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posted by janrinok on Monday November 14 2022, @12:30PM   Printer-friendly
from the take-that,-Evil-Corp! dept.

Apple's recent privacy changes leveled the digital advertising field

In April, 2021, Apple dropped a nuclear bomb on the world of online advertising. The company rolled out a new iPhone privacy setting called App Tracking Transparency, or ATT, that shows you, an iPhone user, a popup asking if you want to "Allow this app to track your activity across other companies' apps and websites?" You have two options: "Ask app not to track" and "Allow." The vast majority of people pick the former, which blocks apps from collecting certain data. Behind the scenes, the change caused a radical shift in the tech landscape. Meta, formerly known as Facebook, said that one setting alone cost the company an estimated $10 billion. Its stock value has plunged 70% this year. But ATT had another side effect, one that got far less attention than Meta's troubles. Apple's iPhone privacy setting gave TikTok a significant leg up in its fight for social media dominance.

"As Meta struggled to maintain performance, TikTok presented a buyer's market for advertisers where demand was low and supply was high," said John Donahue, co-founder of programmatic ad consulting firm Up & to the Right, who's worked with major advertisers like Coca-Cola, Hershey's, and Linksys. "Timing is everything in life, and TikTok couldn't have timed it better."

ATT kneecapped the Facebook ad targeting systems, motivating advertisers to look for new places to spend their money. Even though ATT hurt TikTok in the same ways, the short-form app was in the perfect position to offer an alternative to Meta: its popularity was exploding, its newness meant ad prices were low, and it had designed novel advertising models built for the new privacy world order.

The privacy setting "showcased the risk of having the majority of your eggs in a single basket," Donahue said.

TikTok just lowered its expected ad revenue for the year, but its projected to grow 155%, up $6.01 billion from 2021, according to Insider Intelligence. Meanwhile, Insider predicts that Meta's worldwide ad revenue will drop for the first time ever, down 2% from 2021, a $2.25 billion dip. It would be absurd to give ATT all or even most of the credit for those numbers; the recession played a big role in Meta's losses, as did the company's own long shot bet on virtual reality and "the metaverse." Likewise, Tiktok's gains have a lot to do with cultural shifts. But there's no question that TikTok snatched up advertising dollars that might otherwise have gone to Facebook and Instagram, and Apple's Privacy setting had a lot to do with that.


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  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by Opportunist on Monday November 14 2022, @12:57PM (9 children)

    by Opportunist (5545) on Monday November 14 2022, @12:57PM (#1279644)

    The Metastasis loses money if it can't violate your privacy. Or, in other words, it pretty much bluntly admits that it makes money by invading your personal space. Anyone still wondering if we should cut that cancer out?

    That privacy setting showcases more that it is highly necessary to give the user of a device control over his privacy than anything else.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 14 2022, @02:04PM (6 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 14 2022, @02:04PM (#1279653)

      The Metastasis loses money if it can't violate your privacy.

      Or as a result it can't convince as many advertisers it's worth advertising on FB?

      I suspect some advertisers prefer to only pay X for targeted ads instead of paying (more?) to show ads to a random percentage of "everyone" which could be less cost effective.

      FWIW I was getting lots of FB ads for "wandering hour" watches, maybe because I was trolling their ads with comments like "fidget spinner watches". But I suppose the targeting works better on other people?

      Similar for various crappy kickstarters.

      Is it really violating my privacy by noticing that I interact with such ads (maybe even click through) and then showing more of such "targeted" ads? I find it amusing.

      • (Score: 2, Interesting) by Runaway1956 on Monday November 14 2022, @03:19PM (4 children)

        by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Monday November 14 2022, @03:19PM (#1279672) Journal

        Is it really violating my privacy by noticing that I interact with such ads (maybe even click through) and then showing more of such "targeted" ads? I find it amusing.

        What if we were discussing voting, instead of advertising?

        As a private citizen, at the polling places, I might notice that you filled in a checkbox for a particular party. I might notice that you selected a particular checkbox on page 4 of the poll. No big deal, right? However, if I hover behind you, and make notes as you vote, you would become very uncomfortable. If I just mount a camera at each polling station, and record everyone's votes, a lot of people would become uncomfortable. But, if I disguise my cameras, and you can't see them, you'll become comfortable again, right?

        Is it your position that surveillance doesn't really violate your right to privacy? That's what all this tracking really is. Instead of the German Stasi surveilling you for political reasons, corporations are surveilling you for profit. Can we make a case that surveillance for profit is less evil than surveillance for political reasons?

        How about our neighborhood stalker? "Officer, I just happened to be loitering near the girl's dormitory, and just happened to notice that I could see the girls showering if I stood under this tree, and looked in through that window. Of course I'm not stalking!"

        There is no "noticing" on the internet. It's surveillance, plain and simple.

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 14 2022, @06:46PM (3 children)

          by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 14 2022, @06:46PM (#1279716)

          I consider much of what I do on the internet as public. Whether or not FB can supposedly track me or not. This is quite different from a voting booth and other scenarios where privacy is expected.

          In most Internet scenarios the data ends up on servers somewhere which can be controlled by Govs etc that have jurisdiction e.g. NSL or similar. You don't want to be spied on? Wishful thinking. All you'd get from your protests is just better and more convincing lies that your privacy is truly protected. At best the data is stuck in different silos e.g. Chinese Gov can't easily get the US Gov to handover their exclusive secrets on you and vice-versa.

          Call me paranoid or cynical but I doubt Microsoft spent billions on Skype for just the reasons they stated. Same for Facebook spending billions to get WhatsApp. After all I noticed soon after Microsoft bought Skype the communications seemed a lot less P2P. Previously if I tried to send a Skype message to someone who was not online the message would be stuck on my machine and only go out when BOTH me and the intended recipient were online. But soon after Microsoft took over, the message would leave my computer fine and eventually get to the recipient even if both of us weren't online at the same time... Go figure.

          The Europeans have nice pieces of paper about privacy etc but never forget - one flex from the USA and they cried "Uncle Sam": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evo_Morales_grounding_incident [wikipedia.org]

          So to amuse myself I give them fake/troll data every now and then. e.g. trolling the Chinese Gov with the usual keywords/characters on my made in China phone. Also amuses me if advertisers are wasting their money advertising to me and getting fewer sales because of my responses and comments trying to make their product look less attractive to other people.

          Lastly there's a big difference between someone stalking me online vs someone stalking me physically. Just like someone punching me online vs punching me physically. I've been killed and damaged in games so many times that I've lost count. Maybe that's just as real to you, but it isn't to me.

          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 14 2022, @06:52PM

            by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 14 2022, @06:52PM (#1279717)
            Don't get me wrong, I'd admit pieces of paper on privacy etc are not worthless.

            But I still remember the Ukrainians who gave up their nukes to be protected from the Russians etc by pieces of paper.
          • (Score: 1) by Runaway1956 on Monday November 14 2022, @07:34PM (1 child)

            by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Monday November 14 2022, @07:34PM (#1279726) Journal

            OK, the internet is a public space. No argument, really. I can't actually claim any part of the internet as "my own".

            But, I don't expect a surveillance drone to follow me around in public, all day, every day. In fact, there have been cases in which trackers have been attached to private vehicles, mostly by government agencies, at one level or another. It has pretty much been established that the cops can't just attach a tracker to your vehicle, without a warrant.

            Same on the internet. I'm navigating public spaces, but no one has the authority to track me through those public spaces, without a warrant.

            Do you think that Microsoft, or Facebook, or Twitter might have obtained a warrant that gives them the authority to track you?

            No matter what angle I look at it, surveillance always is wrong. If they want my data, they should pay me for it. If they start making offers, I might surprise myself by taking the money. But, no money, no data. Or, at the least, I severely restrict their ability to collect data on me. Which is a topic for another discussion, of course.

            • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 15 2022, @12:59PM

              by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 15 2022, @12:59PM (#1279848)

              But, I don't expect a surveillance drone to follow me around in public

              But that doesn't happen unless you install their apps. It's more like different cams owned by different people depending on where you go.

              For example SN is already tracking people that go to their spaces, but I don't think FB gets much of that data. I also have data on people/bots that visit my websites. I don't share that data with FB, but if I get a suitable court order I'm gonna cooperate.

              Facebook tracks those who go to their space and their partners spaces. It's like companies signing up with Facebook to install surveillance cameras on their property. Don't visit those places if you don't want to be watched. They're mostly private property not US government/public. Are you saying they have no right to install cameras on their property, or partner with Facebook so that whenever you visit their property or Facebook you'll get ads that they think will interest you, rather than less targeted ads? That said you can block some of their trackers if you want (e.g. select Anti-Facebook in uBlock's Annoyances category).

              If you install their apps (FB, WhatsApp, etc) then of course you're going to get tracked even more. But that's like you signing up to have their surveillance drones follow you. Unless of course you use separate phones (virtual or real) and personas for their apps.

              What's happening now is that Apple users that sign up for FB's surveillance drone are enjoying Apple's blocking features. And FB claims to have made less money because of that.

              I'm happy about Apple's blocking but unlike others I don't feel any outrage or umbrage that people who install FB's surveillance drones aka apps get tracked.

              Someone has to pay for the "free services" I use. I'm not paying so if the advertisers keep paying that's fine with me. The last I checked SN needed money to run too and might get shutdown soon. Go figure what model is more likely to work.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 14 2022, @07:51PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 14 2022, @07:51PM (#1279732)

        A citizenry's freedoms are interdependent, to surrender your own privacy is really to surrender everyone's.

        Accepting complete surveillance in exchange for having ads be targeted is not only not a fair bargain, it is subjugation of the self, it is equivalent to saying "well, they're hitting me with 5 more baseball bats than before, but at least they let me choose which brand of bats they hit me with, oh joy!"

        I would urge you to take a step back, and instead think about the acceptability of forcing ads down your throat itself, as well as the sheer shamelessness of ad peddlers presuming that "of course this individual wants to be bombarded by ads, who wouldn't?"...

        Online Advertisement is theft:

        • it steals your attention, you are not there to look at ads, you're there to look at something else
        • it steals your mental health and sanity, it attempts to make you feel envious for things you don't need and shows you what you do not have, reminding you that you could feel better, if only you hand them your money
        • it steals your money, directly by coercing you to buy something you most likely don't need, and indirectly by increasing the costs incurred by manufacturers of things you do need and would thus have bought anyway, who now have to fork over money to ad peddlers and need to recoup that cost from you by raising their prices
        • it steals your bandwidth by forcing you to pull down assets you did not ask for, bandwidth that could be allocated to more meaningful activities
        • it steals your electrical power, that those javascripts are sub-optimal is an understatement, making you expend electricity that you would otherwise not have
        • it steals your CPU cycles, see above, those cycles could be doing more meaningful things
        • it steals your privacy, by tracking and treating you like cattle; big data is not about ads, ads and big data are about control, cattle is controlled.
        • it steals your security, by miscreants using advertisement networks as delivery vectors for malware

        Online advertisement is not acceptable! Surveillance Capitalism is not an acceptable economic model, and an individual saying "but that's what we have right now, so learn to live with it" only shows how far down the path of obedient cattle that individual already has been pushed.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 15 2022, @10:43AM (1 child)

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 15 2022, @10:43AM (#1279843)

      I'd add to this that any service that pins itself on "serving you ads in exchange for usage of the service" is admitting that their service is not worth any real money. If it were, they'd be charging for it. Instead, they know it adds no value and realize that people wouldn't pay for it and they thus have to generate income through an underhanded means of injecting additional, worthless payload to be co-delivered with the 'service' content in order to sponsor it. The money doesn't come from the service itself, it comes from someone else deciding that you need to be subjected to them.

      The advertisement business is a huge indictment against the advertisement business...

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 16 2022, @03:08AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 16 2022, @03:08AM (#1279947)
        So how long will SN last with their model vs the advertiser model?

        I guess SN's not getting enough viewers for ads to work either? They won't get fooled by Ari's sock puppets and count them as many since Ari appears to be so clueless with his puppetry.
  • (Score: 3, Funny) by DannyB on Monday November 14 2022, @03:03PM (5 children)

    by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Monday November 14 2022, @03:03PM (#1279667) Journal

    a new iPhone privacy setting called App Tracking Transparency, or ATT

    Why, oh why couldn't Apple have called this:

    App Tracking & Transparency

    --
    People today are educated enough to repeat what they are taught but not to question what they are taught.
    • (Score: 2) by helel on Monday November 14 2022, @03:46PM (4 children)

      by helel (2949) on Monday November 14 2022, @03:46PM (#1279684)

      This is apple we're talking about. We're lucky they didn't give it a one word name that's so generic it's almost impossible to search for like "mask."

      • (Score: 3, Informative) by Freeman on Monday November 14 2022, @04:51PM (1 child)

        by Freeman (732) on Monday November 14 2022, @04:51PM (#1279693) Journal

        The punch line to the joke you're missing is "AT&T".

        --
        Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
        • (Score: 3, Funny) by helel on Monday November 14 2022, @04:57PM

          by helel (2949) on Monday November 14 2022, @04:57PM (#1279696)


          For some reason my brain went to ATAT a la Star Wars.

      • (Score: 3, Touché) by stormreaver on Monday November 14 2022, @06:38PM (1 child)

        by stormreaver (5101) on Monday November 14 2022, @06:38PM (#1279713)

        This is apple we're talking about. We're lucky they didn't give it a one word name that's so generic it's almost impossible to search for like "mask."

        Or "Windows". I'm relieved no company has ever gotten away with that level of generic.

        • (Score: 3, Funny) by DannyB on Monday November 14 2022, @10:13PM

          by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Monday November 14 2022, @10:13PM (#1279763) Journal

          Or Word.

          --
          People today are educated enough to repeat what they are taught but not to question what they are taught.
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