Apple Responds to Facebook's Anti-Tracking Criticism

[Spindel]

Summary

On december 16th, in a blog post and a full-page ad published in three major newspapers, Facebook claimed that Apple's tracking change will have a "harmful impact on many small businesses that are struggling to stay afloat."

"We disagree with Apple's approach and solution, yet we have no choice but to show Apple's prompt," said Facebook. "If we don't, they will block Facebook from the App Store, which would only further harm the people and businesses that rely on our services. We cannot take this risk on behalf of the millions of businesses who use our platform to grow."

 

Apples has responded to this with the quote below 

 

Quotes

Quote

We believe that this is a simple matter of standing up for our users. Users should know when their data is being collected and shared across other apps and websites — and they should have the choice to allow that or not. App Tracking Transparency in iOS 14 does not require Facebook to change its approach to tracking users and creating targeted advertising, it simply requires they give users a choice. 

 

My thoughts

I feel that facebook are trying the Spotify/Epic argumentation that what they are doing is to stand up for the "small" businesses. But, just as Spotify/Epic, they don't give a shit about the "small" businesses. If your business model relies on not being transparent I would suggest that you try another model. My guess is FB does not have the balls to withdraw from apples ecosystem anyway.   

 

Sources

https://www.macrumors.com/2020/12/16/apple-responds-to-facebook-tracking-criticism/

[Ashleyyyy]

small businesses don't track billions of people. 

 

i applaud Apple for giving users this option and it's one of the reasons why i'm loyal to iPhone lmao. 

[Arika]

To be honest, i'm not sure why something like this isn't already regulated in legislation. Why is something like "tracking" an assumed acceptance?

[RedRound2]

Honestly, this is as pathetic as Epic v Apple, where Epic lost all it's credibility for the stunt they pulled off.

 

Here, to the basic premise is that, given a user has a choice on whether a corporation gets to know all their personal details and sell it for massive amounts of money - the user would disagree. The fact that Facebook's buisness model relies on intentionally on tricking users with convoluted jargain is the wrongdoing in the first place.

 

I don't expect Android to ever have this feature - but at least there is one competitve platform that you can trust a lot more than others

[Mark Kaine]

I'm still waiting for fb to withdraw from the EU market... 

 

25 minutes ago, RedRound2 said:

I don't expect Android to ever have this feature 

well if current EU plans come to fruition they'll kinda have to. 

[NeuesTestament]

In the apple ecosystem only Apple is allowed to track you.

[PCGuy_5960]

We need to track our users data to... *checks notes* ...save small businesses. 

 

bruh

[Bananasplit_00]

53 minutes ago, RedRound2 said:

Epic lost all it's credibility

You say that like they had any too loose lmao.

 

If anyone actually thinks this is about small business they are off their marbels lmfao

[leadeater]

1 hour ago, Spindel said:

Facebook claimed

And now I don't believe what is being said. Facebook's credibility is zero, even if they had a smoking gun I'd still have my doubts lol

[Spindel]

29 minutes ago, NeuesTestament said:

In the apple ecosystem only Apple is allowed to track you.

Yeah apple bad!

 

Let's forget that apples tracking is opt in when you set up a new phone. Kind of what they want it to be for 3rd parties. 

 

[NeuesTestament]

Just now, Spindel said:

Yeah apple bad!

 

Let's forget that apples tracking is opt in when you set up a new phone. Kind of what they want it to be for 3rd parties. 

 

Apple got caught a couple of weeks back sending info on the Apps a user opened unencrypted back. I don't see a reason to trust them.

[leadeater]

8 minutes ago, NeuesTestament said:

Apple got caught a couple of weeks back sending info on the Apps a user opened unencrypted back. I don't see a reason to trust them.

Application hashes and signatures to check application integrity and trust to make sure it's not malicious, other than it not being encrypted this isn't abnormal. The story was created from an assumption, which wasn't correct, but the problem is when corrections/truth comes out it largely gets ignored because it's not as good of a story. As long as you have the ability to turn this behavior off there isn't anything to complain about, and told it's on by default or initial setup choice to.

 

If you have one of the common AV products you might want to check what the advanced real time protections are actually doing, the very same thing because it's now a standard feature companies compete on to offer better protection and more accurate results.

[PCGuy_5960]

1 hour ago, RedRound2 said:

Honestly, this is as pathetic as Epic v Apple, where Epic lost all it's credibility for the stunt they pulled off.

This isn't even comparable with what epic did though. I don't really like Epic, but you can't deny that they put their money where their mouth is and got Fortnite removed from the App Store as well as offered a permanent discount in the in game currency on all platforms. You could definitely say that Epic only cared about their profits, but I don't think this is the case when you consider everything they did. Unlike Facebook, Epic did seem to genuinely care (at least a bit) about the little guy too. Facebook just wants to sell your data.

[captain_to_fire]

18 minutes ago, NeuesTestament said:

Apple got caught a couple of weeks back sending info on the Apps a user opened unencrypted back. I don't see a reason to trust them.

Apple is simply using what every antivirus program has been doing to quickly detect malicious applications: cloud protection [here] [here] [here]

 

The only problem is that it was unencrypted but that has been fixed already. The person who made the blogpost took it out of context.

[Spindel]

13 minutes ago, PCGuy_5960 said:

This isn't even comparable with what epic did though. I don't really like Epic, but you can't deny that they put their money where their mouth is and got Fortnite removed from the App Store as well as offered a permanent discount in the in game currency on all platforms. You could definitely say that Epic only cared about their profits, but I don't think this is the case when you consider everything they did. Unlike Facebook, Epic did seem to genuinely care (at least a bit) about the little guy too. Facebook just wants to sell your data.

I was never a fan of Epic from the beginning of that drama, but Epic lost the last of their credibility about caring for the small guys when the continued to bitch about "apple evil" after apple reduced their cut to 15 % for the small guys. 

[PCGuy_5960]

Just now, Spindel said:

I was never a fan of Epic from the beginning of that drama, but Epic lost the last of their credibility about caring for the small guys when the continued to bitch about "apple evil" after apple reduced their cut to 15 % for the small guys. 

Oh, didn't know that cause I didn't follow that drama very closely. Still though, I would rank what epic did much higher than what facebook is doing in terms of credibility.

[Video Beagle]

18 minutes ago, PCGuy_5960 said:

I would rank what epic did much higher than what facebook is doing in terms of credibility.

only cuz it's a little bit nobler...or less sleazy...they just want to keep more of the money that people know they're spending, as opposed to wanting more of people's info to sell.

[Ashleyyyy]

1 hour ago, NeuesTestament said:

Apple got caught a couple of weeks back sending info on the Apps a user opened unencrypted back. I don't see a reason to trust them.

that's been debunked as far as i can tell. 

 

even if not, i'd like to know if that user had diagnostics enabled or not. 

[Ashleyyyy]

4 minutes ago, gabrielcarvfer said:

Apple steal apps functionality and then sabotage the apps

how so? if they implement a feature someone made a third party app for that's totally fine. apple isn't required to not implement features lmfao.. 

[Spindel]

1 minute ago, Ashley said:

how so? if they implement a feature someone made a third party app for that's totally fine. apple isn't required to not implement features lmfao.. 

Shrödingers Apple. 

 

Apple does not include a functionality found in i e Android (but that is solved by a 3rd party app), Apple bad, not innovating not in with the times.

 

Apple adds said functionality, Apple bad, stealing functionality, sabotaging apps and copying Android.  

[Arika]

21 minutes ago, gabrielcarvfer said:

Still evil.

- Epic cut is smaller

- Apple steal apps functionality and then sabotage the apps

- Apple claims apps have duplicate functionality when they don't (I think a recent case was the floatplane app)

- Apple app approval is shite

- Users are not allowed to sideload things

- Said xcloud and other services need to provide individual submissions for each game, when they never required songs/movies/videos apps to do the same

I'm not a fan of Apple, i think they have some bullshit policies, but you still need to give them credit when they do something good.

 

---

As a general aside to people on this forum:

 

I dont like the mentality that some people have where "<company> did <bad thing> and therefore must be evil all the time and must be called out at every turn". Don't dilute <good thing> by always trying to focus on, and drag conversation back to, <bad thing>.

[Spindel]

Oh the drama!

 

Quote

For the second consecutive day, Facebook is running a full-page ad in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, and The Washington Post that claims Apple's tracking change will harm not only small businesses, but the internet as a whole. Facebook says that due to Apple's new policy, many apps and websites will have to start charging subscription fees or add more in-app purchase options to make ends meet, making the internet "much more expensive."

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/facebook-runs-second-full-page-ad-criticizing-apple-says-opt-in-tracking-will-make-the-internet-worse.2275908/

[SpaceGhostC2C]

5 hours ago, PCGuy_5960 said:

Unlike Facebook, Epic did seem to genuinely care (at least a bit) about the little guy too. Facebook just wants to sell your data.

It doesn't even matter whether Epic stood for anyone but themselves. It could have a 100% selfish motivation. It's not a matter of being essentially good or being essentially evil, but a matter of falling on the right or wrong side in a given circumstance. Companies can find themselves in either side on a case-by-case basis. 

 

What matters in each of these controversies is that, in order to increase their profits, Epic pushed for a change for the better, while Facebook is pushing for a change for the worse. One was demanding Apple be less abusive, the other is demanding Apple allows them to be more abusive. 

[wanderingfool2]

4 hours ago, Benji said:

So, uhm, how exactly are "millions of small businesses" profiting from the fact that Facebook collects data from everywhere even outside of its own app and ecosystem and then sells them? How many apps actually use "Facebook services"? The only apps that I see usually have Google Ads and not Facebook ones but maybe I'm blind, who knows. In case of Epic, because they are still not "the largest business", you might think it's at least a little bit credible that they want to do something for other small, struggling business, but THE largest data harvesting machine on the entire Internet caring about "small businesses" that almost exclusively lives off advertisement and selling your data? I highly doubt that. They only act in their own interest and I think that Apple is right again. Offering the users to turn off this cross-app tracking and offering other privacy options is a good thing, not a bad thing. It's only bad because Facebook doesn't get any more money from the apparently system-wide tracking.

I can imagine that, just like on Android when you deny the right to use certain functionality like telephony or geolocation, they just make the app stop working once you disable tracking just to get users to enable the data harvesting again so that they can continue to follow their addiction to meaningless "approval".

I could be wrong, but this might be putting in place a policy where if you deny it the app maker isn't allowed to limit the features.  (So the concept being stopping the app might not work).

 

I always am on the fence about targeted ads (and company pushes like Apple to prevent such ads).  While it might be all good for Apple, there is some point in what Facebook is saying (although Facebook is just using it as an argument, but really they likely only care about their own profit...it just so happens to align correctly).  An example of it hurting smaller companies is ad placements.

 

Imagine searching google for "Pizza stores", and google ads gives you ads for the giant conglomerate pizza store instead of a local ad.  Why?  Because Google can't track the user's location, so effectively the small local ad will never be seen...after all, would you pay for ad space if there is a chance that it would be shown to someone who can't even physically buy the product.  It would favor large companies since they have locations everywhere.

 

Additionally, it creates an issue where small App makers could get in trouble.  I don't rely at all on money I make from my Apps (just do it as a hobby), but I know when I disabled targeted ads it reduced my CPM by 10 times.  So imagine if some of the businesses that actually relied on the ad revenue to employ their team had to do the same...or worse, more Apps might move towards the horrible micro-transactions, or become paid apps.

 

My point though is that I could see how this could hurt a certain portion of small businesses quite badly, and if the trend continues to the point of no longer being able to use targeted ads then I could see the way the internet itself works changing.  (If it wasn't for targeted ads/data mining Google and YouTube wouldn't exist today)

[Fasterthannothing]

Apple caring about users privacy give me a break! If that were true they would have cracked the iPhone encryption for the FBI themselves and then immediately patched it. Instead they climbed on their high horse and proclaimed security and privacy. While continuing to allow third parties to get paid billions to hack iPhones with zero knowledge of how to protect users from it. The amount of exploits in Apple devices is astronomical and I truly believe it's because their is more money in it than there would be if Apple did it themselves. Heck just look at where schools that's right public schools are hacking iPhones now! Guess where the technology came from? Apples refusal to unlock the 2016 iPhone

 https://www.google.com/amp/s/appleinsider.com/articles/20/12/11/cellebrite-and-other-iphone-hacking-tools-purchased-by-us-public-schools/amp/

 

Just think of what the Military has now that this stuff is floating around in public. Seriously it sickens me to think people even have one shred of pity for Apple and their pathetic attempt at security and privacy!