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from the if-the-advertisers-don't-like-it,-it-sounds-like-a-good-idea dept.
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Apple's limits on tracking will "sabotage the economic model for the Internet."
Apple's latest operating systems for the Mac and iPhone will soon be rolling out, and with that comes new restrictions on ad-tracking in the Safari browser. Adding a 24-hour limit on ad targeting cookies is good for privacy under Apple's new "Intelligent Tracking Prevention" feature. But if you're an advertiser, the macOS High Sierra and iOS 11 Safari browsers spell gloom and doom for the Internet as we know it. The reason is because Safari is making it harder for advertisers to follow users as they surf the Internet—and that will dramatically reduce the normal bombardment of ads reflecting the sites Internet surfers have visited earlier. Six major advertising groups have just published an open letter blasting the new tracking restrictions Apple unveiled in June. They say they are "deeply concerned" about them:
The infrastructure of the modern Internet depends on consistent and generally applicable standards for cookies, so digital companies can innovate to build content, services, and advertising that are personalized for users and remember their visits. Apple's Safari move breaks those standards and replaces them with an amorphous set of shifting rules that will hurt the user experience and sabotage the economic model for the Internet.
Apple's unilateral and heavy-handed approach is bad for consumer choice and bad for the ad-supported online content and services consumers love. Blocking cookies in this manner will drive a wedge between brands and their customers, and it will make advertising more generic and less timely and useful.
The letter is signed by the American Association of Advertising Agencies, the American Advertising Federation, the Association of National Advertisers, the Data & Marketing Association, the Interactive Advertising Bureau, and the Network Advertising Initiative.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 18 2017, @02:19PM
First: Internet != WWW
Second browser compatibility has always been about being the most busted. Formatting dialects are highly variable even within the same markup language. The brass ring in the browser wars is making even the most busted markup render pleasantly. So the idea that there is a "standard" really indicates a poor understanding of the challenges overcome when making a serviceable web browser. None of them have ever been all that standardized.
And once IE entered the playground it became more about dodging EEE molotov cocktails than anything else. Innovation became stunted because markup became unreliable, so people turned to javascript more and more so they could wrap a handle on bad things they had to do to maintain portability. Which just made things worse, because of course, javascript wasn't and isn't what it was sold as, and it too developed portability problems when Redmond bogarted it.
Now its mostly about vendors slinging turds at each other. Personally I think that cookies were always a bad idea. But I also never saw a genuine need for javascript either. Transparency is more important than presentation IMHO. And now the there is a big move to take transparency out of the WWW. Which is bad for a dozens reasons, but mostly because lack of transparency makes Internet content about carriers and not users. Advertisers want to turn the Internet into a broadcast television market, so that they can hurl their psychological abuse onto people without any need for consent. IOW, killing network neutrality, and pretty much the modern 1st amendment.
So advertising doesn't drive the Internet. It drives commercial websites, but it doesn't drive enthusiast ones. And they were here before the advertisers, often quite good on their own. So if it comes down to "what will the Internet look like w/out advertising?", my answer is: Quite nice really. And almost certainly more secure, since a lot of client side code will migrate back to the server side where it belongs.