Apple does not have a tracking pixel on half the popular web. Apple's main source of income is through luxury hardware and subscription services. Facebook sells your information and attention to willing buyers.
Apple advertising extends beyond the app store, both for iOS and macOS, and is personalized by default. You can disable this in Settings -> Privacy and Security -> Apple Advertising on both platforms.
AFAIK it also includes ads in the News app and apps that load articles from the News app (e.g. Stocks app).
Their fine print also mentions the TV app, but I haven’t seen ads there, so perhaps they’re referring to content suggestions.
This seems to be confirmed further down the line in the fine print when it says:
> We create segments to deliver personalized ads on the App Store, Apple News, and Stocks.
I’d say the main difference between Meta and Apple is that the latter doesn’t combine data from different source and only relies on their own data (what Apple calls “tracking”):
> Apple’s advertising platform does not track you, meaning that it does not link user or device data collected from our apps with user or device data collected from third parties for targeted advertising or advertising measurement purposes, and does not share user or device data with data brokers.
The ads on the TV app I think are 30s trailers when playing episodes or movies (only once per session as I’ve experienced) which can immediately be skipped like a recap.
It’s the only ad on a streaming service that has never annoyed me (I also like the fact that it’s not targeted). Zero ads are better but their implementation on tv plus is the least irritating I’ve experienced.
I picked up a copy of Popular Mechanics yesterday and it took me a solid 2 seconds on half a dozen pages to determine if it was an ad or an article. The styles have sort of blended together and I don't think that's an accident.
Isn't looking at an Apple device just like looking at a newspaper? I seem to recall papers being chock full of ads outside the front page to a far greater extent than the Apple News app.
Our society depends on advertising for promoting new services, gaining new customers, and building trust. I would call it a social necessity which makes it very ethical as long as it is truthful. The hijacking that occurs is consensual as you should not visit sites if you disagree with their advertising habits. Even with the App Store almost never open it directly.
The ones that cannot be avoided are in the outside world. I would celebrate if every billboard, postal mail item, and other real world advertisement were banned completely as that is the part I have no direct control over.
This is a super fascinating comment, because why wouldn't you just want better advertising regulations across the board instead of trying to justify one form while proclaiming the other is harmful?
> I would call it a social necessity which makes it very ethical as long as it is truthful.
Disagree on this one. Blogs, media, social, word of mouth, etc. would still exist without advertising and would serve the purpose of all of those things. PR teams would become as large as marketing teams, things would get exploited (they already are), but we wouldn't be subjected to distraction and manipulation.
I don't think ads are the most evil thing there is, but society would be fine without them and you would probably see a much smaller imbalance of power in wealth and companies. I'll take 1000s of small forums compared to one big Meta.
Honest question: what kind of "blogs" and "social" would survive without advertising? What kind of content creator can produce quality content in the long run, for free?
The Verge? Nops. Techcrunch? Also not. AnandTech or Business Insider? No and no. Hackaday? Dead. NYT and Bloomberg? Maybe, and likely not. And what about your top 20 favorite YouTube creators? The majority would be gone.
Sure, the long tail of quirky small bloggers would be unaffected -- they don't really make any money today from advertising. But a lot of them are bottom-feeders; they consume content produced by others, and re-hash to add their own takes.
And we're not even talking about the second order effect -- all the ecommerce companies that would be wiped out without qualified leads and traffic. Go to any site - The Verge, Hackaday, Daring Fireball - and see the ads. Most of those companies would disappear.
Is this really the web you want to live in? A web with only a handful of publications with large followings who can command premium subscription (read: The Information, NYT, Stratechery, etc), and the top x% of privileged wealthy folks who can afford paying for a bunch of subscriptions?
Yes, I would call advertising a social necessity. It's like a multi-dimension version of prisoner's dilemma - it may not feel you're winning, but the alternative option is much worse.
I already don't see ads on any of the sites you mentioned and I haven't for a decade thanks to Raymond Hill. Clearly they're able to survive with a significant percentage of users saying nope.
Out of curiosity, in these flights of fantastical hypotheticals where “advertising” doesn’t exist, or at least the advertising industry, why are we assuming the other features of capitalism would remain?
Sure I agree. But there has to be some distinction between annoying but more or less harmless ads, like magazine ads and bus stop ads, and annoying ads, like the ones that might end up under your car wipers, in your bicycle basket, or mail box --- and internet spyware ads, that spy on you and sell your privacy to whoever got a dime.
What's with the pathetic apple fanboyism? They are one of the biggest vaccuums of data. They will use that data for money just like everyone else. Apple's just late to the ad game.
Years ago it was google fanboyism with 'don't be evil'. Now it's the unbearable apple privacy fanboys and the insufferable tesla/spacex cult members.
If I'm going to see an ad, I would way rather see an ad about something I care about vs not. Have you watched the evening news on broadcast TV? That is what untargeted ads look like. I don't have IBS but I know the names of every drug that would help me if I did.
I've actually found furniture I'm looking for on websites I didn't know existed on Instagram. Why is targeted ads a bad thing?
Also, not all ads are the same from an ethical standpoint.
Displaying an app ad in the appstore upon searching for a similar term is very different than displaying ads based on your whole life, collected in malicious ways.
I don't own an apple device now but why does app store have ads ? After paying upwards of $1000+ on a iPhone, why can't you expect an ad free experience on a first party app store?
Perhaps there is some sort of pressure by stockholders to have the ability to promote their own products and services on the device or just some sort of backroom dealings.
My personal hope is that Apple course corrects at some point that they do not need to extract the extra cash while damaging the customer experience. The company feels much less customer oriented now and has lost a lot of the premium feel. I have already stopped using their TV app because they have made it nearly non-functional with the amount of promoted content. The News app has an exceptional number of subscription only items in the feed to where I am about to go back to pure RSS. The feeling is like what Google would have done with Google Reader if it was still going stuffing in promotions.
I agree first party apps should be advertisement free if they are advertised as being included in the price of the phone. Otherwise it is a hidden bill you are paying with hours or days of your life that you can't get back.
I would pay for a service that just disabled all first party promotions advertisements. Give me the real price instead of wasting my valuable time with advertisements I would never click.
Because Apple has decided so, because it makes them lots of money, and it isn't a big enough dealbreaker for consumers to not buy iPhones. I believe the Google Play Store has ads, too.
That's kind of arbitrary though. Why if they wanted to price it at $2k if it were to be ad free? Would the consumer then prefer ads if offered with such choice?
They are taking the risk of repelling their customer who paid $1k+ and still sees ads and they are entitled to the courage of their conviction to take that risk.
They’re promoted apps, the developer pays to promote their app. This tends to help startups that name their company off some random word like _bumble_.
This is the bullshit I'm talking about in another thread. No it doesn't. Telling you about icloud which is like an inherent feature and partially the reason some people buy their phones is absolutely in no way comparable to actual ads.
Do you know what has ads in settings? Xiaomi. A relative bought one and I helped him set it up, and you literally had to see an ad to listen to your ringtone!!!
If people bought their phone because of iCloud there's no need to advertise it to them.
What's really annoying on iOS is that persistent notification badge to "finish setting up your account" even when I choose not to use some apple services.
Velocity is often more important than the absolute amount in a business context. If velocity is 100% growth, year over year, it holds true for a couple of years, it's going to draw significant attention.
This isn’t really a business context though, it’s an ethical one.
I think most people would agree that velocity hardly matters here, what’s been actually done is generally what gets judgement, not where you will be in some time if you do everything the same.
If we're going to get technical, Facebook doesn't sell your information, it sells access to its ad network. Apple has an ad network it sells access to, too.
On the one hand, Apple has some potential ad business ceiling.
That ceiling number varies according to how well they can target.
On the other hand, Apple has some amount of iPhone et al. sales that occur because they respect privacy.
Eventually, increasing the former will decrease the latter. I think Android shows us the link is weak (because most people don't care, if tracking is hidden), but it exists.
My impression would be that right now, Apple is targeting far less than their customers would allow (while still buying equivalent amounts of hardware).
The issue is +5 or +10 years, when Apple has a few bad product launches and needs to find a revenue stream, and selling a piece of their privacy soul to juice revenue is an easy bargain to make.
Google's central evil was allowing ad revenue to metastasize and dominate the company, which in turn meant that ad execs have more pull than is healthy.
From the top hit for IDFA (the wikipedia article):
> Starting in iOS 14.5, iPadOS 14.5, and tvOS 14.5, users are prompted to decide whether to opt-in or out of IDFA sharing before apps can query it. This choice can be altered in Settings.[2][3] In May, 2021, Verizon-owned advertisement analytics company Flurry Analytics reported that 96% of US users opted out of IDFA sharing.[4]
Apple replaced the hardware ID with a random number (the IDFA) that could be reset by the user at any time, or turned off completely.
Google eventually followed suit, although any app that received the. READ_PHONE_STATE permission was immune to the protections.
> READ_PHONE_STATE is one of the Android permissions categorized as dangerous. This is because it “allows read only access to phone state, including the phone number of the device, current cellular network information, the status of any ongoing calls, and a list of any Phone Accounts registered on the device”.
... it is often requested and misused by other types of applications that do not have any reason for needing it, including malware.
On iOS tracking and access to personal information is always opt-in. It’s literally a modal alert asking if you want to give permission when an app requests to access the IDFA for the first time.
Apple’s own apps don’t need to display the prompt because as per their privacy policy they don’t collect or use information for tracking purposes (which is also visible in the privacy labels of their apps in the App Store).
> Apple’s own apps don’t need to display the prompt because as per their privacy policy they don’t collect or use information for tracking purposes (which is also visible in the privacy labels of their apps in the App Store).
This is the privacy policy [0] of an example of their app, Apple News. I quote:
"Advertising
In order to deliver great content to you from leading publishers, Apple News is ad supported. If the Personalized Ads setting is on, Apple’s advertising platform may use information about your account, the topics and categories of stories you read, and publications you follow, subscribe to, or turn on notifications for to serve ads that are more relevant to you. We may also use information about your subscriptions to personalize your ads on the App Store."
In this case, you're referring to "Data Linked to You". "Data Linked to You" is based on the account you used to sign in to the News app + your activity within the news app - to create suggestions within the News app.
This does not allow Apple to track you from the News app e.g. access the IDFA of the device, sharing it with third parties or other apps.
It's made clear from the policy which I took the liberty to quote here that Apple News tracks your interests and uses it to personalize ads not only inside the same app but also Apple's App Store. Same policy states that whether you are logged in on the app or not, you will still receive ads.
They claim they do not share this data with other third parties but they sure as hell use it for their own advertising ecosystem.
Using an opt-out is completely different from using third party ad blocking technology and is much more friendly. I can set the IDFA opt-out on my father's iPhone and nothing will break, but if I set him up with ublock or dns blocking and it starts breaking websites, he will be totally confused and not recognize what's happening. Also, using hacks to block tracking is not 100% reliable and allowing the user to have a specific option like Apple does is better for the user.
Billboards still require tracking. If you had the option of putting a billboard up in 1 of 2 neighborhoods and it would get 10k impressions in either location which one would you choose? The optimal strategy is not to pick randomly. The optimal strategy is to predict the conversion rate of both locations. In order to do that you need to investigate who is likely to see your billboard and learn about their interests to see if they would be likely to be interested.
Couldn't one say the same of any brick and mortar store? If a shoe store is going to open in my neighborhood, for example, how much data do they need for it to be optimally located? I guess they could seek out the online browsing history of all the friends of all the people living within 1 mile from the shoe store and analyze it.
I don't doubt that billboards are placed with some careful thought, but tracking is certainly not "required" - some aggregate stats about an area should work, especially as there isn't much feedback on who saw the billboard and bought a product etc.
tracking: the act or process of following something or someone
I haven't seen a billboard that would follow me around before. Placing them at popular location depends on existing data (or often just plain-ass thinking, like obviously a hub in the middle of the town will have more people see it compared to the middle of nowhere), and only very very indirectly generates any sort of new data (e.g. if you only place a single ad in a specific place and can correlate that placement with an increase in product sales.. but that is thoroughly unrealistic and I only write it to be nitpicky with myself).
>I haven't seen a billboard that would follow me around before.
I've never seen a png file follow me around either. It's the people who are selling the advertising space that are doing the tracking. They want to show how valuable of a location they can offer you.
Smart billboards available through Gannett (largest billboard company in US) and track license plate numbers. I used them in Florida until they were banned in 2020.
Billboards that identify car types are still legal AFAIK.
I am no bootlicker for any corp, but I do value and appreciate Apple’s focus on privacy, and I think that many criticisms of it is just nitpicky and doesn’t help anyone (e.g. calling that buy icloud service label an ad..).
On the other hand, I very much await sideloading to be forced out of Apple by the EU.
> I am no bootlicker for any corp, but I do value and appreciate Apple’s focus on privacy, and I think that many criticisms of it is just nitpicky and doesn’t help anyone (e.g. calling that buy icloud service label an ad..).
Many of the same people who see no issue with this mock and insult Microsoft for promoting Edge etc., in Windows. And will pretzel themselves into explaining how "that's different".
> I think that many criticisms of it is just nitpicky and doesn’t help anyone
This is true, but many criticisms are valid. Apple News is user-tracking adware that cannot be uninstalled on MacOS. You cannot install an app on any of the iDevices without telling Apple. You cannot get your GPS location on an iDevice without telling Apple. Apple is spending considerable resources growing their ad business, so expect this to grow worse over time; and combined with Apple's inclination to deny user control, there is no way to opt out without opting out entirely of iDevices.
Meanwhile, the only competitor(Google's Android) tracks everything you do everywhere.
So Apple's privacy perspective is way better than Android's. Could it be better? Of course, and I'm fine with trying to pressure them to do more for protecting our privacy, but between the 2, it's not even close, Apple is WAY more private with your data than Google will ever be.
> Meanwhile, the only competitor(Google's Android) tracks everything you do everywhere.
The difference is you can avoid the tracking easily. This is a direct result of prioritizing user control. You can install apps without telling anybody, you can get your GPS location without telling anybody, and so on. Apple, by denying user control, makes privacy worse for users who care, and it will only get worse as Apple ramps up its services business.
That's funny! You can not opt-out of Google tracking, they just make it look like you can. There is a reason Google runs the Google Play Store, fonts.google.com, maps.google.com and gmail.com for instance. It's not because they are nice, it's because they make oodles more money hosting that stuff free and yanking data from you for their actual money making business.
Except for the Play Store, all of those apply equally to iOS devices. You do not even need to log into a Google account to use an Android device, even one purchased from Google. iOS is strictly worse in the amount of privacy allowed to its users.
They are called “display ads”. Apple did not invent them. If your site produces above average content, then display ads are likely more profitable then keyword ads, since they target high quality ad real estate instead of high value eyeballs.
The IDFA on iOS is a random device identifier and not tied to your identity. It would allow an advertiser to correlate that it’s the same device that has installed several apps, nothing more. It also resets in certain situations.
Facebook on the other hand, creates a grand central repository of everything there is to know about you and sells it to whoever wants to pay. Just like Google.
They are already tracking all users across the highest grossing App Store and all text entered into the search bar of the 2nd most used browser flows through their servers.
So tracking might not be their business but they can very easily start a big business.
I'm not an Apple device user so I could be mistaken, but Apple devices must be collecting all of this information about their users if Facebook is able to access it.
Apple does not need a tracking pixel as it has better information on 50+% of Americans then facebook. Where they live where they eat who they hang out what they spend on all the info is with apple.
If that’s the worst you think it can happen, you lack imagination.
I Myanmar fingerprinting helped the military find dissidents, the the US Cambridge Analytica managed to get enough data to influence an election, and there’s many more examples.
Besides, if a private company can sell access to you through ads, less benevolent actors can use that access for other more nefarious practices.
1) The data are the privacy equivalent of nuclear waste. A company having it is also barely different from the government having it, directly. The data ought not be collected, period. It’s astonishingly dangerous.
2) Someone following you around writing notes about everything you do doesn’t stop being creepy-as-fuck harassment just because it’s online and “at scale”. And actually a lot of this transcends the Internet and gets connected with real world activities, blurring the difference even more. It’s wrong when someone does it to a single person for some personal reason, and it’s even more wrong when a megacorp does it to everyone to make a buck.
3) It harms the function of markets. Massive nearly-impossible-for-a-small-business-to-attain data-moats protect monopolies and discourage competition. It adds to the already-harmful-to-market-function information imbalance between individuals and companies.
For one reason, because the data lives on forever, and these companies merge or go out of business eventually, at which point the data ends up in the hands of someone else.
Data is also shared with data brokers (Acxiom and the like) which collect unknown quantities of data about you, linked to your actual identity. That data can then affect whether you get a loan or a job.
Most importantly, we don't know what's done with the data and have no control should we want it to be forgotten.
It’s not the targeting, it’s the largely surreptitious compilation of the dossier about people that is so vile.
If someone showed up at your house with a folder about a loved one, turns out they had been following them around town, tracking their movements, taking pictures, reading their emails, etc. I don’t think you’d be two thrilled, but hey they’re only going to use that info to target ads…pinky swear…
What's the worst that could happen... sheesh why don't we not find out for a change.
Watch the 10hr long interview documentary called Shoah and listen to how trains, buildings and institutions were used to do 'the deed'.
It was impossible to tell what was going to happen ahead of time for the victims, they assumed they were heading to a labour camp and being assigned a block of soap and sent to the showers was a good thing...
Why does this even need to be said! Do we not know our dark european history?
Conserving the known good we have, is not an 'immediate fail', as many futurists would indulge in saying...
At least you know now where you can discover one reason (of many) as to why some people are wary of collective control.
> the way i see it, the worst case scenario is you get an Ad for something you might actually like...
That's hardly the worst case scenario when there are countless stories like "Facebook Allowed Advertisers to Target Users Interested in “White Genocide” — Even in Wake of Pittsburgh Massacre"[1].
There's also the time Facebook's targeted ads were used to facilitate genocide in Myanmar[2][3].
Generally speaking it's never a good idea to stoke the fire of unfounded fears in people. Doing so directly leads to stochastic terrorism and other horrible things.
There are more important things in this world than money. Surely we can all agree that "better ad targeting" isn't worth human lives?
Because it's none of their damn business! If you are cautious in public around strangers, and you better be, why would any sane person trust a company with their personal data?!?
Your question is either super naive or you have a stake in facebook or apple.
I could care less if someone or the whole world knows that I like elvis presely, fence repair or cucumbers and gardening and a whole host of other random facts. i mean so what? that data can go out of date very easily. any second now I could decide I don't like elvis presely, etc. the vast majority of "data" collected is all nonsense anyways.
the things I don't want getting into anyone's hands are things like: financial info, address, phone number, social security, my middle name, birthday, etc. none of those things are stuff I share with a social network.
Advertisers can sell you things at higher prices if they know you have more money. The first rule of negotiation in business is that information is power.
Looking at Apple's latest reports, their services and App Store revenue has become the main vector of growth. Considering this includes App Store ads, gambling apps and the bulk of it is in-app purchases, I don't see Apple having a moral high ground.
