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Apple Warns App Tracking Transparency Could Be Disabled in Europe

BaldiMac said:
Germany is the one complaining that Apple does have to ask permission to do the thing that Apple doesn't do.
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The current status of German regulators against apple can be found here. Specifically, the announcement of a preliminary assessment being sent to Apple in regards to the ATT issue is here.

Some quotes from the latter:

Personalised advertising is also of great commercial significance for other companies wishing to offer free apps, some of which compete with Apple’s own services, in the App Store. This applies in particular to the many providers which – in contrast to Apple, for example – do not themselves have a wealth of broad and deep user data to draw on. However, the ATTF makes it far more difficult for competing app publishers to access the user data relevant for advertising.
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Apple’s ATTF defines “tracking” in a way that only covers data processing for advertising purposes across companies. However, based on the findings so far, the strict ATTF rules do not cover Apple’s own practice of combining user data across its ecosystem – from its App Store, Apple ID and connected devices – and using them for advertising purposes.
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IMHO these concerns reflect exactly what I have been posting about: the regulators are taking issues in how Apple defined the ATT rules and how the rules disproportionately affect especially smaller third-party providers.
 
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Appreciate the analogy, but I'd still argue regulators are completely missing the mark, and by doing so will make things worse for end users.

The key here is also that Apple's first-party tracking isn't for behavioral advertising. It's for for product analytics and personalization within its own ecosystem (things like improving Siri suggestions, App Store search relevance, or Apple Music recommendations).

The local newspaper’s problem isn’t that the rule favors the mall owner; it’s that the newspaper’s business model depends on cross-app surveillance. Apple shouldn't be required to ask for permission for something it doesn't do just because others built their companies around trading user data and Apple didn't.

To extend the retail analogy, regulators completely miss the fact that the reason the mall owner's department store (Apple) keeps track of what people buy inside its own departments is to restock shelves and improve displays. The shoe store next door (Meta/Local Newspaper/Whoever), on the other hand, wants to know what customers bought across the entire mall so it can sell that information to advertisers or target those customers when they leave the mall.

Regulators seem to treat both as “tracking,” but they’re not remotely the same thing. One is basic first-party analytics and a normal part of running a business. The other is invasive cross-context behavioral profiling. Pretending they’re equivalent because both involve “data” is how you end up with privacy law that punishes the wrong actors, which is exactly what's happening here, and will result either in less privacy for European customers OR Apple being forced to ask for permission for things it does not do, that will, of course, lead everyone to believe Apple does what it doesn't do.
 
bsolar said:
IMHO that's actually what regulators are concerned with.

Apple offers a very broad palette of apps and services. Since they designed ATT to exclude first-party apps, their whole ecosystem can effectively cross-track user activities without being affected by ATT much at all. The result is that ATT is basically not hurting Apple at all, whereas it's hurting vendors that do not or cannot provide that kind of apps and services' footprint or ecosystem.

Now, part of me says "that's those third-party vendors' fault for relying on third-party vendors for user data" and Apple's integration is undeniably part of their appeal, but Apple does gain an advantage by the way ATT is designed. I think ATT is a net positive, but I do believe the regulators' concern is not unreasonable either.
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I think you've fooled yourself by using loaded language here. You're essentially arguing that apps should be able to overrule user preference to track you. Which is against EU law.
 
surferfb said:
The key here is also that Apple's first-party tracking isn't for behavioral advertising. It's for for product analytics and personalization within its own ecosystem (things like improving Siri suggestions, App Store search relevance, or Apple Music recommendations).
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That's not entirely true, it depends on whether the user has the "Personalized Ads" settings enabled or not. If enabled, Apple's ads platform does use user data to deliver targeted advertisement.

Note that more recent iOS version have that setting opt-in, but I believe it was opt-out at inception and at the time of the regulators' complaints.
 
bsolar said:
That's not entirely true, it depends on whether the user has the "Personalized Ads" settings enabled or not. If enabled, Apple's ads platform does use user data to deliver targeted advertisement.
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What's your point? As you mention below, it's opt in.

bsolar said:
Note that more recent iOS version have that setting opt-in, but I believe it was opt-out at inception and at the time of the regulators' complaints.
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According to your own quote earlier, they were already fined for this and changed to opt-in with iOS 15 (4 years ago).
 
BaldiMac said:
What other conclusion is there? You seem to be saying that it is unfair that apps need permission to track you across third parties. That's the point of ATT.
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The opposite is true. If you read the German regulators' document it also makes it very clear IMHO: the main issue they are having is not third-parties having to require permission to obtain data from other third-parties: the issue is in a large ecosystem of apps and services not having to request permission to share data across said ecosystem.

Again note that this is not something new: some regulations can limit which data a single company offering different products can share internally: data obtained from a product might not be available for different purposes inside said company, so it might not be available to the other products.

BaldiMac said:
What's your point? As you mention below, it's opt in.
According to your own quote earlier, they were already fined for this and changed to opt-in with iOS 15 (4 years ago).
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My point is that the statement "Apple's first-party tracking isn't for behavioral advertising", to which I was replying, is in fact "not entirely true".
 
BaldiMac said:
But, again, no app requires that for first party tracking! Apple does more than the other apps!
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I suspect e.g. the French regulators do require that to the other apps, so the other apps very likely still need a compliant opt-in mechanism by law. I guess those would be the "prompts" we were talking about before...

Furthermore, I don't even think the opt-in is the main issue the regulators have. I think the main point is "you are allowed to track across all apps and services you provide" is available to all vendors, but if you are a vendor that has a huge ecosystem, that options gives you much more than if you are a small vendor that must rely on a multitude of third-party vendors' shared data to achieve a similar coverage of the user.
 
bsolar said:
I suspect e.g. the French regulators do require that to the other apps, so the other apps very likely still need a compliant opt-in mechanism by law. I guess those would be the "prompts" we were talking about before...

Furthermore, I don't even think the opt-in is the main issue the regulators have. I think the main point is "you are allowed to track across all apps and services you provide" is available to all vendors, but if you are a vendor that has a huge ecosystem, that options gives you much more than if you are a small vendor that must rely on a multitude of third-party vendors' shared data to achieve a similar coverage of the user.
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Based on the link you posted, the French regulator's issue is: "Your tracking permission (which is actually effective) is unnecessary because we already have one (that is not effective). Furthermore, because your effective tracking permission is just yes/no, third parties have to put up a second permission to comply with our confusing, ineffective law, which Apple doesn't have to, because they don't track across third party sites. And making them put up two warnings is unfair. How dare you, Apple! Therefore, we demand the effective tracking prevention be removed because it is unnecessary. We don't care that Apple's rule actually does what our regulation intends to, but fails to do."
 
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surferfb said:
Based on the link you posted, the French's issue is: "Your tracking permission (which is actually effective) is unnecessary because we already have one (that is not effective). Furthermore, because your effective tracking permission is just yes/no, third parties have to put up a second permission to comply with our ineffective law, which Apple doesn't have to, because they don't track across third party sites. And that is unfair. How dare you, Apple!"
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They cite multiple issues and also allege that they proposed "marginal modifications" to the framework that would have made it compliant. How much those "marginal modifications" are actually "marginal" I don't know...

Said that, again, they explicitly express the same concerns as the German regulators:

Although the introduction of ATT has impacted all application publishers, the framework has been particularly harmful for smaller publishers that do not enjoy alternative targeting possibilities, in particular in the absence of sufficient proprietary data.
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bsolar said:
I suspect e.g. the French regulators do require that to the other apps, so the other apps very likely still need a compliant opt-in mechanism by law. I guess those would be the "prompts" we were talking about before...

Furthermore, I don't even think the opt-in is the main issue the regulators have. I think the main point is "you are allowed to track across all apps and services you provide" is available to all vendors, but if you are a vendor that has a huge ecosystem, that options gives you much more than if you are a small vendor that must rely on a multitude of third-party vendors' shared data to achieve a similar coverage of the user.
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Seems like you've come full circle here. We've already addressed this. Again, Apple already addressed what you call the main issue by adding an opt-in setting for personalized ads. At this point, they have done more than third-party apps are required to by their policies.
 
Ok, this thread is all-over here. I thought that the whole point of App Tracking Transparency was to warn users when an app was using information from other apps (different publishers) to track user behavior. The prompt is to Ask the app to not track, and well behaved apps will heed this preference. I also didn't know that Apple had their own Ad-platform and were snooping on me to track my behavior outside of Apple's own apps. I don't recall ever seeing a prompt from an Apple app asking about tracking? If Apple is doing this, then the EU is correct in their accusation, but otherwise it seems petty. Perhaps I misunderstand something?
 
BaldiMac said:
Seems like you've come full circle here. We've already addressed this. Again, Apple already addressed what you call the main issue by adding an opt-in setting for personalized ads. At this point, they have done more than third-party apps are required to by their policies.
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I don't think the regulators will consider the issue "addressed" until the advantage of having an ecosystem will be mitigated and I highly doubt they consider the opt-in setting satisfactory in that regard, especially since they very likely require third-party apps to have a similar opt-ins regardless of Apples' policies.

Said that, it's the regulators' call...
 
LinkRS said:
Ok, this thread is all-over here. I thought that the whole point of App Tracking Transparency was to warn users when an app was using information from other apps (different publishers) to track user behavior. The prompt is to Ask the app to not track, and well behaved apps will heed this preference. I also didn't know that Apple had their own Ad-platform and were snooping on me to track my behavior outside of Apple's own apps. I don't recall ever seeing a prompt from an Apple app asking about tracking? If Apple is doing this, then the EU is correct in their accusation, but otherwise it seems petty. Perhaps I misunderstand something?
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Apple is not snooping on you to track your behavior outside of Apple's own apps.
 
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bsolar said:
I don't think the regulators will consider the issue "addressed" until the advantage of having an ecosystem will be mitigated and I highly doubt they consider the opt-in setting satisfactory in that regard, especially since they very likely require third-party apps to have a similar opt-ins regardless of Apples' policies.

Said that, it's the regulators' call...
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What advantage!?!?! Again, it's opt in! Just like every other app can do.
 
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patmondal said:
the land of GDPR now wants to allow advertisers to track consumers?
Is privacy their focus, or do they have a vendetta against Apple, or are they being paid/lobbied by Meta and other advertisers.
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If you look at any of those “legitimate interest” (wtv the eff that means) listings on GDPR prompts, they are positively LITTERED with European data-sucking/advertising companies. This reeks of lobbying, corruption and double standards…
 
BaldiMac said:
What advantage!?!?! Again, it's opt in! Just like every other app can do.
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The advantage is that if you are Apple and obtain consent for your ecosystem, your news app automatically can use data from dozens of different apps and services. If you are a simple news app, you don't have that option and would require data from multiple third-party vendors to obtain a similar coverage of a user's activity.

Again, you don't need to agree with that, as long as you understand that is clearly what the regulators are taking issues with.
 
mikebenton said:
Seems like every feature released by Apple becomes another payday for some European government. $150m Euros? Really? I’m sure that money totally went to the French people. Apple has to be the biggest cash-cow in Europe! I mean, it can’t just be a lawsuit to change the way something works. It always has to involve ridiculous amounts of money.
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"French people?"
 
bsolar said:
The advantage is that if you are Apple and obtain consent for your ecosystem, your news app automatically can use data from dozens of different apps and services. If you are a simple news app, you don't have that option and would require data from multiple third-party vendors to obtain a similar coverage of a user's activity.
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Now you're just being argumentative. There's literally no solution to the problem you've presented unless you are going to outlaw personalized advertising completely. I'm all for that, but the EU seems to think it's necessary.
 
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bsolar said:
The advantage is that if you are Apple and obtain consent for your ecosystem, your news app automatically can use data from dozens of different apps and services. If you are a simple news app, you don't have that option and would require data from multiple third-party vendors to obtain a similar coverage of a user's activity.

Again, you don't need to agree with that, as long as you understand that is clearly what the regulators are taking issues with.
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But doesn’t it bother you that regulators are treating fundamentally different things as equivalent? Apple’s first-party analytics aren’t the same as the cross-site behavioral tracking these laws were meant to address, but the regulators don't seem to understand that distinction. Shouldn't we want regulators to actually understand what they are regulating? And that there is a very significant difference in what Apple does and what the third-parties want to do?

It’s not that Apple’s advantage is "unfair," it’s that they built an ecosystem where users voluntarily keep their data in one account. Regulators mistaking that for cross-app tracking implies they don’t understand the difference between first-party analytics and third-party surveillance. Which is kind of a big thing if you're supposedly in charge of regulating privacy.

Shouldn't we want the regulations to be based in facts, not misunderstandings?
 
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