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Facebook’s ad campaign shows how worried it is about Apple's privacy changes

114 points by anupamchugh 6y ago

jeffrallen 6y ago
Error 404. Correct link is https://www.inc.com/jason-aten/facebook-just-admitted-it-has-lost-its-battle-with-apple-over-privacy.html https://www.inc.com/jason-aten/facebook-just-admitted-it-has...
- 908087 6y ago
  I'm getting a 404 at your link as well, though it looks like someone archived it before it went dead. https://web.archive.org/web/20210228143057/https://www.inc.com/jason-aten/facebook-just-admitted-it-has-lost-its-battle-with-apple-over-privacy.html https://web.archive.org/web/20210228143057/https://www.inc.c...
- anupamchugh 6y ago
  Yeah, this is strange. The submitted link is the same as the one you've mentioned. Sometimes it works otherwise it requires a refresh.
  - shagie 6y ago
    FWIW, I clicked the link in this thread (twice). First time was a 404, second time it worked.
  - Triv888 6y ago
    And the refresh button disappeared in the latest Firefox (v84.0.2)? I have to use F5, but still 404s 80% of the time... looks like a similar problem that Twitter has been having for months (sometimes it says "content is not available to you" unless you refresh).
    - 2cb 6y ago
      > the refresh button disappeared in the latest Firefox (v84.0.2)? Well that's just... terrible UX. Surely there's a setting to enable it again? > still 404s 80% of the time... looks like a similar problem that Twitter has been having for months (sometimes it says "content is not available to you" unless you refresh). Sounds to me like a CDN problem in both cases. Content not propagating and possibly not being cached correctly at the endpoint you're trying to use until you refresh a few times. Just a guess mind, but a relatively informed one since I've had similar issues on my own sites that usually require CDN cache invalidation to fix.
    - Monory 6y ago
      The latest Firefox is actually v86, and the refresh button is right there for me. Could you maybe have accidentally removed it in the Customize menu?
      - Triv888 6y ago
        It came back with my linux distribution's provided update... not sure what hapenned but I didn't remove it.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
newbie578 6y ago
I have no issue with making Facebook ask for for permission for users, that is ok. But my bigger problem is the hidden intentions behind Apple. Why aren't Apple's apps themselves also having to ask for permission? I personally do not trust Apple one bit, just as I do not trust Facebook. So why is it so much harder to disable Apple's tracking, compared to Facebook's? Something like this could have grounds for anti-competitive behaviour.
- benguild 6y ago
  Only apps that do this sort of tracking have to ask. Otherwise there is no need. Does that make sense?
  - zimmen 6y ago
    We don’t know whether Apple’s apps will ask yet do we? Not until the next iOS update. And when an app doesn’t ask, does that just mean there is no tracking going on or is it some nefarious scheme to achieve who knows what? The nefarious option will probably become most popular on the interwebs, obviously. I can already see the HN posts: “Pages caught loading an asset from apple.com, violating their own tracking policy! Is Apple doomed?”
    - mqrs 6y ago
      Check out your iPhone’s Settings > Privacy and scroll to the very bottom. You’ll see “Analytics & Improvements” and “Apple Advertising”, which both contain toggles and details about the data that has been gathered so far. There was also an iOS update in the past where the onboarding flow asked me to grant these permissions, though I vaguely remember seeing it on every major iOS version update. Now, that’s not to say that the iPhone setting guarantees that Apple is not up to something sketchy. We can’t tell what’s going on under the hood or in their servers, but if we really wanted to be extremists about privacy, then we have to resort to apps that we’ve built and self-hosted ourselves.
  - wayneftw 6y ago
    So who investigates whether Apple’s apps do this sort of tracking or not?
helsinkiandrew 6y ago
> Except, small businesses can still advertise to their customers. They can still use all of the information Facebook knows about its users--like their gender, age, location, and interests, to show ads. If you're a small business, none of that changes. The only person that really stands to lose seems to be Facebook. I'm not sure that is true: Facebook would argue that with tracking users interests are better understood. A small model railway business can advertise to people who aren't just members of facebook railway groups and visit railway pages on facebook but also those who are visiting model railway websites outside of facebook too (that have FB tracking pixels). When people are visiting websites reviewing a new engine and start clicking on that businesses adverts for the engine, FB will show the ad to more of people who have visited those webpages too, making the ad more cheaper as you're not competing with other ad purchasers. [EDIT] I'll still be saying no to facebook tracking.
- chokeartist 6y ago
  > When people are visiting websites reviewing a new engine and start clicking on that businesses adverts for the engine, FB will show the ad to more of people who have visited those webpages too, making the ad more cheaper as you're not competing with other ad purchasers. I don't care. They can take their entire immoral business model and fuck themselves to the graveyard. Next.
- mgreg 6y ago
  Why couldn't facebook instead facilitate that same small model railway business advertising on the railway group pages, and non-facebook pages about model railways? Why not just tie the ads to the content of the page visited? With targeting you're correct that facebook (and others) can instead follow the user around the internet and show them (perhaps) relevant ads on sites that may be cheaper to advertise on (e.g. some crappy link-bait / SEO built site) which may be more effective than an ad otherwise shown on _that_ click-bait site but perhaps less effective than a railway ad shown on a railway related website. Facebook can transfer revenue from the higher quality site on railway topics to lower quality sites that may just be click-bait and capture nearly all that difference for themselves. Bottom line is you de-fund high quality sites (railway hobbyist sites in this example) and encourage surveilling individuals for only facebook's benefit.
williesleg 6y ago
Wow! All those big datacenters, both Apple and Facebook!
feralimal 6y ago
Facebook wants all your data. Apple wants all your data. Apple is preventing Facebook from the data it used to get via Apple. This is nothing about privacy. Albeit we see fine statements about 'privacy' and 'open internet'. This a little corporate fisticuffs about which entity gets to own your data to monetize your life. Both assume the right of 'open privacy' when it comes to your data.
- acdha 6y ago
  I know “both sides” narratives offer an easy way to tune out of an issue you don’t wish to engage with, but that’s a huge unsupported claim. Apple and Facebook have entirely different business models and Facebook has had a history of dishonesty about what they collect or how they use it, not to mention even shadier practices (remember when they suckered the news industry with that “pivot to video” based on fake data?). It’s important to remember that large companies don’t have your best interests at heart but simply reaching for false equivalencies by reflex makes you prone to being fooled, not sophisticated. Facebook PR spends a lot of money trying to encourage this kind of apathy.
- ceejayoz 6y ago
  I'm all for "companies aren't your friends" as an attitude, but pretending Apple and Facebook are the same on privacy and what they do with your data is simply unsupported by the facts.
- Schiendelman 6y ago
  This is a deep misunderstanding of Apple's business model. Apple doesn't 'want all your data' because that's not useful to their core business. They're selling you privacy as a secondary effect, but they are indeed selling you privacy. Apple publishes explicit statements about their privacy standards. Believing that Apple "wants all your data" requires believing that many, many written documents they publish, many of which would be easily falsified if untrue, are bald-faced lies. It's simply not reality.
  - jeffgreco 6y ago
    Apple wants all your data to be stuck in their walled garden, but indeed not for the nefarious data mining/reselling practices of Facebook — more old fashioned lock-in reasons.
KptMarchewa 6y ago
>Everyone's News Feed is unique, which means you're more likely to see content you want to watch, groups you want to join, creators you want to follow, and products and services you want to buy. This is so bullshit. It means that I'm more likely to see content Facebook wants me to see, that maximizes some of their metrics. There's nothing for me there.
- jeffgreco 6y ago
  Yes, Facebook restricting Pages’ organic reach only to require the Page owners to invest heavily in advertising to make up for the difference was a real death knell for the concept of the digital public square on there.
- justapassenger 6y ago
  It’s possible for those two initiatives to be aligned.
  - imnotlost 6y ago
    Highly unlikely, that’s just a lie marketeers tell themselves so they can sleep at night.
  - simlevesque 6y ago
    You can say that about almost anything.
  - bluesign 6y ago
    for the "products and services you want to buy", metric is maximum revenue for facebook. There is no chance these two initiatives can be aligned, as long as there is "bid" part in the equation. If you have 0.01% interest in my product but I have deep pockets, you will see my ad all the time.
    - justapassenger 6y ago
      That’s not how businesses work. They don’t burn money on useless ads, just to annoy you.
3np 6y ago
Can we talk about the video? First time I see it and it's just so awkwardly bad. It feels like something out of a low-effort parody. Never before have I felt that FB is crumbling but how the heck did this pass internally?
- system16 6y ago
  I guess it was a rush job, because it certain looks like it. Besides the cringe factor, I think the bigger problem with it is "who is this video for"? If I didn't already know about the Apple/Facebook controversy, I'd have no idea what message it was trying to get across, and even then it's extremely vague. If I didn't pay attention to the bizarre voice over, I'd assume it a video for a new photo app or filter or something. Apple isn't blocking Facebook from doing anything. It will just now be asking users to confirm they are ok with the tracking behaviour first. Facebook will have to do a lot better than this cringefest video to convince people why this is such a bad thing.
- JKCalhoun 6y ago
  Curiously, Safari asked me if I want to allow Facebook to track me when I clicked on the video. When I declined, the video stopped. (Clicked again, let the video play out in the background, then declined. Oh well.)
  - ryandrake 6y ago
    I noticed the same thing. They're so petty they'll cancel the video mid-stream when you choose not to let them cookie themselves all over your browser. Think about it: Some engineer (maybe even someone who reads HN) programmed that business logic. Thank you, developer #48814 for being part of the problem rather than part of the solution.
- hadrien01 6y ago
  What video are you talking about? I don't see any video in the linked article
  - zapzupnz 6y ago
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
danShumway 6y ago
Evergreen point that if users actually wanted this tracking, if they actually believed that ads and tracking made their timelines better, then they would say "yes" when asked if they wanted to be tracked. Apple's change doesn't make tracking opt-in or opt-out, it forces users to make a choice, with both choices being equally easy to make. It's a perfect compromise between default privacy and default tracking -- presenting the user with an unskipable dialog that makes sure that neither option is buried in a setting someplace, that presents both options on equal terms. So Facebook wants to argue that it's a worse experience for consumers if they're not being tracked, but the truth is that they know a large portion of users don't want the experience that Facebook is offering. That's why Facebook is scared. Not because Apple is bullying users into being private, not because (in this case) they're attacking the Open web, but because Facebook knows that when users are presented with a clear choice that makes it equally easy to opt into or out of tracking, they choose to opt out. Advertisers are always saying that people want what they're offering. But they are so stinking scared about being asked to prove it.
- LeanderK 6y ago
  I think the problem is that facebook never had to fight for tracking. Everyone just just got tracked and fb could do what they want. They never cared whether it was really useful, they just tried to show as much relevant ads as possible. A complete disregard for the user-experience thanks to it's monopoly, which also shows in fb getting unpopular (at least in my circles).
  - JKCalhoun 6y ago
    I don't know. When I first heard people talking about dark patterns in UI design, Facebook was the platform that immediately sprung to my mind. It was always laughable (?) the hoops you had to go through to turn on various aspects of privacy in their settings. And it was constantly changing, requiring users to constantly go back into settings to turn off yet another flag that was introduced default-on. They seem to have known very early on that user's would not appreciate their crap.
  - danShumway 6y ago
mittaus 6y ago
> personalization, and it's the not-so-secret sauce zation -> sation -> satum -> to sow personal -> persona -> πρόσωπον -> mask
- mittaus 6y ago
  The truth hurts. Facebook, and everyone working for them, is interested in sowing our online masks!
rantwasp 6y ago
I have zero sympathy for what Facebook is doing so I believe this is a step in the right direction. A bigger step would be to just stop using anything Facebook. You attention is a precious resource and your time on Earth is limited.
- JKCalhoun 6y ago
  That's a bigger issue, but I agree. I broke the yoke of Big Cable and transcended the "vidiots" only to have become lazy and a "netiot". A friend I know appears to limit his computer (and phone) time to the morning hours. (I mean, I've never asked him but if I email or even text him, I never see a reply until the morning of the following day.) I am going to try and do that as well. Get some actual shit done during the day again.
  - 2cb 6y ago
    Personally, after dumping Facebook and Twitter, I made a Mastodon instance to chill out on. While it is arguably just as much of a time waster as any other social media, it doesn't track me, throw ads in my face, show me an algorithmic feed designed to manipulate me, "suggest" people and pages to follow, and since it's my instance I can choose what other instances I do or don't want to federate with. The end result is a form of social media that's much better for my mental health. We've all seen the studies by now about the stress and other negative effects of Facebook. None of that applies to Mastodon and the fediverse in general. Or at least, much less of it. Ultimately, of course, it depends on how you choose to use it. But yeah it's still just as easy to spend all day on there instead of actually getting shit done. Mostly. One thing Mastodon doesn't do, which Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, Instagram, and the rest do is bug you with notifications telling you what you're "missing out on" if you don't use it for a while. I've had Instagram go nuts sending me constant notifications telling me nothing except "this list of people posted recently, check out what you're missing!" Then, when I disabled its notifications, instead I get emails saying the same thing. I'm probably gonna delete IG soon because it's Facebook owned and I don't use it anymore, but point is, these mainstream social networks are designed to pull you back in constantly. Federated networks are not. Much easier to not use Mastodon for a few days, nothing will bug me about it.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
frouge 6y ago
Did not think that NPR's all-out war would end so fast...
- marcodave 6y ago
  National Public Radio? National Performance Review? Non-photorealistic rendering?
poundofshrimp 6y ago
Explicit consent for privacy-related things is a great idea. It’s difficult to sympathise with Facebook here.
CaptArmchair 6y ago
Apple and Facebook are vastly different companies with different incentives and business models. The former is about selling a very particular vision on the personal computing experience and controlling the platform that underpins that experience. The latter is about selling adverting space, business intelligence and access to large audiences. To both of them, privacy is a liability or a business opportunity. They will engage with the issue of privacy to the extent that it fits within their business models. As far as Apple is concerned, Facebook's stance regarding privacy today isn't a straightforward legal liability or even a moral quandry. It has become a deep strategic liability. Over the past 15 years Facebook and others could freely leverage the affordances provided by Apple's platform - the app store, browser, API's, devices,... - to develop an environment that enables them to track its users. The endless string of deep issues caused by social media have rubbed off and put the entire industry - "Big Tech" including Apple - under public scrutiny. Apple's relationship to Facebook isn't as straightforward as one might think: it's implicitly symbiotic. Audiences want to be able to connect with others via social media. And Apple is perfectly positioned as a middle man to provide an integrated platform - devices, OS, app store,... - to do just that. Being able to access your social network is a major selling point for Apple. Not having to build the infrastructure itself and letting others do it, was a massive opportunity for Apple. At least in so far that those actors didn't enter Apple's own markets. And so, Apple's changing stance is born out of necessity. It's about safeguarding the brand and the vision that it wants to sell to the world. But it has to do that gingerly since it's products have become part of a digital infrastructure that underpin vast parts of economical and societal activities. Unlike Parler, Apple can't just remove Facebook from it's app store without hurting its own interests. In all of this, I don't think that Facebook "admitted it has lost the Battle with Apple over privacy". Let alone that it actually lost that "battle" such as it is. Even more so, if there ever is a battle over privacy, it's between Facebook - and other media companies - and the public as represented by it's legal and judicial institutions. Whether it's through hearings in Congress, or through the dealings with the EU Commission. Apple itself is no stranger to it's products being front and center to privacy issues. It has a long-standing dispute with the FBI about adding backdoors that would allow public authorities to circumvent encryption. [1] However, this is less of a strategic issue threatening it's commercial interests: it's a legal issue in which public authorities - not a private actor - demand legal compliance from Apple. Which is a very different ballgame. In the eyes of the general public, all of this may seem to revolve around the same set of issues. And Apple might be perceived as the "good guy" taking the private interests of its customers to heart as globally trust in big technology corporations has been damaged. But I think that's just too simple and naive a narrative. The reality is usually far more murky. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FBI%E2%80%93Apple_encryption_dispute https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FBI%E2%80%93Apple_encryption_d...
deleted 6y ago
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ankurparikh 6y ago
What is the next best alternative for a Facebook advertiser in a world of no third-party tracking?
gremlinsinc 6y ago
Facebook and Google shouldn't be allowed to run ads on their ad networks without paying the same as customers pay to some 3rd party a charity, a tax, etc... Likewise Amazon shouldn't be allowed to basically steamroll custom brands and replace them with Amazon products that are exactly the same.

114 points by anupamchugh 6y ago

Error 404. Correct link is https://www.inc.com/jason-aten/facebook-just-admitted-it-has-lost-its-battle-with-apple-over-privacy.html https://www.inc.com/jason-aten/facebook-just-admitted-it-has...

908087 6y ago
I'm getting a 404 at your link as well, though it looks like someone archived it before it went dead. https://web.archive.org/web/20210228143057/https://www.inc.com/jason-aten/facebook-just-admitted-it-has-lost-its-battle-with-apple-over-privacy.html https://web.archive.org/web/20210228143057/https://www.inc.c...
anupamchugh 6y ago
Yeah, this is strange. The submitted link is the same as the one you've mentioned. Sometimes it works otherwise it requires a refresh.
- shagie 6y ago
  FWIW, I clicked the link in this thread (twice). First time was a 404, second time it worked.
- Triv888 6y ago
  And the refresh button disappeared in the latest Firefox (v84.0.2)? I have to use F5, but still 404s 80% of the time... looks like a similar problem that Twitter has been having for months (sometimes it says "content is not available to you" unless you refresh).
  - 2cb 6y ago
    > the refresh button disappeared in the latest Firefox (v84.0.2)? Well that's just... terrible UX. Surely there's a setting to enable it again? > still 404s 80% of the time... looks like a similar problem that Twitter has been having for months (sometimes it says "content is not available to you" unless you refresh). Sounds to me like a CDN problem in both cases. Content not propagating and possibly not being cached correctly at the endpoint you're trying to use until you refresh a few times. Just a guess mind, but a relatively informed one since I've had similar issues on my own sites that usually require CDN cache invalidation to fix.
  - Monory 6y ago
    The latest Firefox is actually v86, and the refresh button is right there for me. Could you maybe have accidentally removed it in the Customize menu?
    - Triv888 6y ago
      It came back with my linux distribution's provided update... not sure what hapenned but I didn't remove it.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

newbie578 6y ago

I have no issue with making Facebook ask for for permission for users, that is ok. But my bigger problem is the hidden intentions behind Apple. Why aren't Apple's apps themselves also having to ask for permission? I personally do not trust Apple one bit, just as I do not trust Facebook. So why is it so much harder to disable Apple's tracking, compared to Facebook's? Something like this could have grounds for anti-competitive behaviour.

benguild 6y ago
Only apps that do this sort of tracking have to ask. Otherwise there is no need. Does that make sense?
- zimmen 6y ago
  We don’t know whether Apple’s apps will ask yet do we? Not until the next iOS update. And when an app doesn’t ask, does that just mean there is no tracking going on or is it some nefarious scheme to achieve who knows what? The nefarious option will probably become most popular on the interwebs, obviously. I can already see the HN posts: “Pages caught loading an asset from apple.com, violating their own tracking policy! Is Apple doomed?”
  - mqrs 6y ago
    Check out your iPhone’s Settings > Privacy and scroll to the very bottom. You’ll see “Analytics & Improvements” and “Apple Advertising”, which both contain toggles and details about the data that has been gathered so far. There was also an iOS update in the past where the onboarding flow asked me to grant these permissions, though I vaguely remember seeing it on every major iOS version update. Now, that’s not to say that the iPhone setting guarantees that Apple is not up to something sketchy. We can’t tell what’s going on under the hood or in their servers, but if we really wanted to be extremists about privacy, then we have to resort to apps that we’ve built and self-hosted ourselves.
- wayneftw 6y ago
  So who investigates whether Apple’s apps do this sort of tracking or not?

helsinkiandrew 6y ago

> Except, small businesses can still advertise to their customers. They can still use all of the information Facebook knows about its users--like their gender, age, location, and interests, to show ads. If you're a small business, none of that changes. The only person that really stands to lose seems to be Facebook. I'm not sure that is true: Facebook would argue that with tracking users interests are better understood. A small model railway business can advertise to people who aren't just members of facebook railway groups and visit railway pages on facebook but also those who are visiting model railway websites outside of facebook too (that have FB tracking pixels). When people are visiting websites reviewing a new engine and start clicking on that businesses adverts for the engine, FB will show the ad to more of people who have visited those webpages too, making the ad more cheaper as you're not competing with other ad purchasers. [EDIT] I'll still be saying no to facebook tracking.

chokeartist 6y ago
> When people are visiting websites reviewing a new engine and start clicking on that businesses adverts for the engine, FB will show the ad to more of people who have visited those webpages too, making the ad more cheaper as you're not competing with other ad purchasers. I don't care. They can take their entire immoral business model and fuck themselves to the graveyard. Next.
mgreg 6y ago
Why couldn't facebook instead facilitate that same small model railway business advertising on the railway group pages, and non-facebook pages about model railways? Why not just tie the ads to the content of the page visited? With targeting you're correct that facebook (and others) can instead follow the user around the internet and show them (perhaps) relevant ads on sites that may be cheaper to advertise on (e.g. some crappy link-bait / SEO built site) which may be more effective than an ad otherwise shown on _that_ click-bait site but perhaps less effective than a railway ad shown on a railway related website. Facebook can transfer revenue from the higher quality site on railway topics to lower quality sites that may just be click-bait and capture nearly all that difference for themselves. Bottom line is you de-fund high quality sites (railway hobbyist sites in this example) and encourage surveilling individuals for only facebook's benefit.

williesleg 6y ago

Wow! All those big datacenters, both Apple and Facebook!

feralimal 6y ago

Facebook wants all your data. Apple wants all your data. Apple is preventing Facebook from the data it used to get via Apple. This is nothing about privacy. Albeit we see fine statements about 'privacy' and 'open internet'. This a little corporate fisticuffs about which entity gets to own your data to monetize your life. Both assume the right of 'open privacy' when it comes to your data.

acdha 6y ago
I know “both sides” narratives offer an easy way to tune out of an issue you don’t wish to engage with, but that’s a huge unsupported claim. Apple and Facebook have entirely different business models and Facebook has had a history of dishonesty about what they collect or how they use it, not to mention even shadier practices (remember when they suckered the news industry with that “pivot to video” based on fake data?). It’s important to remember that large companies don’t have your best interests at heart but simply reaching for false equivalencies by reflex makes you prone to being fooled, not sophisticated. Facebook PR spends a lot of money trying to encourage this kind of apathy.
ceejayoz 6y ago
I'm all for "companies aren't your friends" as an attitude, but pretending Apple and Facebook are the same on privacy and what they do with your data is simply unsupported by the facts.
Schiendelman 6y ago
This is a deep misunderstanding of Apple's business model. Apple doesn't 'want all your data' because that's not useful to their core business. They're selling you privacy as a secondary effect, but they are indeed selling you privacy. Apple publishes explicit statements about their privacy standards. Believing that Apple "wants all your data" requires believing that many, many written documents they publish, many of which would be easily falsified if untrue, are bald-faced lies. It's simply not reality.
- jeffgreco 6y ago
  Apple wants all your data to be stuck in their walled garden, but indeed not for the nefarious data mining/reselling practices of Facebook — more old fashioned lock-in reasons.

KptMarchewa 6y ago

>Everyone's News Feed is unique, which means you're more likely to see content you want to watch, groups you want to join, creators you want to follow, and products and services you want to buy. This is so bullshit. It means that I'm more likely to see content Facebook wants me to see, that maximizes some of their metrics. There's nothing for me there.

jeffgreco 6y ago
Yes, Facebook restricting Pages’ organic reach only to require the Page owners to invest heavily in advertising to make up for the difference was a real death knell for the concept of the digital public square on there.
justapassenger 6y ago
It’s possible for those two initiatives to be aligned.
- imnotlost 6y ago
  Highly unlikely, that’s just a lie marketeers tell themselves so they can sleep at night.
- simlevesque 6y ago
  You can say that about almost anything.
- bluesign 6y ago
  for the "products and services you want to buy", metric is maximum revenue for facebook. There is no chance these two initiatives can be aligned, as long as there is "bid" part in the equation. If you have 0.01% interest in my product but I have deep pockets, you will see my ad all the time.
  - justapassenger 6y ago
    That’s not how businesses work. They don’t burn money on useless ads, just to annoy you.

3np 6y ago

Can we talk about the video? First time I see it and it's just so awkwardly bad. It feels like something out of a low-effort parody. Never before have I felt that FB is crumbling but how the heck did this pass internally?

system16 6y ago
I guess it was a rush job, because it certain looks like it. Besides the cringe factor, I think the bigger problem with it is "who is this video for"? If I didn't already know about the Apple/Facebook controversy, I'd have no idea what message it was trying to get across, and even then it's extremely vague. If I didn't pay attention to the bizarre voice over, I'd assume it a video for a new photo app or filter or something. Apple isn't blocking Facebook from doing anything. It will just now be asking users to confirm they are ok with the tracking behaviour first. Facebook will have to do a lot better than this cringefest video to convince people why this is such a bad thing.
JKCalhoun 6y ago
Curiously, Safari asked me if I want to allow Facebook to track me when I clicked on the video. When I declined, the video stopped. (Clicked again, let the video play out in the background, then declined. Oh well.)
- ryandrake 6y ago
  I noticed the same thing. They're so petty they'll cancel the video mid-stream when you choose not to let them cookie themselves all over your browser. Think about it: Some engineer (maybe even someone who reads HN) programmed that business logic. Thank you, developer #48814 for being part of the problem rather than part of the solution.
hadrien01 6y ago
What video are you talking about? I don't see any video in the linked article
- zapzupnz 6y ago

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

danShumway 6y ago

Evergreen point that if users actually wanted this tracking, if they actually believed that ads and tracking made their timelines better, then they would say "yes" when asked if they wanted to be tracked. Apple's change doesn't make tracking opt-in or opt-out, it forces users to make a choice, with both choices being equally easy to make. It's a perfect compromise between default privacy and default tracking -- presenting the user with an unskipable dialog that makes sure that neither option is buried in a setting someplace, that presents both options on equal terms. So Facebook wants to argue that it's a worse experience for consumers if they're not being tracked, but the truth is that they know a large portion of users don't want the experience that Facebook is offering. That's why Facebook is scared. Not because Apple is bullying users into being private, not because (in this case) they're attacking the Open web, but because Facebook knows that when users are presented with a clear choice that makes it equally easy to opt into or out of tracking, they choose to opt out. Advertisers are always saying that people want what they're offering. But they are so stinking scared about being asked to prove it.

LeanderK 6y ago
I think the problem is that facebook never had to fight for tracking. Everyone just just got tracked and fb could do what they want. They never cared whether it was really useful, they just tried to show as much relevant ads as possible. A complete disregard for the user-experience thanks to it's monopoly, which also shows in fb getting unpopular (at least in my circles).
- JKCalhoun 6y ago
  I don't know. When I first heard people talking about dark patterns in UI design, Facebook was the platform that immediately sprung to my mind. It was always laughable (?) the hoops you had to go through to turn on various aspects of privacy in their settings. And it was constantly changing, requiring users to constantly go back into settings to turn off yet another flag that was introduced default-on. They seem to have known very early on that user's would not appreciate their crap.
- danShumway 6y ago

mittaus 6y ago

> personalization, and it's the not-so-secret sauce zation -> sation -> satum -> to sow personal -> persona -> πρόσωπον -> mask

mittaus 6y ago
The truth hurts. Facebook, and everyone working for them, is interested in sowing our online masks!

rantwasp 6y ago

I have zero sympathy for what Facebook is doing so I believe this is a step in the right direction. A bigger step would be to just stop using anything Facebook. You attention is a precious resource and your time on Earth is limited.

JKCalhoun 6y ago
That's a bigger issue, but I agree. I broke the yoke of Big Cable and transcended the "vidiots" only to have become lazy and a "netiot". A friend I know appears to limit his computer (and phone) time to the morning hours. (I mean, I've never asked him but if I email or even text him, I never see a reply until the morning of the following day.) I am going to try and do that as well. Get some actual shit done during the day again.
- 2cb 6y ago
  Personally, after dumping Facebook and Twitter, I made a Mastodon instance to chill out on. While it is arguably just as much of a time waster as any other social media, it doesn't track me, throw ads in my face, show me an algorithmic feed designed to manipulate me, "suggest" people and pages to follow, and since it's my instance I can choose what other instances I do or don't want to federate with. The end result is a form of social media that's much better for my mental health. We've all seen the studies by now about the stress and other negative effects of Facebook. None of that applies to Mastodon and the fediverse in general. Or at least, much less of it. Ultimately, of course, it depends on how you choose to use it. But yeah it's still just as easy to spend all day on there instead of actually getting shit done. Mostly. One thing Mastodon doesn't do, which Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, Instagram, and the rest do is bug you with notifications telling you what you're "missing out on" if you don't use it for a while. I've had Instagram go nuts sending me constant notifications telling me nothing except "this list of people posted recently, check out what you're missing!" Then, when I disabled its notifications, instead I get emails saying the same thing. I'm probably gonna delete IG soon because it's Facebook owned and I don't use it anymore, but point is, these mainstream social networks are designed to pull you back in constantly. Federated networks are not. Much easier to not use Mastodon for a few days, nothing will bug me about it.

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frouge 6y ago

Did not think that NPR's all-out war would end so fast...

marcodave 6y ago
National Public Radio? National Performance Review? Non-photorealistic rendering?

poundofshrimp 6y ago

Explicit consent for privacy-related things is a great idea. It’s difficult to sympathise with Facebook here.

CaptArmchair 6y ago

Apple and Facebook are vastly different companies with different incentives and business models. The former is about selling a very particular vision on the personal computing experience and controlling the platform that underpins that experience. The latter is about selling adverting space, business intelligence and access to large audiences. To both of them, privacy is a liability or a business opportunity. They will engage with the issue of privacy to the extent that it fits within their business models. As far as Apple is concerned, Facebook's stance regarding privacy today isn't a straightforward legal liability or even a moral quandry. It has become a deep strategic liability. Over the past 15 years Facebook and others could freely leverage the affordances provided by Apple's platform - the app store, browser, API's, devices,... - to develop an environment that enables them to track its users. The endless string of deep issues caused by social media have rubbed off and put the entire industry - "Big Tech" including Apple - under public scrutiny. Apple's relationship to Facebook isn't as straightforward as one might think: it's implicitly symbiotic. Audiences want to be able to connect with others via social media. And Apple is perfectly positioned as a middle man to provide an integrated platform - devices, OS, app store,... - to do just that. Being able to access your social network is a major selling point for Apple. Not having to build the infrastructure itself and letting others do it, was a massive opportunity for Apple. At least in so far that those actors didn't enter Apple's own markets. And so, Apple's changing stance is born out of necessity. It's about safeguarding the brand and the vision that it wants to sell to the world. But it has to do that gingerly since it's products have become part of a digital infrastructure that underpin vast parts of economical and societal activities. Unlike Parler, Apple can't just remove Facebook from it's app store without hurting its own interests. In all of this, I don't think that Facebook "admitted it has lost the Battle with Apple over privacy". Let alone that it actually lost that "battle" such as it is. Even more so, if there ever is a battle over privacy, it's between Facebook - and other media companies - and the public as represented by it's legal and judicial institutions. Whether it's through hearings in Congress, or through the dealings with the EU Commission. Apple itself is no stranger to it's products being front and center to privacy issues. It has a long-standing dispute with the FBI about adding backdoors that would allow public authorities to circumvent encryption. [1] However, this is less of a strategic issue threatening it's commercial interests: it's a legal issue in which public authorities - not a private actor - demand legal compliance from Apple. Which is a very different ballgame. In the eyes of the general public, all of this may seem to revolve around the same set of issues. And Apple might be perceived as the "good guy" taking the private interests of its customers to heart as globally trust in big technology corporations has been damaged. But I think that's just too simple and naive a narrative. The reality is usually far more murky. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FBI%E2%80%93Apple_encryption_dispute https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FBI%E2%80%93Apple_encryption_d...

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ankurparikh 6y ago

What is the next best alternative for a Facebook advertiser in a world of no third-party tracking?

gremlinsinc 6y ago

Facebook and Google shouldn't be allowed to run ads on their ad networks without paying the same as customers pay to some 3rd party a charity, a tax, etc... Likewise Amazon shouldn't be allowed to basically steamroll custom brands and replace them with Amazon products that are exactly the same.