified 6y ago
    I think Facebook has proven sufficiently that playing it straight is just not in their DNA. I'd also assume they'd rather find a novel way of staying shady than change their monetization scheme.
bfrog 6y ago
Good
deedubaya 6y ago
Good.
hallihax 6y ago
Oh no
thoughtstheseus 6y ago
Great news. It would be nice to have fewer companies stalking me, my family, and friends.
numbers 6y ago
Great! Can’t wait for the iOS 14 release!
booleandilemma 6y ago
And here I was about to get an Android!
coldtea 6y ago
That's excellent!
vijaybritto 6y ago
So if this continues Facebook is gonna evolve into something like Etsy or Shopify?!
supernova87a 6y ago
Well, well, well. Some months from now, let's revisit all the sentiments here and see if they still apply when Apple/Google/etc make a change that hurts some startup's bottom line. I'm guessing not so much praise and enthusiasm when it happens to someone else, instead of a big bad company like FB, right? We'll see...
- goalieca 6y ago
  I’m very happy with less targeted advertising. I realize the predominant model right now is free with advertising. It’s not a happy place.
  - elliekelly 6y ago
    I don’t even mind the advertising. I mind the stalking. I would be more than willing to tolerate more ads if it meant fewer trackers.
  - bilbo0s 6y ago
    So true. Even if Apple kills a small company dependent on targeted advertising, I would cheer. I'm not cheering because it's FB, I'm cheering because it strikes at targeted advertising. If you're a small company out tracking people to try to sell them an Oklahoma City Thunder dart board, I'm gonna cheer just as loudly when Apple sticks it to you.
- myhf 6y ago
  If "some startup's bottom line" depends on nonconsensual surveillance then they have ample warning to find a more sustainable business model.
  - bilbo0s 6y ago
    I wouldn't even give them warning, they deserve no such consideration.
- tl 6y ago
  If a startup wants to track my actions outside of its sandbox, I want that startup to fail. On the other hand, when Apple implements policies that prevent companies of any size from building valuable things (see for example the outrage over 30%) then I've have a different sentiment.
northisup 6y ago
good!
illumanaughty 6y ago
Good.
yalogin 6y ago
So good news? That is awesome.
WesolyKubeczek 6y ago
Facebook can cry me a river while listening to me play a tiny violin.
RichardHeart 6y ago
I love privacy, but if seeing worse ads is all that's been won, seems weaksauce.
- m12k 6y ago
  Seeing worse ads (or none if you install an adblocker), but there's less info about you floating around the web, beyond your control. I'll take that any day of that week.
wiether 6y ago
Yes please
foobiekr 6y ago
My only question is: when will they bring this to the Mac.
RockmanZero 6y ago
"Our view is that Facebook and targeted ads are a lifeline for small businesses". BulSht!
fabiofzero 6y ago
Good.
beezischillin 6y ago
Sounds great. The amount of dodgy and creepy stuff Facebook does on tge daily shouldn’t be rewarded. Remember when they kept crashing their Android app For some users just to AB test their reaction or when they tried to research how to algorithmically manipulate peoples’ mood? I’d be glad they allowed this to go on this long...
diogenescynic 6y ago
Oh, no. Stahp. Please.

194 points by nojito 6y ago

jeremiahlee 6y ago

Good! Working as intended.

kgwxd 6y ago
But what about small businesses? Targeted advertising is their lifeline in these trying times. /s
- EGreg 6y ago
  What’s this /s ? /s
  - dvtrn 6y ago
    Used to indicate sarcasm on other sites.

yjftsjthsd-h 6y ago

That's... The idea, yes. > Our view is that Facebook and targeted ads are a lifeline for small businesses, especially in the time of Covid, and we are concerned that aggressive platform policies will cut at that lifeline at a time when it is so essential to small business growth and recovery," Wehner said. "We need to trample privacy to save small businesses because covid!" is a take I did not expect to read today. Also Facebook acting like it's altruistically helping those poor little businesses - how terrible that Apple is making it harder for them to give Facebook money!

bryanrasmussen 6y ago
I am surprised that they didn't turn it into a think of the children thing instead.
- yardie 6y ago
  "If you take our ads away only the criminals will run ads!"
  - classified 6y ago
    One could argue that this is exactly what is happening already. Except that what FB does is still considered "legal".
- willis936 6y ago
  That wouldn't be as brazenly Orwellian. They have appearances to maintain.
- isoprophlex 6y ago
  Will somebody please think of the children errrr no i mean small businesses!!
  - other_herbert 6y ago
    How will the children buy ice cream if we don't tell them where their local ice cream shop is!
- noisy_boy 6y ago
  Small business are run by people with small children.
princevegeta89 6y ago
I'm sure the Facebook paid some random guy to say these words.
- the__prestige 6y ago
  It's not some random guy. It's their CFO.
ucha 6y ago
That's somewhat true. The advent of targeted ads allowed lots of niche companies to thrive and compete with the established behemoths that have an oligopoly on shelf space. Internet advertising essentially launched the direct-to-consumer model that's so threatening to the P&Gs and Unilevers out there.
- MrGando 6y ago
  The big companies also use targeted ads, but with orders of magnitude bigger budgets. It's the big companies who have forced the small business to spend on targeted ads or die. Disclaimer: Worked on a successful ad-tech company for ~2.5 years.
  - AlexandrB 6y ago
    Love it when big companies spend money on targeting ads towards users searching for their smaller competitors and those competitors now have to spend money to get their own search results back. I'm sure there's a Facebook equivalent of this bullshit.
- donkeyd 6y ago
  It's also a lie, because Facebook forces these companies to buy ads by not showing their posts to followers.
  - Phanyxx 6y ago
    Slowly killing off organic reach on business pages was a dirty move, but still, Facebook's not "forcing" them to do anything.
    - krn 6y ago
      Well, if a company wants to reach its own followers on Facebook, it is forced to pay for that.
- xondono 6y ago
  Real online communities like specialty webs or youtube channels are a WAY better value compared to running fb ads
12xo 6y ago
They have such a perverted sense of purpose.
dbbk 6y ago
I mean, both positions have merit. I don't see targeted advertising as this evil notion that it seems a lot of people do. For small businesses, being able to get your message to the right people for as cheap as possible can be make-or-break.
- sroussey 6y ago
  So the ends justify the means, whatever that may be?
  - CathedralBorrow 6y ago
    > So the ends justify the means, whatever that may be? Do you honestly believe that is a fair summary of their words?
    - toiletfuneral 6y ago
      well op said they don't think tracking is evil because it helps businesses...so that's pretty much how I interpreted it as well what are we missing?
    - yjftsjthsd-h 6y ago
      Yes; the claim was that targeted ads are important because they let small businesses survive. That seems exactly like arguing that the ends (help small businesses) justifies the means (targeted ads, with the prerequisite tracking).
      - CathedralBorrow 6y ago
        You left out the "whatever it may be" part.
        sroussey 6y ago
        What ever fingerprinting, dark pattern, technical trick, lie, etc
hughw 6y ago
Their complaint isn't that it won't be possible to track you. It's that it won't be possible to track you without your permission.
- ViViDboarder 6y ago
  Exactly! If they really believe that their ads product is in the best interest of their users, they can convince them to opt in. The subtext here is that they know it’s not and many users will opt out.
  - lightgreen 6y ago
    Each 100ms delay, each form, each extra page makes service lose percents of users (any service, Google, Netflix, Amazon). A company can convince users to opt-in, but it will lose quite a lot of people, even those who don't really care if they are tracked or not. Simple because users want to use the service, not become legal and technical experts. Understanding how all of it works is really hard. Their ads product is indeed beneficial to users: users get relevant personalized localized ads (instead of boring ads which can still be seen on TV or paper magazines) and they get better service because the company gets it's revenue from ads. But most users don't want to know that. They simply want to use the service. (And I suspect vast majority of users would not really care if they are tracked or not if they really knew how tracking and how ads personalization works; I mean really knew technical details, not boogey man explainations from tabloids).
    - xondono 6y ago
      Pretty much everyone that told me “I don’t care” changed their opinion when they saw the kind of tricks it allows knowledgeable people to do to them.
      - lightgreen 6y ago
        Tell me about these tricks, and maybe I'll change my opinion too.
criddell 6y ago
I assume Facebook is leading the way by slashing ad and promotion fees for small businesses.
cma 6y ago
Plus a lot of the effectiveness of small business advertising on Facebook is zero sum between the competing small businesses. So the more effective it is relative to how well newspaper advertising, etc. worked in the past, the bigger a cut Facebook can extract from them. Which starts sounding more like a big business profit story, not small business.
rpastuszak 6y ago
Please, so Covid-19 will become the next excuse in the spirit of “but think of the children!”
- Terretta 6y ago
  It’s already a crossover episode. In today’s congressional testimony on COVID, the ranking member’s go to reason for reopening schools was to “stop child abuse”.
partiallypro 6y ago
Of course it doesn't hurt -Apple's- ad targeting within its store apps.
- zepto 6y ago
  Yes it does.
ashtonkem 6y ago
The idea that Facebook is acting out of genuine concern for small businesses is just laughable. At least come up with a plausible lie.
- flixic 6y ago
  They are not optimizing for plausibility, but for “think of the children!!”
mrweasel 6y ago
If Facebook is that upset they could just pull their apps from Apples app store and let the user decide which they’d miss the most, the iPhone or Facebook and Instagram.
deleted 6y ago
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api 6y ago

Makes me want to buy an iPhone for my next phone.

jameshush 6y ago
I work in the ad tech space, spent a lot of time on the publishing side. We've always had higher CPMs from Android users than iOS users. There's just more hooks in Android for tracking than their is for iOS, and it'll probably continue to be that way. If you're not a fan of tracking switching to the Apple ecosystem is a good in between. A more extreme route would be to have a rooted Android phone without Google Play Services but the hassle isn't really worth it for me.

marketingtech 6y ago

Not just Facebook, but the entire $80 billion mobile app advertising industry. [edit] To clarify, I'm referring to Apple crippling ads that drive net new app installs, not the ability to monetize your app via ads. The privacy angle is completely justified, but I think Apple is underestimating the second order effects here. Significantly fewer apps will be installed, harming both the developer ecosystem and Apple's App Store profits. https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnkoetsier/2020/06/24/apple-just-made-idfa-opt-in-sending-an-80-billion-industry-into-upheaval/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnkoetsier/2020/06/24/apple-j...

cynix 6y ago
> Significantly fewer apps will be installed Surely an app containing fewer ads would make people _more_ likely to install them, not less?
- marketingtech 6y ago
  There will be fewer companies able to afford ads to drive installs for their apps. IDFA trades privacy for market efficiency. It's used by ad networks to allow me to optimize for either the cheapest or most valuable installs, and validate that my marketing spend is actually driving these behaviors with an acceptable ROI. Without it, ad networks will be much less effective and it will cost developers at least 2x to drive the same number of installs. IDFA has obvious privacy flaws, but Apple is making a mistake by crippling it without offering a privacy-safe alternative (and several of those have been proposed by the industry).
  - reaperducer 6y ago
    So... we get less low-quality, hardly works, just barely passes the App Store rules crapware, and less privacy worries? Sounds like a win-win.
  - coldcode 6y ago
    Driving installs is a giant business that also needs to die. At a previous employer we took one small app we had maybe at #150 in travel in the App Store. We paid $10K to some app install driver company as a test. I watched as people in countries we did no business in downloaded the app in droves and pushed it to #1 in travel in 24hrs - then the money ran out and we were back at #150 in a couple of days. The company that we were sold to by our parent company did the same thing on a regular basis and kept their main app in the top 5 for years. Not sure if they do it today (this was 6+ years ago). I wish Apple would find a way to stop these artificial App Store hacks (maybe they have I no longer pay much attention since our app's downloads do not affect our business).

Talyen42 6y ago

Good. Cross-site ad targeting/fingerprinting is digital stalking.

josefresco 6y ago

> Our view is that Facebook and targeted ads are a lifeline for small businesses LOLOLOL - I service only small businesses (hundreds of them) and 90% of them could give 0 fucks if Facebook disappeared from this planet tomorrow. The whole "targeted advertising" pipe dream sold to small businesses is tiring. Highly targeted Facebook ads work for a small percentage of business models - if you don't fit one of these models it's a giant waste of money or at least on par with print/radio/tv/un-targeted digital ads.

wil421 6y ago
Most small business owners I know have had more success maintaining a FB/Social media page than doing targeted advertising. Or even just doing simple SEO to get on googles results page.
- josefresco 6y ago
  Organic Facebook (not paid) is still a viable marketing channel for many of my clients. However Facebook is decreasing organic reach to force these businesses to purchase ads. The ideal targeted-ad-scenario that Facebook and ad agency talking heads promote just does't apply to most small businesses. Unfortunately most are still FOMO'd into purchasing these ads. The same could be said about SEO/Google Ads. Google is essentially a paid search engine now so while SEO will work for some sectors, for most they will never be #1 because the top 3-4 results are ads disguised as organic results (hence why I say Google is a paid search engine)
  - freehunter 6y ago
    I ran a business where the target audience was on Facebook and the numbers were just shocking. We had about 3500 followers. If I didn’t run any ads, our posts would only be shown to maybe 200-300 people total, out of the 3500 people who actively make the choice to follow our page. As soon as I turned on $1/day ads (the lowest FB allows), those numbers skyrocketed to about 1000 people seeing each post. Still far short of the number of people who went out of their way to tell Facebook that they wanted to see my posts. Every dollar I spent per day increased that number. That convinced me that Facebook won’t give business pages the traffic they’ve earned unless that business pays Facebook to let that page’s followers see that page’s posts. It’s a racket and you have to pay to play.

move-on-by 6y ago

I am personally hoping this change will generate more evidence that targeted advertising is not as valuable as everyone believes. _I believe_ contextual advertising is effective and doesn't come with all the privacy nightmares and ethical issues like allowing targeting alcoholics with alcohol ads. Of course, that is just my own personal opinion. I've seen some articles agreeing with what I just said - but not being a statistician or even in the advertising industry I'm not qualified to say one way or the other.

shripadk 6y ago
> targeted advertising is not as valuable as everyone believes > privacy nightmares and ethical issues like allowing targeting alcoholics with alcohol ads These two statements are diametrically opposing each other. Either targeted advertising works or it doesn't. You can't say that it isn't valuable and then raise concerns about how it causes privacy nightmares and alcoholics to buy more alcohol. Alcoholics will buy more alcohol either ways. Targeting makes no difference to their behavior really. But your argument holds no ground because alcohol ads are highly regulated. You can read more about why here: [1]. More often than not advertising companies reject alcohol ads as it hurts their business more than it helps (due to stringent regulations in most parts of the World). It is not as easy as you make it out to be. Else your social media pages should be inundated with alcohol ads. It is not. I strongly believe that there should be regulations on the content of the ads that are pushed out (just like the alcohol ads). There should be regulation on how often an ad can be retargeted and to ensure that the placements don't hamper user productivity. Blanket bans on advertising methods just for sake of privacy is going to do more harm than good. There has to be some sort of a balance. For people who want privacy they can opt for privacy focused social networks. But if entire platforms move towards privacy then the advertising industry will collapse completely. Targeted advertising is the cheapest way for small and medium businesses to get new customers. It levels the playing field with corporations with big pockets. If you move towards privacy as a focus point with no proper alternatives to advertising it will cause a major shakeup. Many businesses will shutdown. You'll have more consolidation and less competition. Only those with big pockets can advertise their products/services. And in the post-Corona World, this is a lifeline to many small businesses. [1]: https://support.google.com/adspolicy/answer/6012382?hl=en https://support.google.com/adspolicy/answer/6012382?hl=en

geerlingguy 6y ago

Good. Targeted ads not only creep me out, they are usually laughably bad in terms of "I just bought product X from site Y, and now I'm getting lots of ads for product X, which I don't need now that I bought it."

saos 6y ago

Good!

newscracker 6y ago

Good riddance, I say. Small businesses can continue to focus more on what they tend to do better in general, like having closer relationships with customers, really listening to feedback, etc., instead of believing in an illusion that Facebook ads will bring them more customers and throwing money that will make Facebook richer and them poorer while they get misled by engagement analytics numbers that don’t translate into a better conversion rate. I hope Facebook’s relentless and shameless intrusions get more beatings that it truly deserves.

bjtitus 6y ago
I like this take. It's not like hyper targeted ads are the only thing the internet provides us with now. It's also MUCH easier to build and stay connected with your community. Focusing more on that could be much better overall than ads.

deleted 6y ago

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3pt14159 6y ago

There is this parable about building a house upon sand versus building upon rock. When the storm comes the house on the sand gets washed away. Facebook didn't have to turn into a global ad platform that does tricky shit like spy on users with blue thumbs up buttons or weird hacks into webrtc to fingerprint users. They could have done the work to provide more direct value and charged for it, like Apple did or did something completely different like building something like Shopify that was still open to the internet but had first class support in Facebook. But they didn't and my hope is that their business model will wash away as security and privacy tighten up on our devices and through our democracies. Just imagine if Apple had taken a different approach and basically said "we're going to make phones that we monetize by tracking our users" instead. The institutional focus would have been warped and—eventually—someone would have come out with high quality phones and computers that don't track you and they would have lost in the long run.

boring_twenties 6y ago
> "we're going to make phones that we monetize by tracking our users" Google is doing exactly that and seems to have a market share of 75% vs Apple's 25% [1]. What am I missing? [1] https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/mobile/worldwide https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/mobile/worldwide
- maxcan 6y ago
  Profit share vs market share. As a long term holder of AAPL, I’m grateful for their ability to capture the former.
- ericmay 6y ago
  Market share is just one aspect. If you have 75% market share but you have 1% margins, and your competitor has 25% market share and 80% margins, the 25% is probably going to be the one you want.
  - boring_twenties 6y ago
    I don't see how this is relevant to the GP point that I was addressing? They seemed to be implying that consumers would favor privacy-respecting phones.

PedroCandeias 6y ago

Do they mean the ad targeting that shows me ads to help build a religious building (I'm an atheist) in NYC (I live in Europe)? That ad targeting is going to work less well? How? In all seriousness, good. Facebook is creepy enough as it is, and this kind of protest is disingenious at best.

crawsome 6y ago

I don't install any social media "Apps" into my phones. I use Firefox, ublock orogin, privacy badger, duckduckgo essentials, and facebook fence. It's overkill, but damn, it's trivial to setup, and platforms don't follow me whereever I go.

deleted 6y ago

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shirshak55 6y ago

I think dedicated firewall can help a lot. Like if I use spotify i should be able to use firewall and tell spotify app can connect only to https://*.spotify.com https://*.spotify.com if there are other url it should ask permission for that. I think this would help a lot. Especially when facebook implants its tracker to most app using sdk

progman32 6y ago
Check out umatrix.
kube-system 6y ago
DNS blocking/filtering is a flimsy solution which is only effective if most people don't use it. If it ever becomes mainstream (which is starting to happen), trackers will just use CNAMEs or proxies (which is also starting to happen)
- llsf 6y ago
  I believe pi-hole does support blocking CNAMEs: https://pi-hole.net/2020/07/15/pi-hole-5-1-released/#page-content https://pi-hole.net/2020/07/15/pi-hole-5-1-released/#page-co...
- Terretta 6y ago
  Like pihole, the device friendly NextDNS.io service can follow/block the CNAMEs.
  - kube-system 6y ago
    And some trackers have already sidestepped that and switched to proxying requests server side. The only reason anyone is using CNAMEs is because pihole and NextDNS are of negligible adoption, and adding a CNAME is super easy to do. Once CNAME blocking is more prevalent, it will become mainstream to proxy tracking requests as well. example: https://developers.google.com/analytics/devguides/collection/protocol/v1/devguide#using-a-proxy-server https://developers.google.com/analytics/devguides/collection...

hiram112 6y ago

> With the update to its mobile devices, Apple will ask users if they want to let app developers track their activity across other apps and websites. I'm getting so tired of the bullshit coming out of tech companies. Listening to these tech CEOs lie and give non-answers to every question asked by Congress this week was disgusting. Would any user EVER want apps to be able to track them across the web and within other apps? Why would this not be off by default? I used Android for years until enough was enough with the blatant theft of my data by Google. So I opened up my wallet even wider to go with Apple, as I thought they took users' privacy seriously. Apparently not.

Someone 6y ago
“Apple will ask users if they want to let app developers track their activity across other apps and websites. […] Why would this not be off by default?” How does that _not_ describe “off by default”? Even if that doesn’t, FTA: “In iOS 14, each app that wants to use these identifiers will ask users to opt-in to tracking when the app is first launched.”
deleted 6y ago
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tehabe 6y ago

I think that is the point.

bastardoperator 6y ago

GOOD!

apazzolini 6y ago

Boo fucking hoo.

sarora27 6y ago

Good.

tempodox 6y ago

So, good news all around. Even FB themselves acknowledge that their predatory model is going to take a hit.

JKCalhoun 6y ago
Yeah, a little surprised FB would be helping Apple sell iOS 14.
- tempodox 6y ago
  > FB … helping Apple sell iOS 14. That's exactly the right way to put it.
SilasX 6y ago
For the time being, sure. Until they find they next way to conceal their tracking, and Apple has to find a new OS-level mechanism to prevent it.
- classified 6y ago
  I think Facebook has proven sufficiently that playing it straight is just not in their DNA. I'd also assume they'd rather find a novel way of staying shady than change their monetization scheme.

bfrog 6y ago

Good

deedubaya 6y ago

Good.

hallihax 6y ago

Oh no

thoughtstheseus 6y ago

Great news. It would be nice to have fewer companies stalking me, my family, and friends.

numbers 6y ago

Great! Can’t wait for the iOS 14 release!

booleandilemma 6y ago

And here I was about to get an Android!

coldtea 6y ago

That's excellent!

vijaybritto 6y ago

So if this continues Facebook is gonna evolve into something like Etsy or Shopify?!

supernova87a 6y ago

Well, well, well. Some months from now, let's revisit all the sentiments here and see if they still apply when Apple/Google/etc make a change that hurts some startup's bottom line. I'm guessing not so much praise and enthusiasm when it happens to someone else, instead of a big bad company like FB, right? We'll see...

goalieca 6y ago
I’m very happy with less targeted advertising. I realize the predominant model right now is free with advertising. It’s not a happy place.
- elliekelly 6y ago
  I don’t even mind the advertising. I mind the stalking. I would be more than willing to tolerate more ads if it meant fewer trackers.
- bilbo0s 6y ago
  So true. Even if Apple kills a small company dependent on targeted advertising, I would cheer. I'm not cheering because it's FB, I'm cheering because it strikes at targeted advertising. If you're a small company out tracking people to try to sell them an Oklahoma City Thunder dart board, I'm gonna cheer just as loudly when Apple sticks it to you.
myhf 6y ago
If "some startup's bottom line" depends on nonconsensual surveillance then they have ample warning to find a more sustainable business model.
- bilbo0s 6y ago
  I wouldn't even give them warning, they deserve no such consideration.
tl 6y ago
If a startup wants to track my actions outside of its sandbox, I want that startup to fail. On the other hand, when Apple implements policies that prevent companies of any size from building valuable things (see for example the outrage over 30%) then I've have a different sentiment.

northisup 6y ago

good!

illumanaughty 6y ago

Good.

yalogin 6y ago

So good news? That is awesome.

WesolyKubeczek 6y ago

Facebook can cry me a river while listening to me play a tiny violin.

RichardHeart 6y ago

I love privacy, but if seeing worse ads is all that's been won, seems weaksauce.

m12k 6y ago
Seeing worse ads (or none if you install an adblocker), but there's less info about you floating around the web, beyond your control. I'll take that any day of that week.

wiether 6y ago

Yes please

foobiekr 6y ago

My only question is: when will they bring this to the Mac.

RockmanZero 6y ago

"Our view is that Facebook and targeted ads are a lifeline for small businesses". BulSht!

fabiofzero 6y ago

Good.

beezischillin 6y ago

Sounds great. The amount of dodgy and creepy stuff Facebook does on tge daily shouldn’t be rewarded. Remember when they kept crashing their Android app For some users just to AB test their reaction or when they tried to research how to algorithmically manipulate peoples’ mood? I’d be glad they allowed this to go on this long...

diogenescynic 6y ago

Oh, no. Stahp. Please.