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I think we are coming at it from different directions. You need tracking for personalized ads, you don't need personalized ads for tracking.

shuckles 5y ago
No you don’t need tracking for personalized ads. Apple defines tracking as sharing information about the user between distinct 3rd parties, while it personalizes ads based on your behavior within Apple’s own services.
- brimble 5y ago
  Right. Consider: >>> What do you do for a living? "I track animals." Oh, cool, like you're a hunter or in animal control or something? Trekking all over the wilds, keen eye for detail, grand adventures, lots of mud and amazing stories? "No, I manage a zoo. I track the zoo animals in a spreadsheet. I sit in an office." >>> AFAIK Apple means the hunting kind, when they write "tracking". As in following a user around and watching them while they use services & apps that you don't operate.
brimble 5y ago
Sort of. Again, it's possible to personalize ads without tracking, unless tracking means "collecting literally any data, including order history for a logged-in user" or things like selecting ads based on geography for an address that you provided, not even GPS tracking or something like that. It is entirely possible that the settings do totally different things, so the different language isn't some kind of trick. I think it's likely that picking either of those phrases and using it for both would result in the description of the respective settings being less accurate. Swap the one that applies to applications to "disable personalized ads", rather than "disable tracking". But it doesn't do that—does it? It disables (a certain kind of) tracking. The tracking may not even be used for ads. Apple has no way to guarantee that. You may still see personalized ads based on other data. Make the Apple one "disable tracking" rather than "disable personalized ads". But the setting might not do that at all, while still disabling personalization. In fact, the ad personalization may not have been based on tracking in the first place, and even if it were, disabling personalization could very well leave the tracking in place. The accusation was that Apple's describing the same thing two ways to give themselves an advantage, but I'd say the settings very likely do not do the same thing.

shuckles 5y ago

No you don’t need tracking for personalized ads. Apple defines tracking as sharing information about the user between distinct 3rd parties, while it personalizes ads based on your behavior within Apple’s own services.

brimble 5y ago
Right. Consider: >>> What do you do for a living? "I track animals." Oh, cool, like you're a hunter or in animal control or something? Trekking all over the wilds, keen eye for detail, grand adventures, lots of mud and amazing stories? "No, I manage a zoo. I track the zoo animals in a spreadsheet. I sit in an office." >>> AFAIK Apple means the hunting kind, when they write "tracking". As in following a user around and watching them while they use services & apps that you don't operate.

brimble 5y ago

Sort of. Again, it's possible to personalize ads without tracking, unless tracking means "collecting literally any data, including order history for a logged-in user" or things like selecting ads based on geography for an address that you provided, not even GPS tracking or something like that. It is entirely possible that the settings do totally different things, so the different language isn't some kind of trick. I think it's likely that picking either of those phrases and using it for both would result in the description of the respective settings being less accurate. Swap the one that applies to applications to "disable personalized ads", rather than "disable tracking". But it doesn't do that—does it? It disables (a certain kind of) tracking. The tracking may not even be used for ads. Apple has no way to guarantee that. You may still see personalized ads based on other data. Make the Apple one "disable tracking" rather than "disable personalized ads". But the setting might not do that at all, while still disabling personalization. In fact, the ad personalization may not have been based on tracking in the first place, and even if it were, disabling personalization could very well leave the tracking in place. The accusation was that Apple's describing the same thing two ways to give themselves an advantage, but I'd say the settings very likely do not do the same thing.