4 ms·

Every attention thief is absolutely thrilled at the idea of tracking your eyes. Let’s all imagine the day where the YouTube free tier pauses ads when you’re not

by snoman 2y ago

Every attention thief is absolutely thrilled at the idea of tracking your eyes. Let’s all imagine the day where the YouTube free tier pauses ads when you’re not actively looking at them. Shit. I’m turning into one of those negative downers. I’m sorry. I’ve had too much internet today.

Tagbert 2y ago
If this is at all like the eye tracking in Vision Pro, it is only available to the OS and apps are not given access to the data.
- happyopossum 2y ago
  Until the EU comes in and forces them to ‘open up’ the functionality in the name of ‘fairness’…
  - Tijdreiziger 2y ago
    If you look at the current things the EU has forced them to open up (app distribution and NFC payments), both of them are things that Apple was already actively monetizing. To compare this to a non-monetized accessibility feature is a bit disingenuous. The whole notion of ‘fairness’ is that gatekeepers should allow others to compete on even footing. That can be fulfilled by granting EITHER everybody OR nobody access to the market (but not: only yourself).
- mistrial9 2y ago
  for now - it is naive to think this is safe
  - sroussey 2y ago
    Eye tracking has been on iOS for many years (as an option for faceid called attention).
    - stacktrust 2y ago
      Avoidable via iPhone SE3 and iPad Air, which both use TouchID.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- ben_w 2y ago
  System one is, but advertisers could always roll their own and see if they can get away with "you can only view this content if you give us permission to use your camera".
  - LordKeren 2y ago
    This would not pass the App Review process
  - favorited 2y ago
    At least on iOS, I can't imagine that happening - apps are not allowed to demand you grant permissions unrelated to the actual functionality. From App Review Guidelines (5.1.1) Data Collection and Storage, (ii) Access: > Apps must respect the user’s permission settings and not attempt to manipulate, trick, or force people to consent to unnecessary data access. For example, apps that include the ability to post photos to a social network must not also require microphone access before allowing the user to upload photos. Lots of iOS apps today really want to mine your address book, and constantly spam you with dialogs to enable it, but they don't go as far as disabling other features until you grant them access, because they'd get rejected once someone noticed.
    - amlib 2y ago
      It's not that hard to come with ways to circumvent system restrictions, after all, advertisers are a fierce adversary and have shown many clever ways of invading users privacy in web browsers and mobile apps. In the case of eye tracking I could see a situation where the system perhaps feeds the "malicious" app in question with a hint of which widget is being currently gazed by the user. You could then just build a giant grid of invisible widgets covering the whole app window and use that to reconstruct the all the eye tracking happening inside your app.
      - dialup_sounds 2y ago
        The system doesn't supply data like widget highlight states to apps for exactly that reason.
- bun_at_work 2y ago
  Until people complain that Apple is being anti-competitive by not making vision tracking open, or allowing third-party eye-tracking controls, etc. etc.
kevin_thibedeau 2y ago
Wait for human attention detection to become mandatory to view DRMed content on the telescreen.
carl_dr 2y ago
Watch the Black Mirror episode “Fifteen Million Merits”, to see how this might end up.
- vundercind 2y ago
  Fifteen million merits is maybe the least about the future of any Black Mirror episode. It reads best as entirely a comment on the society we already have. A big clue is that the world in it doesn’t make a ton of internal sense and the episode makes absolutely no effort to smooth that over. The questions it raises and leaves open without even attempting an answer are on purpose. You’re supposed to go “god, bicycling to make little pellets? Just to buy useless trash? God, why? It’s so pointless,” or, “they truly look down on and are mean to the people who get demoted, even though they’re basically guaranteed to end up that way someday, when their health or good fortune run out? Just cruelty for no reason that’s highly likely to hit them some day, too? That’s insane!” … because actually it’s about now (or, the year it came out) and the point is to get you to connect the dots and realize we’re doing the same crap and just don’t notice. It’s only “sci fi” as some sleight of hand to give you an alien’s eye view of our own actual society as a way to prompt reflection. The core story of the corruption of a “revolutionary” to serve the purposes of the system is some bog-standard media studies stuff pertaining to today, not sci fi. The reveal that they could just fucking stop all this and go outside, it’s not some alien world or a post apocalypse after all is yet another thing that’s supposed to make you go “what’s wrong with them? Oh. Right. It’s us.”[1] Long winded way to say: we can’t “end up” at Fifteen Million Merits future-world, because it’s just our own world we’re already in. [1] Some read the final scene as depicting yet another viewscreen, but this is such a wildly weaker reading as far as the how effective the scene is that I can’t believe it’s intended that way.

by snoman 2y ago

Tagbert 2y ago

If this is at all like the eye tracking in Vision Pro, it is only available to the OS and apps are not given access to the data.

happyopossum 2y ago
Until the EU comes in and forces them to ‘open up’ the functionality in the name of ‘fairness’…
- Tijdreiziger 2y ago
  If you look at the current things the EU has forced them to open up (app distribution and NFC payments), both of them are things that Apple was already actively monetizing. To compare this to a non-monetized accessibility feature is a bit disingenuous. The whole notion of ‘fairness’ is that gatekeepers should allow others to compete on even footing. That can be fulfilled by granting EITHER everybody OR nobody access to the market (but not: only yourself).
mistrial9 2y ago
for now - it is naive to think this is safe
- sroussey 2y ago
  Eye tracking has been on iOS for many years (as an option for faceid called attention).
  - stacktrust 2y ago
    Avoidable via iPhone SE3 and iPad Air, which both use TouchID.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
ben_w 2y ago
System one is, but advertisers could always roll their own and see if they can get away with "you can only view this content if you give us permission to use your camera".
- LordKeren 2y ago
  This would not pass the App Review process
- favorited 2y ago
  At least on iOS, I can't imagine that happening - apps are not allowed to demand you grant permissions unrelated to the actual functionality. From App Review Guidelines (5.1.1) Data Collection and Storage, (ii) Access: > Apps must respect the user’s permission settings and not attempt to manipulate, trick, or force people to consent to unnecessary data access. For example, apps that include the ability to post photos to a social network must not also require microphone access before allowing the user to upload photos. Lots of iOS apps today really want to mine your address book, and constantly spam you with dialogs to enable it, but they don't go as far as disabling other features until you grant them access, because they'd get rejected once someone noticed.
  - amlib 2y ago
    It's not that hard to come with ways to circumvent system restrictions, after all, advertisers are a fierce adversary and have shown many clever ways of invading users privacy in web browsers and mobile apps. In the case of eye tracking I could see a situation where the system perhaps feeds the "malicious" app in question with a hint of which widget is being currently gazed by the user. You could then just build a giant grid of invisible widgets covering the whole app window and use that to reconstruct the all the eye tracking happening inside your app.
    - dialup_sounds 2y ago
      The system doesn't supply data like widget highlight states to apps for exactly that reason.
bun_at_work 2y ago
Until people complain that Apple is being anti-competitive by not making vision tracking open, or allowing third-party eye-tracking controls, etc. etc.

kevin_thibedeau 2y ago

Wait for human attention detection to become mandatory to view DRMed content on the telescreen.

carl_dr 2y ago

Watch the Black Mirror episode “Fifteen Million Merits”, to see how this might end up.

vundercind 2y ago
Fifteen million merits is maybe the least about the future of any Black Mirror episode. It reads best as entirely a comment on the society we already have. A big clue is that the world in it doesn’t make a ton of internal sense and the episode makes absolutely no effort to smooth that over. The questions it raises and leaves open without even attempting an answer are on purpose. You’re supposed to go “god, bicycling to make little pellets? Just to buy useless trash? God, why? It’s so pointless,” or, “they truly look down on and are mean to the people who get demoted, even though they’re basically guaranteed to end up that way someday, when their health or good fortune run out? Just cruelty for no reason that’s highly likely to hit them some day, too? That’s insane!” … because actually it’s about now (or, the year it came out) and the point is to get you to connect the dots and realize we’re doing the same crap and just don’t notice. It’s only “sci fi” as some sleight of hand to give you an alien’s eye view of our own actual society as a way to prompt reflection. The core story of the corruption of a “revolutionary” to serve the purposes of the system is some bog-standard media studies stuff pertaining to today, not sci fi. The reveal that they could just fucking stop all this and go outside, it’s not some alien world or a post apocalypse after all is yet another thing that’s supposed to make you go “what’s wrong with them? Oh. Right. It’s us.”[1] Long winded way to say: we can’t “end up” at Fifteen Million Merits future-world, because it’s just our own world we’re already in. [1] Some read the final scene as depicting yet another viewscreen, but this is such a wildly weaker reading as far as the how effective the scene is that I can’t believe it’s intended that way.