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Honestly I only knew that could be disabled or disabled through reading this site. No indication of that in the update. So unless people come to these kinds of sites … they won’t know.

Its disabled by default anyway so there not real optin or opt out going on here, no questions asked after the update, nothing. Again, a choice pretending to be one for any regular iPhone user.

There would be if it was enabled by default and when the App requested to track than opt in or opt out per app or just there and than disable for all.

This is clear a process designed not to transparently give the user the the option. They market one thing and again deliver another. This is about control over third party business models, Apple control … how can something good be turned bad? It requires imagination.

An Apple Social Network is coming.
Wow, glad I switched to decaf
 
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The default is for tracking to be disabled when iOS 14.5 is installed. So in reality this is "4% of users have opted in to having apps ask whether to track or not". 96% of users have just done nothing.
Exactly. Of that 96%, many could easily simply not be aware of the new feature.
 
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Facebook doesn’t get it. We’re not loyal to them.

I wish Apple would make a social network like Facebook was when it first started. No companies, just people.
I don't think Apple would do this as there is too much potential bad PR and would require an enormous amount of moderation, just look at the AirTag, other Bluetooth trackers have been available for year, Apple has the best anti-stalking measures and is still criticised. like it or not they're held to a very high standard. I think they'd potential over moderate to correct for this and then free speech suffers.

I do however wish there was a paid service with no data mining that offered a way to stay connected with people. The money for the service has to come from somewhere and I'd rather pay cash than data, I don't think most people are ready for that to pay though as everyone is so used to services being "free".
 
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An early look at an ongoing analysis of Apple's App Tracking Transparency suggests that the vast majority of iPhone users are leaving app tracking disabled since the feature went live on April 26 with the release of iOS 14.5.

tracking-disabled-ios-14-5.jpg

According to the latest data from analytics firm Flurry, just 4% of iPhone users in the U.S. have actively chosen to opt into app tracking after updating their device to iOS 14.5. The data is based on a sampling of 2.5 million daily mobile active users.

When looking at users worldwide who allow app tracking, the figure rises to 12% of users in a 5.3 million user sample size.

att-opt-out-flurry-analytics1.jpg

With the release of iOS 14.5, apps must now ask for and receive user permission before they can can access a device's random advertising identifier, which is used to track user activity across apps and websites. Users can either enable or disable the ability for apps to ask to track them. Apple disables the setting by default.

Since the update almost two weeks ago, Flurry's figures show a stable rate of app-tracking opt-outs, with the U.S. figure hovering between 11-13%, and 2-5% worldwide. The challenge for personalized ads market will be significant if the first two weeks end up reflecting a long-term trend.

att-opt-out-flurry-analytics2.jpg

Facebook, a vociferous opponent of ATT, has already started attempting to convince users that they must enable tracking in iOS 14.5 if they want to help keep Facebook and Instagram "free of charge." That sentiment would seem to go against the social network's earlier claim that ATT will have a "manageable" impact on its business and could even benefit Facebook in the long term.

Flurry Analytics, owned by Verizon Media, is used in over 1 million mobile applications, providing aggregated insights across 2 billion mobile devices per month. Flurry intends to update its figures every weekday for the daily opt-in rate as well as the share of users that apps cannot ask to track, both in the U.S. and globally.

Article Link: Analytics Suggest 96% of Users Leave App Tracking Disabled in iOS 14.5
mine is gray, it refused to turn on
 
the wording of the question is also a little ambiguous - it could be taken as if it's disabled then apps don't need to ask to track and they will track unless you otherwise stop it.
completely agree about the wording, it took me a few reads to be sure what the result of the toggle was.

The 'allow them to ask', could be ready as "if they don't ask, we'll assume it ok", it doesn't state "if you are not asked then the default position of they are not allowed to track"
 
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I came to ask the same thing. I’m pretty sure it isn’t as well. It wasn’t disabled on any of my devices or my parents’, and it seems like Apple would receive a lot of backlash from regulators if they disabled it by default.
Why? What about allowing tracking by default is the "correct" default rule disabling it by default is "wrong"? I could equally argue that enabling tracking by default for many years was the "wrong" approach because consumers shouldn't be allowed to be tracked without explicit consent, and failing to toggle a (relatively) hidden off switch isn't meaningful consent. But even if you don't buy that argument, please make one that says "consumers should have to affirmatively decline to be tracked". Otherwise at best either default rule is reasonable and Apple has just chosen a different one than it had in the past.
 
It's always been described as "Apple to require apps to aks for permission to track" which was hard to argue against, but "Apple Disables App Tracking" is a very different thing, easier to argue against, and I suspect much more controversial. I suggest we change future headlines to reflect the reality of the situation.
Why is it easier to argue against? It's just a "deny all" instead of "deny one by one". In neither case is it permanently disabled - a user can switch it.

That said, I agree with your broader point that the coverage of "will ask permission" is lost in the bigger picture that by default it will be turned off altogether.
 
Wait, if tracking is no longer possible after 14.5 without user opt-in, how did Flurry get these data in the first place?

(j/k)
I get you're joking but to explain for those wondering, they look at analytics from traffic they were able to collect previously, compared to the lack of them they can collect now. If previously they could gather data from 95% of users and now they can only do so from 35%, that shows a 63.15% decline since the implementation of iOS 14.5.

They can also compare the percentage they collect from iOS 14.5 vs versions of iOS prior to it.
 
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They are test devices used by the advertising companies, Facebook and Google?
I would like to speak to this 4% and ask why they want to be tracked all over the internet.
I just wanna make the wrongly targeted ads to go away.
Stop showing me the things I've already purchased or subscribe to.

In an ideal work, the tracking would allow advertisers to anticipate what I want and show me the perfect ad in the perfect moment.
 
I am one of the 96% but...
The toggle is off by default and I can not switch it into on. it's grey. And it is said that it cannot be switch in China.

So Apple has helped me and other Chinese users to make a choice whether an app could ask tracking or not. 🤣
 

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Honestly I only knew that could be disabled or disabled through reading this site. No indication of that in the update. So unless people come to these kinds of sites … they won’t know.

Its disabled by default anyway so there not real optin or opt out going on here, no questions asked after the update, nothing. Again, a choice pretending to be one for any regular iPhone user.

There would be if it was enabled by default and when the App requested to track than opt in or opt out per app or just there and than disable for all.

This is clear a process designed not to transparently give the user the the option. They market one thing and again deliver another. This is about control over third party business models, Apple control … how can something good be turned bad? It requires imagination.

An Apple Social Network is coming.
The more that criticisms get leveled at Apple, the more I am convinced they are headed in an appropriate direction for what they want to accomplish. For that I give them kudos.
 
Why is it easier to argue against? It's just a "deny all" instead of "deny one by one". In neither case is it permanently disabled - a user can switch it.
Because you can't switch what you don't know about, which means most people will have the option in its default state not because they've made a choice, but because they don't know there's a choice to be made.
 
And how soon before we launch an app or visit a website where we get the pop-up warning to "Turn on tracking or else the app/web site won't work."

They already do this to us when they discover we've got a very good set of Ad Blockers on every web browser, and, yes, it does tick them off. And rather than whitelist them, I usually am able to open the very same website page in another browser. When I do disable the Ad Blockers, or whitelist the site, I am amazed at what suddenly shows up on my screen.

And then I promptly re-enable the Ad Blocker. Ugh! It's their own fault we use Ad Blockers, and it's their own fault that Apple has made tracking more difficult.
 
The default is for tracking to be disabled when iOS 14.5 is installed. So in reality this is "4% of users have opted in to having apps ask whether to track or not". 96% of users have just done nothing.

Are you talking about the option shown in the screenshot in the OP (allow apps to request to track)? Because mine was on by default. I had to turn it off. Of course, having it on doesn't mean apps will track you - it just means you are allowing them to give you the choice TO be tracked on an app-by-app basis.
 
I wish Apple would make a social network like Facebook was when it first started. No companies, just people.
Apple’s bad at “social networks”, but there’s a clear reason why. Apple, which prides itself on preventing access (even to itself) to your personal information by anonymous strangers, can never be good at creating a network where the focus is sharing your personal information with anonymous strangers. Plus, everything we currently call a “social network” makes money to support the network from advertising. And, to make the MOST money from that advertising, they’d have to create profiles for the prospective advertiser to target, which means more data gathering.
 
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And how soon before we launch an app or visit a website where we get the pop-up warning to "Turn on tracking or else the app/web site won't work."
That would be against Apple's rules, and they would ask the developer to fix that, and if necessary kick the app out of the app store.
 
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