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One thing that removes a lot of credibility from Apple's "for the good of the user" communication on this is that they broke out the personalization for their o

One thing that removes a lot of credibility from Apple's "for the good of the user" communication on this is that they broke out the personalization for their own ad network as an option, put it in a different location, and made it opt-out instead of opt-in. https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnkoetsier/2020/08/07/apple-ad-network-gets-special-privileges-that-facebook-google-wont-on-ios14/#4d31d1dc7515 https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnkoetsier/2020/08/07/apple-a...

wnevets 6y ago
> One thing that removes a lot of credibility from Apple's "for the good of the user" communication I feel like taking billions from Google to be the default search engine on iOS also did that
gamblor956 6y ago
One could argue that the initial policy was anti competitive because it artificially inflated Apple's offering over its competitors...
- aaomidi 6y ago
  Probably was.
- madeofpalk 6y ago
  What's "Apple's offering"?
  - notatoad 6y ago
    their own ad network, as described in top of this comment chain.
    - madeofpalk 6y ago
      I don't even know what "Apple Advertising" is. Is it app store ads?
    - pwinnski 6y ago
      Except Apple shut down their ad network years ago, so that's not what these options are for.
      - rrdharan 6y ago
        I believe you're referring to iAd: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IAd https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IAd You're being downvoted because they still make money off of advertising: "The iAd App Network was discontinued as of June 30, 2016.[8] Since then the technology lives on in both Apple News Advertising and App Store Search Ads.[9]"
        pwinnski 6y ago
        Right, but they have no ad network, only ads on their own properties. That's why the settings are different, they're describing totally different things. I think the settings should be combined, but Apple is in no way tracking users across sites, because they're not tracking users like that at all. Refusing to track users is the entire reason their "iAd" ad network failed!
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
alex_young 6y ago
Certainly seems to open the door for some creative PR campaigns by impacted apps. I'd personally prefer not to have any of the ad tracking stuff, especially at the OS level.
- ashtonkem 6y ago
  Ad campaigns nothing, that seems like a legal risk to me.
- x0x0 6y ago
  Like it or hate it, app install ads often pay the best and are how a lot of free-to-the-user apps earn money. Before the wave of whinging I'm not pro ads. I'm just pointing out this is a big disruption to the financial models of many free apps.
GekkePrutser 6y ago
Sounds like this might also be the reason for this delay. If Apple is indeed favouring their own ad services they might indeed be the target of very well funded antitrust-based legal campaigns. I assume the adtech companies would have at least threatened them with this. So they are probably going to retune their own ad service to comply with the same before they go live with this change.
- jariel 6y ago
  If Apple is indeed rolling out their own ad program and giving themselves preferential access, it would be thermonuclear valley war. Nobody cares about individual users in the end, once in 50 years you might get a politician who rises to a populist challenge. But when you take 1/2 of some major adjacent-competitors money away, then it's war. The stakes are 10's of billions and every lobbyist, lawyer, marketer, PR person is going to be engaged. I wouldn't quite speculate on Apple's motivations here, but it's a very real and big issue. They can screw you and I, and even Fornite, but Facebook? An then 'self deal' with their own ads? Even that is a risk.
- paulpan 6y ago
  Was thinking the same. If the reason is to give Apple's ad services team time to make the adjustments, then that seems another strike on antitrust grounds. Timing not great to say the least.
- aleppe7766 6y ago
  Apple’s own ad service is long gone and won’t come back (if some sanity is still left in Apple’s board). They’re just playing nice with some core partners.
  - shajznnckfke 6y ago
    Apple has an ad service: https://searchads.apple.com/ https://searchads.apple.com/ Ads to install apps, shown in App Store and News apps. App install ads are also Facebook’s main mobile ad market. This crackdown specifically block’s Facebook’s ability to show attribution of app purchases for their ads, while preserving that ability for Apple by default.
makecheck 6y ago
Yeah, this is crazy: Settings -> Privacy -> Location Services -> (ALL the way to the bottom of the list, past all apps) System Services -> Location-Based Apple Ads. Oh, and if you have text size increased by any amount, “Ads” doesn’t even appear and it’s just “Location-Based Apple...” (on or off). The harder something is to find and disable, the shadier it seems.
- millstone 6y ago
  Gross! Just to feed App Store and Apple News? Apple should kill that immediately, it's hypocritical.
  - disgruntledphd2 6y ago
    Unfortunately, most large corporations are relatively immune to hypocrisy.
    - AnthonyMouse 6y ago
      It's not hypocrisy they're immune from, it's consequences.
- lilyball 6y ago
  I don't see "Location-Based Apple Ads" on my iPhone running iOS 14.
  - agency 6y ago
    It's there for me on iOS 13.7: https://imgur.com/gJyId5P https://imgur.com/gJyId5P It was on by default - I toggled it off.
    - dogma1138 6y ago
      It is off by default.
lilyball 6y ago
It looks like Apple's advertising targeting isn't using the same info that they're trying to withhold from third parties though. I actually have it off on my device so I can't see what the "View Ad Targeting Information" says (if I turn it back on, it says I have to wait 24 hours before it has the info to show me), but from the description it does show, it sounds like the ad target uses "account information and interactions with Apple services" for serving ads. Which is to say, this is information Apple already has, and all you're saying is "please don't use that info for serving ads". It does not sound like it reduces the information Apple has (which makes sense, any PII not necessary for running Apple's services is not sent to Apple except after undergoing differential privacy). Compare this with third-party advertising, where the use of IDFA does explicitly hand information to third parties that they otherwise wouldn't have. For example, the Facebook SDK is integrated into a bazillion different apps, so Facebook can track a single user across all of these different apps even if the user doesn't use Facebook login (or if they use Facebook login for a single one of these apps, Facebook can then associate the usage of all the other apps with that same login too). The two are not remotely equivalent.
- librish 6y ago
  They seem pretty equivalent to me. You have a site or service send usage information to an ad network and the ad network returns an ad to show. The only difference here is that in the case of Apple they own both the service and the ad network.
- shajznnckfke 6y ago
  Facebook’s big ad business on mobile is advertising to install apps. That’s also Apple’s ad business on mobile (ads shown on Apple News, and in the App Store itself). For Facebook to show attribution of ad conversions, they must do tracking “across apps” (from their app where the ad was clicked, to the advertiser’s app). For Apple to do the same attribution, they can call it “interactions with Apple services”, because the purchase is done through the App Store. In that sense, both are going after the same user actions but different language can be used to describe them.
  - 6y ago
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
an_opabinia 6y ago
The biggest misconception is how and why ad IDs are used, what precisely the value of ad targeting is, how it impacts the user, the ad buyer, etc. People don't really seem to know anything about this stuff. If you spent even 1 minute articulating a falsifiable hypothesis about the impact of something like IDFA, you would have a much more interesting conversation that the typical Apple versus the world way this goes on HN.
dkonofalski 6y ago
Just curious... how does that remove credibility? Seems logical to put that option in one global place for the OS. Individual apps from the App Store don't have access at that level so there's no way they could give it the same priority. The only alternative I can see is if iOS has some way to set options per developer and that seems like a silly thing.
musicale 6y ago
> they broke out the personalization for their own ad network as an option, put it in a different location, and made it opt-out instead of opt-in. If that is true, it absolutely contradicts Apple's claim that "Privacy is built in from the beginning": https://www.apple.com/privacy/features/ https://www.apple.com/privacy/features/
m3kw9 6y ago
They do that because they don’t sell any of your info, unlike Facebook which should be opt in. The whole issue Apple has with FB is privacy and selling of your data. If apple was selling data and they needed opt out then you may have a point
- zakki 6y ago
  Any source that Apple doesn’t/didn’t sell customers info?
stjohnswarts 6y ago
I was actually considering a apple phone if they came through. This just put the nails in that coffin. I'll just stick with Android where I can install whatever I want for the most part.

wnevets 6y ago

> One thing that removes a lot of credibility from Apple's "for the good of the user" communication I feel like taking billions from Google to be the default search engine on iOS also did that

gamblor956 6y ago

One could argue that the initial policy was anti competitive because it artificially inflated Apple's offering over its competitors...

aaomidi 6y ago
Probably was.
madeofpalk 6y ago
What's "Apple's offering"?
- notatoad 6y ago
  their own ad network, as described in top of this comment chain.
  - madeofpalk 6y ago
    I don't even know what "Apple Advertising" is. Is it app store ads?
  - pwinnski 6y ago
    Except Apple shut down their ad network years ago, so that's not what these options are for.
    - rrdharan 6y ago
      I believe you're referring to iAd: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IAd https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IAd You're being downvoted because they still make money off of advertising: "The iAd App Network was discontinued as of June 30, 2016.[8] Since then the technology lives on in both Apple News Advertising and App Store Search Ads.[9]"
      - pwinnski 6y ago
        Right, but they have no ad network, only ads on their own properties. That's why the settings are different, they're describing totally different things. I think the settings should be combined, but Apple is in no way tracking users across sites, because they're not tracking users like that at all. Refusing to track users is the entire reason their "iAd" ad network failed!
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

alex_young 6y ago

Certainly seems to open the door for some creative PR campaigns by impacted apps. I'd personally prefer not to have any of the ad tracking stuff, especially at the OS level.

ashtonkem 6y ago
Ad campaigns nothing, that seems like a legal risk to me.
x0x0 6y ago
Like it or hate it, app install ads often pay the best and are how a lot of free-to-the-user apps earn money. Before the wave of whinging I'm not pro ads. I'm just pointing out this is a big disruption to the financial models of many free apps.

GekkePrutser 6y ago

Sounds like this might also be the reason for this delay. If Apple is indeed favouring their own ad services they might indeed be the target of very well funded antitrust-based legal campaigns. I assume the adtech companies would have at least threatened them with this. So they are probably going to retune their own ad service to comply with the same before they go live with this change.

jariel 6y ago
If Apple is indeed rolling out their own ad program and giving themselves preferential access, it would be thermonuclear valley war. Nobody cares about individual users in the end, once in 50 years you might get a politician who rises to a populist challenge. But when you take 1/2 of some major adjacent-competitors money away, then it's war. The stakes are 10's of billions and every lobbyist, lawyer, marketer, PR person is going to be engaged. I wouldn't quite speculate on Apple's motivations here, but it's a very real and big issue. They can screw you and I, and even Fornite, but Facebook? An then 'self deal' with their own ads? Even that is a risk.
paulpan 6y ago
Was thinking the same. If the reason is to give Apple's ad services team time to make the adjustments, then that seems another strike on antitrust grounds. Timing not great to say the least.
aleppe7766 6y ago
Apple’s own ad service is long gone and won’t come back (if some sanity is still left in Apple’s board). They’re just playing nice with some core partners.
- shajznnckfke 6y ago
  Apple has an ad service: https://searchads.apple.com/ https://searchads.apple.com/ Ads to install apps, shown in App Store and News apps. App install ads are also Facebook’s main mobile ad market. This crackdown specifically block’s Facebook’s ability to show attribution of app purchases for their ads, while preserving that ability for Apple by default.

makecheck 6y ago

Yeah, this is crazy: Settings -> Privacy -> Location Services -> (ALL the way to the bottom of the list, past all apps) System Services -> Location-Based Apple Ads. Oh, and if you have text size increased by any amount, “Ads” doesn’t even appear and it’s just “Location-Based Apple...” (on or off). The harder something is to find and disable, the shadier it seems.

millstone 6y ago
Gross! Just to feed App Store and Apple News? Apple should kill that immediately, it's hypocritical.
- disgruntledphd2 6y ago
  Unfortunately, most large corporations are relatively immune to hypocrisy.
  - AnthonyMouse 6y ago
    It's not hypocrisy they're immune from, it's consequences.
lilyball 6y ago
I don't see "Location-Based Apple Ads" on my iPhone running iOS 14.
- agency 6y ago
  It's there for me on iOS 13.7: https://imgur.com/gJyId5P https://imgur.com/gJyId5P It was on by default - I toggled it off.
  - dogma1138 6y ago
    It is off by default.

lilyball 6y ago

It looks like Apple's advertising targeting isn't using the same info that they're trying to withhold from third parties though. I actually have it off on my device so I can't see what the "View Ad Targeting Information" says (if I turn it back on, it says I have to wait 24 hours before it has the info to show me), but from the description it does show, it sounds like the ad target uses "account information and interactions with Apple services" for serving ads. Which is to say, this is information Apple already has, and all you're saying is "please don't use that info for serving ads". It does not sound like it reduces the information Apple has (which makes sense, any PII not necessary for running Apple's services is not sent to Apple except after undergoing differential privacy). Compare this with third-party advertising, where the use of IDFA does explicitly hand information to third parties that they otherwise wouldn't have. For example, the Facebook SDK is integrated into a bazillion different apps, so Facebook can track a single user across all of these different apps even if the user doesn't use Facebook login (or if they use Facebook login for a single one of these apps, Facebook can then associate the usage of all the other apps with that same login too). The two are not remotely equivalent.

librish 6y ago
They seem pretty equivalent to me. You have a site or service send usage information to an ad network and the ad network returns an ad to show. The only difference here is that in the case of Apple they own both the service and the ad network.
shajznnckfke 6y ago
Facebook’s big ad business on mobile is advertising to install apps. That’s also Apple’s ad business on mobile (ads shown on Apple News, and in the App Store itself). For Facebook to show attribution of ad conversions, they must do tracking “across apps” (from their app where the ad was clicked, to the advertiser’s app). For Apple to do the same attribution, they can call it “interactions with Apple services”, because the purchase is done through the App Store. In that sense, both are going after the same user actions but different language can be used to describe them.
- 6y ago

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

an_opabinia 6y ago

The biggest misconception is how and why ad IDs are used, what precisely the value of ad targeting is, how it impacts the user, the ad buyer, etc. People don't really seem to know anything about this stuff. If you spent even 1 minute articulating a falsifiable hypothesis about the impact of something like IDFA, you would have a much more interesting conversation that the typical Apple versus the world way this goes on HN.

dkonofalski 6y ago

Just curious... how does that remove credibility? Seems logical to put that option in one global place for the OS. Individual apps from the App Store don't have access at that level so there's no way they could give it the same priority. The only alternative I can see is if iOS has some way to set options per developer and that seems like a silly thing.

musicale 6y ago

> they broke out the personalization for their own ad network as an option, put it in a different location, and made it opt-out instead of opt-in. If that is true, it absolutely contradicts Apple's claim that "Privacy is built in from the beginning": https://www.apple.com/privacy/features/ https://www.apple.com/privacy/features/

m3kw9 6y ago

They do that because they don’t sell any of your info, unlike Facebook which should be opt in. The whole issue Apple has with FB is privacy and selling of your data. If apple was selling data and they needed opt out then you may have a point

zakki 6y ago
Any source that Apple doesn’t/didn’t sell customers info?

stjohnswarts 6y ago

I was actually considering a apple phone if they came through. This just put the nails in that coffin. I'll just stick with Android where I can install whatever I want for the most part.