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I'm a little confused by this author feeling like they are pulling back the curtain on Apple & Ads. Apple hasn't been anti-ad (though their products have way fe

I'm a little confused by this author feeling like they are pulling back the curtain on Apple & Ads. Apple hasn't been anti-ad (though their products have way fewer ads than the competition. I installed Windows on a new machine yesterday and oh boy I was not prepared) but rather they are pro-privacy. Their recent crackdown on ad networks wasn't "we hate ads so we are going it make harder" but instead it was "you all are leaking customer data like a sieve and that's not ok". The problem with most all the ad networks out there is they are not good stewards of their data and will sell it (directly or indirectly) to anyone with the money to buy it. Personally I hate ads but I understand their place in the world and if I have to see ads I trust Apple way more than Google or whatever fly-by-night ad tracking company is out there. The problem has always been that the advertisers had way more access to the info about the customer (and sometimes the customer's PII/unique id) than I was comfortable with and they would share that indiscriminately. If Apple is the one holding that info and if they design their system in a way that protects it then I don't personally see this as a problem.

bombcar 4y ago
I'm a bit of cynic and I think part of Apple's privacy push is that they see the writing on the wall - advertising is way less valuable than the current customers of advertising think it is, and by removing a bunch of the "targetability" of said advertising they can get closer to the more profitable advertising of yore (where you couldn't directly track all metrics all the time).
- avalys 4y ago
  Have you ever run a business that relied on advertising to drive revenue or are you just relying on what you've read online? Anyone running a small business in a niche space knows that targeted advertising works. The other aspect of it is that targeted advertising allows you to make money from niche advertisers even if you operate a general-interest website.
  - dwaite 4y ago
    Third party general interest websites generally don’t care where their advertising dollars come from, which is why they outsourced it all in the first place. If anything, they would probably prefer advertisements at least tangentially related to the content so that their readers don’t get creeped out by some Amazon product following them around the internet.
    - avalys 4y ago
      Right, but they care about how much advertising dollars they make, and they can make more dollars if the pool of possible advertisers is larger.
    - reaperducer 4y ago
      If anything, they would probably prefer advertisements at least tangentially related to the content so that their readers don’t get creeped out by some Amazon product following them around the internet Which is what Google initially promised web site owners: Targeted advertising. That's why it's called Google AdSense. Because, thanks to Google's crawling ability, it was supposed to sense the content of the page and place appropriate ads there. Only later, as Google's managers became more greedy, did it become ads for forklifts on granny's sausage-making recipe page because must... wring... every... last... penny... for... rhetorical... shareholders... Gah!
    - rchaud 4y ago
      Third party websites can more or less only serve Google ads, or from some tiny competitor like Carbon Ads. Every other ad product is walled-garden specific. Facebook ads are shown only on on Facebook properties. Same with Twitter, Amazon and Apple. You may see ads for these companies on third party sites, but they are being served via Google Ads.
  - threeseed 4y ago
    > Anyone running a small business in a niche space knows that targeted advertising works. My partner runs a small business in a niche space and spends a million/year on ads. She doesn't need customers to be tracked across sites or long term information maintained about their interests or behaviour. She really just needs to sell ads via (a) direct searches and (b) retargeting people who have visited her own site.
- whimsicalism 4y ago
  Anyone who is seriously in the advertising game knows how to measure the incrementality of their advertising spend. There isn't some vast conspiracy of people paying way too much for useless advertising. Advertising works, this is why people pay for it. Apple's changes don't really prevent people from targeting onsite ads... what they do block is the experiments advertisers do to see if their ads are working (ie. on-platform incrementality studies).
  - rchaud 4y ago
    At HN, only a few things are certain. Death, taxes, and advertisers and MBAs colluding to ruin every company.
mgh2 4y ago
Advertising itself is not necessarily bad, but it is how it is done. All FAANGs are growing their shares of the pie. It is time for someone to do it right. Abusers have lived for too long, we need someone to beat them at their own game. Apple is rightly positioned to do so.
- candiddevmike 4y ago
  How do you think Apple can "do advertising" right? Advertising by its very nature is abusive to users: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attention_theft https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attention_theft. Maybe they should make all advertising (not just targeted) opt-in like they did with the advertising ID! I'm sure plenty of users will click allow.
  - avalys 4y ago
    The fact that someone has made this claim and given a name to the concept doesn't make it valid.
  - mgh2 4y ago
    The article doesn't make it clear whether this will be applied to the App Store only. If this is the case, apps are not a life-necessity in the information era - unlike information (search), shopping (e-commerce), or communication (social media). They do not intrude our everyday living unless we intentionally look for it. Every other kind of advertising does so and thus are open to abuse.
    - howinteresting 4y ago
      Banking apps (for example) are absolutely a necessity. This is kind of a silly distinction to draw. My take is that either all advertising is bad or none is. That's why I use Linux, which has fewer ads (zero) than any other OS.
      - mgh2 4y ago
        You can go to your local bank or use the desktop app instead. How do you deter off bad/unethical advertising if everyone is subjective to it anyways? Like almost any tool, you have both bad and good actors. The how matters https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/the%20end%20justifies%20the%20means#:~:text=%E2%80%94used%20to%20say%20that%20a,to%20get%20their%20candidate%20elected https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/the%20end%20justi....
jklinger410 4y ago
> I trust Apple way more than Google I hear this a lot but Google is probably one of the most trustworthy stewards of the most amount of private data in the history of mankind.
- pvarangot 4y ago
  - whimsicalism 4y ago
    Sure, if you want to use an inflammatory and incorrect metaphor.
    - simonh 4y ago
      I'm not sure it is incorrect. Google doesn't sell the data sure, it sells indirect access to it by selling targeted adds based on the data. They abuse the data on behalf of others, but it's still getting abused.
- rpastuszak 4y ago
  Why?
- _jal 4y ago
  I think you can say they built the first huge, impactful non-classified pile of surveillance data dedicated to advertising, and thereby set the bar for corporate behavior with this sort of thing. Of course it is inevitable that slimier outfits came along later and were worse. That's a predictable and expected outcome in any market niche. So in that respect, I can agree.
- spanktheuser 4y ago
  Google is also responsible for the Android and Chrome platforms. In both cases, my impression is that they have long tolerated, if not promoted, ecosystems open to third party data collection of the more abusive sort. While Google may protect data gathered through maps, mail and their many other properties, their stewardship of Android / Chrome greatly diminishes my trust in their organization.
fezfight 4y ago
Feels more like their standard move, lock out competitors so they can control it for their own profit. Not that I mind them fucking with advertisers, but let's not pretend Apple is benevolent here.
- joshstrange 4y ago
  They aren't benevolent but there is such a thing as a mutually beneficial relationship. I'm fine with people making money off advertisement as long as they aren't selling my data directly and the number of companies I trust to do that is very low. In a lot of ways targeted ads and the like can be beneficial, it's about connecting people selling something the the people who want/need that thing, the problem is when data companies can just hoover up or buy that data and do gross things with it.
  - bee_rider 4y ago
    I don't trust any company to do it because: * Even the competent companies have data leaks. * Even the competent companies will give it up if their government comes knocking. * Even a company which is relatively ethical now might someday be taken over by nickle-and-dime management.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - LadyCailin 4y ago
      That's fine, but then you shouldn't give your info to apple at all. Or google, or facebook, or microsoft, or amazon, or ycombinator, for that matter. The fact is, unless you want to be a luddite (which you aren't, you're here, with an account, at least) then you have to trust at least some of these companies. So the question is, which ones can generally be trusted, and which can't? I personally trust apple more than facebook, ycombinator more than amazon, etc. Your ordering might be different, and that's fine, but you're drawing a bright line there, which only hurts yourself.
whimsicalism 4y ago
Google does not "sell data" directly to anyone, so only the 'indirect' part of your comment applies. Even then, Apple's changes have little impact on the "selling data" aspect of things... the real thing that they prevent doing is sale attribution, which is critical for advertising business and not really all that privacy invasive.
- dwaite 4y ago
  Apple has provided frameworks and technology specifically for pro-privacy sale attribution, and continues to be invested in efforts to support standardization of such techniques.
  - philjohn 4y ago
    Except they deliberately delay the attribution messaage so optimising ads takes longer for buyers, and hence costs more money.
    - elteto 4y ago
      That sounds like a feature to me, the end user.
      - dymk 4y ago
        Higher costs being passed on to you?
        bee_rider 4y ago
        Increases the incentive to look for brands that don't waste money on advertising.
        dymk 4y ago
        What’s your method for discovering those brands?
fariszr 4y ago
Apple is better than other big tech for sure, but don't let them fool you into believing they actually care about your privacy, because they don't, and they often use privacy as a an anti-competion weapon. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r38Epj6ldKU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r38Epj6ldKU
- spideymans 4y ago
  Breaking new: capitalistic companies are capitalistic. I don’t give a shit as long as their corporate interests reasonably align with my own
ksec 4y ago
>Apple hasn't been anti-ad You mean Apple played the tracking and Anti Ads cards with all of its PR submarine articles and marketing, how Apple is not an Ad company and doesn't sell ad ( not true then and not true now, to the point the App Store Head questioned whether putting Ads on App Store search would go against Tim Cook's public image ). Fuel the public discourse against data collection AND Ads, push the narrative on all forms of media ( including Social Media ) how every single ad is tracking. ( You may want to read Benedict Evan's piece on Ad and Tracking ) And only to backtrack when the whole Ad industry questions Apple's motive on why are they all of a sudden Anti Ad? ( Tim Cook, somehow, for some reason, had to made a few public statement on how Apple is not "Anti-Ads". ) The whole tracking and Ads PR strategy got to the point where Ad is evil on HN. It wasn't "Personally I hate ads but I understand their place in the world ". It was simply I hate Ads. ( People working inside Ad industry rarely comments on HN anymore ) And when other players in the industry does "targeting" Ads, it is tracking. When Apple does it, it is "personalised". [1] I guess the pandemic had people forget how Apple started their grand strategy play against Facebook. I still cant believe nearly 20 years later how Apple has outdone Google's "Do No Evil" hypocrisy. [1] https://twitter.com/Carnage4Life/status/1532861766492774400 https://twitter.com/Carnage4Life/status/1532861766492774400
- CharlesW 4y ago
  You're doing what the parent comment says, which is conflating Apple's pro-privacy behavior with "anti-advertising" behavior. You're far from the only one, to the point that folks like Tim Cook regularly talk about this. "We’re not against digital advertising. I think digital advertising is going to thrive in any situation, because more and more time is spent online, less and less is spent on linear TV. And digital advertising will do well in any situation. The question is, do we allow the building of this detailed profile to exist without your consent? "We think that some number of people, I don’t know how many, don’t want to be tracked like that. And they should be able to say they don’t."¹ Apple has never disparaged advertising as a revenue model for developers. They even have regular WWDC sessions on the topic². What they have been very vocal about is user control. ¹ https://www.thestar.com/business/2021/04/12/apple-ceo-tim-cook-on-privacy-permission-and-tracking-users.html https://www.thestar.com/business/2021/04/12/apple-ceo-tim-co... ² https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2022/10038/ https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2022/10038/
zitterbewegung 4y ago
Does anyone remember this? https://techcrunch.com/2016/03/28/the-downfall-of-the-walled-garden-heres-why-iad-failed/amp/ https://techcrunch.com/2016/03/28/the-downfall-of-the-walled... Apple tried before with ads in iOS. Right now it seems like they advertise only in the App Store but adding more ads to the core OS would be bad but I could see a play where you get free Apple Music and tv+ but you just have to tolerate ads (and I would switch to that).
- throwaway-blaze 4y ago
  They advertise in Apple News too. I don't think they've ever released a real number but estimates are that they did $3-4billion in advertising revenue in 2021. Not big by the standards of GOOG or META but growing fast.
novok 4y ago
IMO Apple is pro-privacy from competitors and 3rd parties. They are not pro-privacy from Apple itself and the governments that force them to disclose things. There is a lot of tracking from apple you just cannot opt out of from apple straight out. A lot of logs are just uploaded and you can't stop it from the device itself as a setting, such as battery analytics and more. Just investigate what comes out of your iphone & mac still data wise even when you opt out of things you are given as an option. You cannot open an apple id without a phone number or other strong identifying information, even if all you want to do is download free apps. iPhones are mostly unusable without an Apple ID. Apple does not give you an option to not have any encryption keys kept in escrow by apple, like they do with iCloud and iCloud backups. And backups are on by default, including the contents of your iMessage logs. They don't keep your iMessage keys in escrow by default, so they've always been capable in not doing that. They keep iCloud data within China, so the Chinese government probably has continuous full access to whatever is on iCloud for Chinese users, because apple keeps the iCloud keys in escrow. The same goes with the NSA in the USA, because we all know those governments invest enough to fully compromise apple's data centers. Apple could chose a design that allows users to avoid the key escrow and make these government spy agency jobs much harder. The examples go on and on. But they are very good in not highlighting these facts.
- CharlesW 4y ago
  > A lot of logs are just uploaded and you can't stop it from the device itself as a setting, such as battery analytics and more. You actually can. It's one click to opt-out of all device analytics: https://www.apple.com/legal/privacy/data/en/device-analytics/ https://www.apple.com/legal/privacy/data/en/device-analytics... For anyone curious about what's being sent when device analytics is allowed to phone home, that's found at Settings > Privacy > Analytics & Improvements.
thefz 4y ago
Someone down in the comments was waiting for the Apple defense squad to pop up and say that this has been in consumer's best interest the whole time, and there you are. of course they do it because they care about your privacy, and not for their revenue. Of course.
- joshstrange 4y ago
  And if I had added a "and of course someone will come into the replies and say it's only about profit" then that would have negated your comment? Welcome to the real world where 2 things can be true at the same time: Apple cares about profits and Apple cares about privacy.
  - thefz 4y ago
    Hey whatever, if it makes you feel better.
pxc 4y ago
> Apple hasn't been anti-ad (though their products have way fewer ads than the competition.) > Personally I hate ads but [...] if I have to see ads I trust Apple You don't have to see ads. There have been and still are operating systems with no ads, and Apple is absolutely swimming in cash. There is no necessity here— Apple is not integrating ads because they 'have to', and we don't 'have to' see them because we don't have to use operating systems that integrate ads. The resignation here just kills me.
quitit 4y ago
In addition to this: They’ve been building ad tools because that’s what developers have been asking for as a way to surface their app. Otherwise all developers had was a situation where only Apple’s algorithms decides which app is similar to another app, which is largely generated through user searches/behaviours (something that is easily exploited as seen on amazon with the “customers also bought” exploits). That left developers with limited ability to surface their ad honestly and absolutely no way to feature event-based activities, expansions and other promotional industry norms. HN won’t like it because it’s Apple - but this largely improves the experience for the developers. While consumers get relevant ads without the unscrupulous on-selling of data.
- Apocryphon 4y ago
  Will this really improve the experience for the average developer, or will this be a way for those with deep pockets to blanket the platform with ads and drown out small-time indie devs even more? It feels like a more lasting solution not based on being able to buy eyeballs would be making the search experience on the App Store more robust and modernized. To fix the solution with an UX upgrade. That feels more like an Apple solution, not by adding more ads into the mix.
  - quitit 4y ago
    Why not both? Improve the UX which they do regularly and introduce ads which developers have been screaming for. With or without ads in the app store, the problem about being out marketed exists outside the app store. What this is merely apple’s privacy-protecting solution for what is seen inside the app store. Im yet to see an argument which isn’t just some thinly veiled distaste for apple. Hate apple all you like, but actually challenge the conversation with a valid argument.
    - Apocryphon 4y ago
      I don't hate Apple; I've worked there myself, continue to be a shareholder (and thus have vested interest in its fortunes), and given the way the industry works, may return there eventually. But I find blind faith in the company from die-hard fans both misplaced, and frankly, distasteful. As with any organization, Apple is deserving both scrutiny and critique, and it is wrong to dismiss critique as hatred. And the image of Apple as a scrappy underdog beset on all sides by haters is two decades out of date by now. It's a corporate giant that deserves as much skepticism as the others. > Improve the UX which they do regularly and introduce ads which developers have been screaming for. If ads can be better, then developers will like them. But I question the supposition that developers have been screaming for ads, given that the status quo with App Store ads is situations like this: https://twitter.com/wilshipley/status/1270568780712706049 https://twitter.com/wilshipley/status/1270568780712706049 https://twitter.com/wilshipley/status/1197642397854777344 https://twitter.com/wilshipley/status/1197642397854777344 https://twitter.com/wilshipley/status/1271154427034918912 https://twitter.com/wilshipley/status/1271154427034918912 Granted, that's from two years ago, and any new ads rollouts would presumably be of greater quality. It's just that track record doesn't inspire a lot of confidence, and really throws into question the idea that developers really want ads. How do you prevent the big players with the biggest marketing budgets from buying up all of the space? I'm not going to pre-judge the feature, but I do believe some healthy skepticism is warranted. If App Store ads follow even a modicum of some of these feature requests, then perhaps they will really be what developers want. https://twitter.com/wilshipley/status/1271185023744397312 https://twitter.com/wilshipley/status/1271185023744397312 Edit: an example from six months ago https://twitter.com/tgrapperon/status/1492460177001431042 https://twitter.com/tgrapperon/status/1492460177001431042 https://twitter.com/miguelkennedy/status/1492529534729654274 https://twitter.com/miguelkennedy/status/1492529534729654274

bombcar 4y ago

I'm a bit of cynic and I think part of Apple's privacy push is that they see the writing on the wall - advertising is way less valuable than the current customers of advertising think it is, and by removing a bunch of the "targetability" of said advertising they can get closer to the more profitable advertising of yore (where you couldn't directly track all metrics all the time).

avalys 4y ago
Have you ever run a business that relied on advertising to drive revenue or are you just relying on what you've read online? Anyone running a small business in a niche space knows that targeted advertising works. The other aspect of it is that targeted advertising allows you to make money from niche advertisers even if you operate a general-interest website.
- dwaite 4y ago
  Third party general interest websites generally don’t care where their advertising dollars come from, which is why they outsourced it all in the first place. If anything, they would probably prefer advertisements at least tangentially related to the content so that their readers don’t get creeped out by some Amazon product following them around the internet.
  - avalys 4y ago
    Right, but they care about how much advertising dollars they make, and they can make more dollars if the pool of possible advertisers is larger.
  - reaperducer 4y ago
    If anything, they would probably prefer advertisements at least tangentially related to the content so that their readers don’t get creeped out by some Amazon product following them around the internet Which is what Google initially promised web site owners: Targeted advertising. That's why it's called Google AdSense. Because, thanks to Google's crawling ability, it was supposed to sense the content of the page and place appropriate ads there. Only later, as Google's managers became more greedy, did it become ads for forklifts on granny's sausage-making recipe page because must... wring... every... last... penny... for... rhetorical... shareholders... Gah!
  - rchaud 4y ago
    Third party websites can more or less only serve Google ads, or from some tiny competitor like Carbon Ads. Every other ad product is walled-garden specific. Facebook ads are shown only on on Facebook properties. Same with Twitter, Amazon and Apple. You may see ads for these companies on third party sites, but they are being served via Google Ads.
- threeseed 4y ago
  > Anyone running a small business in a niche space knows that targeted advertising works. My partner runs a small business in a niche space and spends a million/year on ads. She doesn't need customers to be tracked across sites or long term information maintained about their interests or behaviour. She really just needs to sell ads via (a) direct searches and (b) retargeting people who have visited her own site.
whimsicalism 4y ago
Anyone who is seriously in the advertising game knows how to measure the incrementality of their advertising spend. There isn't some vast conspiracy of people paying way too much for useless advertising. Advertising works, this is why people pay for it. Apple's changes don't really prevent people from targeting onsite ads... what they do block is the experiments advertisers do to see if their ads are working (ie. on-platform incrementality studies).
- rchaud 4y ago
  At HN, only a few things are certain. Death, taxes, and advertisers and MBAs colluding to ruin every company.

mgh2 4y ago

Advertising itself is not necessarily bad, but it is how it is done. All FAANGs are growing their shares of the pie. It is time for someone to do it right. Abusers have lived for too long, we need someone to beat them at their own game. Apple is rightly positioned to do so.

candiddevmike 4y ago
How do you think Apple can "do advertising" right? Advertising by its very nature is abusive to users: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attention_theft https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attention_theft. Maybe they should make all advertising (not just targeted) opt-in like they did with the advertising ID! I'm sure plenty of users will click allow.
- avalys 4y ago
  The fact that someone has made this claim and given a name to the concept doesn't make it valid.
- mgh2 4y ago
  The article doesn't make it clear whether this will be applied to the App Store only. If this is the case, apps are not a life-necessity in the information era - unlike information (search), shopping (e-commerce), or communication (social media). They do not intrude our everyday living unless we intentionally look for it. Every other kind of advertising does so and thus are open to abuse.
  - howinteresting 4y ago
    Banking apps (for example) are absolutely a necessity. This is kind of a silly distinction to draw. My take is that either all advertising is bad or none is. That's why I use Linux, which has fewer ads (zero) than any other OS.
    - mgh2 4y ago
      You can go to your local bank or use the desktop app instead. How do you deter off bad/unethical advertising if everyone is subjective to it anyways? Like almost any tool, you have both bad and good actors. The how matters https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/the%20end%20justifies%20the%20means#:~:text=%E2%80%94used%20to%20say%20that%20a,to%20get%20their%20candidate%20elected https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/the%20end%20justi....

jklinger410 4y ago

> I trust Apple way more than Google I hear this a lot but Google is probably one of the most trustworthy stewards of the most amount of private data in the history of mankind.

pvarangot 4y ago
- whimsicalism 4y ago
  Sure, if you want to use an inflammatory and incorrect metaphor.
  - simonh 4y ago
    I'm not sure it is incorrect. Google doesn't sell the data sure, it sells indirect access to it by selling targeted adds based on the data. They abuse the data on behalf of others, but it's still getting abused.
rpastuszak 4y ago
Why?
_jal 4y ago
I think you can say they built the first huge, impactful non-classified pile of surveillance data dedicated to advertising, and thereby set the bar for corporate behavior with this sort of thing. Of course it is inevitable that slimier outfits came along later and were worse. That's a predictable and expected outcome in any market niche. So in that respect, I can agree.
spanktheuser 4y ago
Google is also responsible for the Android and Chrome platforms. In both cases, my impression is that they have long tolerated, if not promoted, ecosystems open to third party data collection of the more abusive sort. While Google may protect data gathered through maps, mail and their many other properties, their stewardship of Android / Chrome greatly diminishes my trust in their organization.

fezfight 4y ago

Feels more like their standard move, lock out competitors so they can control it for their own profit. Not that I mind them fucking with advertisers, but let's not pretend Apple is benevolent here.

joshstrange 4y ago
They aren't benevolent but there is such a thing as a mutually beneficial relationship. I'm fine with people making money off advertisement as long as they aren't selling my data directly and the number of companies I trust to do that is very low. In a lot of ways targeted ads and the like can be beneficial, it's about connecting people selling something the the people who want/need that thing, the problem is when data companies can just hoover up or buy that data and do gross things with it.
- bee_rider 4y ago
  I don't trust any company to do it because: * Even the competent companies have data leaks. * Even the competent companies will give it up if their government comes knocking. * Even a company which is relatively ethical now might someday be taken over by nickle-and-dime management.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - LadyCailin 4y ago
    That's fine, but then you shouldn't give your info to apple at all. Or google, or facebook, or microsoft, or amazon, or ycombinator, for that matter. The fact is, unless you want to be a luddite (which you aren't, you're here, with an account, at least) then you have to trust at least some of these companies. So the question is, which ones can generally be trusted, and which can't? I personally trust apple more than facebook, ycombinator more than amazon, etc. Your ordering might be different, and that's fine, but you're drawing a bright line there, which only hurts yourself.

whimsicalism 4y ago

Google does not "sell data" directly to anyone, so only the 'indirect' part of your comment applies. Even then, Apple's changes have little impact on the "selling data" aspect of things... the real thing that they prevent doing is sale attribution, which is critical for advertising business and not really all that privacy invasive.

dwaite 4y ago
Apple has provided frameworks and technology specifically for pro-privacy sale attribution, and continues to be invested in efforts to support standardization of such techniques.
- philjohn 4y ago
  Except they deliberately delay the attribution messaage so optimising ads takes longer for buyers, and hence costs more money.
  - elteto 4y ago
    That sounds like a feature to me, the end user.
    - dymk 4y ago
      Higher costs being passed on to you?
      - bee_rider 4y ago
        Increases the incentive to look for brands that don't waste money on advertising.
        dymk 4y ago
        What’s your method for discovering those brands?

fariszr 4y ago

Apple is better than other big tech for sure, but don't let them fool you into believing they actually care about your privacy, because they don't, and they often use privacy as a an anti-competion weapon. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r38Epj6ldKU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r38Epj6ldKU

spideymans 4y ago
Breaking new: capitalistic companies are capitalistic. I don’t give a shit as long as their corporate interests reasonably align with my own

ksec 4y ago

>Apple hasn't been anti-ad You mean Apple played the tracking and Anti Ads cards with all of its PR submarine articles and marketing, how Apple is not an Ad company and doesn't sell ad ( not true then and not true now, to the point the App Store Head questioned whether putting Ads on App Store search would go against Tim Cook's public image ). Fuel the public discourse against data collection AND Ads, push the narrative on all forms of media ( including Social Media ) how every single ad is tracking. ( You may want to read Benedict Evan's piece on Ad and Tracking ) And only to backtrack when the whole Ad industry questions Apple's motive on why are they all of a sudden Anti Ad? ( Tim Cook, somehow, for some reason, had to made a few public statement on how Apple is not "Anti-Ads". ) The whole tracking and Ads PR strategy got to the point where Ad is evil on HN. It wasn't "Personally I hate ads but I understand their place in the world ". It was simply I hate Ads. ( People working inside Ad industry rarely comments on HN anymore ) And when other players in the industry does "targeting" Ads, it is tracking. When Apple does it, it is "personalised". [1] I guess the pandemic had people forget how Apple started their grand strategy play against Facebook. I still cant believe nearly 20 years later how Apple has outdone Google's "Do No Evil" hypocrisy. [1] https://twitter.com/Carnage4Life/status/1532861766492774400 https://twitter.com/Carnage4Life/status/1532861766492774400

CharlesW 4y ago
You're doing what the parent comment says, which is conflating Apple's pro-privacy behavior with "anti-advertising" behavior. You're far from the only one, to the point that folks like Tim Cook regularly talk about this. "We’re not against digital advertising. I think digital advertising is going to thrive in any situation, because more and more time is spent online, less and less is spent on linear TV. And digital advertising will do well in any situation. The question is, do we allow the building of this detailed profile to exist without your consent? "We think that some number of people, I don’t know how many, don’t want to be tracked like that. And they should be able to say they don’t."¹ Apple has never disparaged advertising as a revenue model for developers. They even have regular WWDC sessions on the topic². What they have been very vocal about is user control. ¹ https://www.thestar.com/business/2021/04/12/apple-ceo-tim-cook-on-privacy-permission-and-tracking-users.html https://www.thestar.com/business/2021/04/12/apple-ceo-tim-co... ² https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2022/10038/ https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2022/10038/

zitterbewegung 4y ago

Does anyone remember this? https://techcrunch.com/2016/03/28/the-downfall-of-the-walled-garden-heres-why-iad-failed/amp/ https://techcrunch.com/2016/03/28/the-downfall-of-the-walled... Apple tried before with ads in iOS. Right now it seems like they advertise only in the App Store but adding more ads to the core OS would be bad but I could see a play where you get free Apple Music and tv+ but you just have to tolerate ads (and I would switch to that).

throwaway-blaze 4y ago
They advertise in Apple News too. I don't think they've ever released a real number but estimates are that they did $3-4billion in advertising revenue in 2021. Not big by the standards of GOOG or META but growing fast.

novok 4y ago

IMO Apple is pro-privacy from competitors and 3rd parties. They are not pro-privacy from Apple itself and the governments that force them to disclose things. There is a lot of tracking from apple you just cannot opt out of from apple straight out. A lot of logs are just uploaded and you can't stop it from the device itself as a setting, such as battery analytics and more. Just investigate what comes out of your iphone & mac still data wise even when you opt out of things you are given as an option. You cannot open an apple id without a phone number or other strong identifying information, even if all you want to do is download free apps. iPhones are mostly unusable without an Apple ID. Apple does not give you an option to not have any encryption keys kept in escrow by apple, like they do with iCloud and iCloud backups. And backups are on by default, including the contents of your iMessage logs. They don't keep your iMessage keys in escrow by default, so they've always been capable in not doing that. They keep iCloud data within China, so the Chinese government probably has continuous full access to whatever is on iCloud for Chinese users, because apple keeps the iCloud keys in escrow. The same goes with the NSA in the USA, because we all know those governments invest enough to fully compromise apple's data centers. Apple could chose a design that allows users to avoid the key escrow and make these government spy agency jobs much harder. The examples go on and on. But they are very good in not highlighting these facts.

CharlesW 4y ago
> A lot of logs are just uploaded and you can't stop it from the device itself as a setting, such as battery analytics and more. You actually can. It's one click to opt-out of all device analytics: https://www.apple.com/legal/privacy/data/en/device-analytics/ https://www.apple.com/legal/privacy/data/en/device-analytics... For anyone curious about what's being sent when device analytics is allowed to phone home, that's found at Settings > Privacy > Analytics & Improvements.

thefz 4y ago

Someone down in the comments was waiting for the Apple defense squad to pop up and say that this has been in consumer's best interest the whole time, and there you are. of course they do it because they care about your privacy, and not for their revenue. Of course.

joshstrange 4y ago
And if I had added a "and of course someone will come into the replies and say it's only about profit" then that would have negated your comment? Welcome to the real world where 2 things can be true at the same time: Apple cares about profits and Apple cares about privacy.
- thefz 4y ago
  Hey whatever, if it makes you feel better.

pxc 4y ago

> Apple hasn't been anti-ad (though their products have way fewer ads than the competition.) > Personally I hate ads but [...] if I have to see ads I trust Apple You don't have to see ads. There have been and still are operating systems with no ads, and Apple is absolutely swimming in cash. There is no necessity here— Apple is not integrating ads because they 'have to', and we don't 'have to' see them because we don't have to use operating systems that integrate ads. The resignation here just kills me.

quitit 4y ago

In addition to this: They’ve been building ad tools because that’s what developers have been asking for as a way to surface their app. Otherwise all developers had was a situation where only Apple’s algorithms decides which app is similar to another app, which is largely generated through user searches/behaviours (something that is easily exploited as seen on amazon with the “customers also bought” exploits). That left developers with limited ability to surface their ad honestly and absolutely no way to feature event-based activities, expansions and other promotional industry norms. HN won’t like it because it’s Apple - but this largely improves the experience for the developers. While consumers get relevant ads without the unscrupulous on-selling of data.

Apocryphon 4y ago
Will this really improve the experience for the average developer, or will this be a way for those with deep pockets to blanket the platform with ads and drown out small-time indie devs even more? It feels like a more lasting solution not based on being able to buy eyeballs would be making the search experience on the App Store more robust and modernized. To fix the solution with an UX upgrade. That feels more like an Apple solution, not by adding more ads into the mix.
- quitit 4y ago
  Why not both? Improve the UX which they do regularly and introduce ads which developers have been screaming for. With or without ads in the app store, the problem about being out marketed exists outside the app store. What this is merely apple’s privacy-protecting solution for what is seen inside the app store. Im yet to see an argument which isn’t just some thinly veiled distaste for apple. Hate apple all you like, but actually challenge the conversation with a valid argument.
  - Apocryphon 4y ago
    I don't hate Apple; I've worked there myself, continue to be a shareholder (and thus have vested interest in its fortunes), and given the way the industry works, may return there eventually. But I find blind faith in the company from die-hard fans both misplaced, and frankly, distasteful. As with any organization, Apple is deserving both scrutiny and critique, and it is wrong to dismiss critique as hatred. And the image of Apple as a scrappy underdog beset on all sides by haters is two decades out of date by now. It's a corporate giant that deserves as much skepticism as the others. > Improve the UX which they do regularly and introduce ads which developers have been screaming for. If ads can be better, then developers will like them. But I question the supposition that developers have been screaming for ads, given that the status quo with App Store ads is situations like this: https://twitter.com/wilshipley/status/1270568780712706049 https://twitter.com/wilshipley/status/1270568780712706049 https://twitter.com/wilshipley/status/1197642397854777344 https://twitter.com/wilshipley/status/1197642397854777344 https://twitter.com/wilshipley/status/1271154427034918912 https://twitter.com/wilshipley/status/1271154427034918912 Granted, that's from two years ago, and any new ads rollouts would presumably be of greater quality. It's just that track record doesn't inspire a lot of confidence, and really throws into question the idea that developers really want ads. How do you prevent the big players with the biggest marketing budgets from buying up all of the space? I'm not going to pre-judge the feature, but I do believe some healthy skepticism is warranted. If App Store ads follow even a modicum of some of these feature requests, then perhaps they will really be what developers want. https://twitter.com/wilshipley/status/1271185023744397312 https://twitter.com/wilshipley/status/1271185023744397312 Edit: an example from six months ago https://twitter.com/tgrapperon/status/1492460177001431042 https://twitter.com/tgrapperon/status/1492460177001431042 https://twitter.com/miguelkennedy/status/1492529534729654274 https://twitter.com/miguelkennedy/status/1492529534729654274