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So you mean their REAL purpose is attribution, but they just chose to build giant databases covering peoples locations, friend groups, hobbies, desires, careers

by Closi 6y ago

So you mean their REAL purpose is attribution, but they just chose to build giant databases covering peoples locations, friend groups, hobbies, desires, careers, sex, sexual preferences, relationship statuses, political alignment, voting probability, race and more in order to implement a 'secondary nice-to-have'? And that's better? As a side point, I don't see why attribution tracking requires any form of cross-site tracking or fingerprinting. It seems like it would be pretty trivial to implement this without all the privacy issues (i.e. just direct the ad to domain.com/ad123 and track the user on-site from there).

fingerlocks 6y ago
None of that has anything to do with this topic. This is about Facebook's access to the Apple IDFA. There are no web URLs involved[0] when you click an ad on instagram and it launches another app on your phone. These are separate issues, and I don't entire disagree with the others you brought up. [0] Before someone comes in to correct me, I know I'm handwaving here. The point stands.
- danShumway 6y ago
  The apps on your phone would not have the ability to suck up isolated pieces of data about your usage and combine them into a single profile with your age/gender/etc... if they didn't have a set of shared identifiers that they could use to associate that data across multiple sources. It seems very relevant to me. The larger privacy problems wouldn't be quite as bad if there was no way to tell what device an app was running on or who was using it. That seems like it would limit data collection in a pretty significant way.
- ogre_codes 6y ago
  > None of that has anything to do with this topic. This is about Facebook's access to the Apple IDFA. You don't seem to understand what the implications of the IDFA are. Facebook uses the IDFA to tie your activities together. It is one of the fundamental ways they collect all this data. This is why they are fighting so hard to maintain it.

by Closi 6y ago

fingerlocks 6y ago

None of that has anything to do with this topic. This is about Facebook's access to the Apple IDFA. There are no web URLs involved[0] when you click an ad on instagram and it launches another app on your phone. These are separate issues, and I don't entire disagree with the others you brought up. [0] Before someone comes in to correct me, I know I'm handwaving here. The point stands.

danShumway 6y ago
The apps on your phone would not have the ability to suck up isolated pieces of data about your usage and combine them into a single profile with your age/gender/etc... if they didn't have a set of shared identifiers that they could use to associate that data across multiple sources. It seems very relevant to me. The larger privacy problems wouldn't be quite as bad if there was no way to tell what device an app was running on or who was using it. That seems like it would limit data collection in a pretty significant way.
ogre_codes 6y ago
> None of that has anything to do with this topic. This is about Facebook's access to the Apple IDFA. You don't seem to understand what the implications of the IDFA are. Facebook uses the IDFA to tie your activities together. It is one of the fundamental ways they collect all this data. This is why they are fighting so hard to maintain it.