iOS 14's Upcoming Anti-Tracking Prompt Sparks Antitrust Complaint in France

[genovelle]

It's anticompetitive because it puts Apple in a privileged position compared to other apps and networks. Apple has access to your demographic info and knows what apps you use, and won't have to display these prompts (or respect them!) in its own apps.

That said, it's a weaker argument than with Google, because Apple itself isn't primarily an advertising network (except for App Store ads) and thus isn't directly competing with the ad networks it's crippling.

The fact that it is telling a company that using the app will share data with other companies outside of the one that owns the app is not anti-competitive. It is consumer friendly by exposing shady activity. I actually get explicit requests from Apple about the use of my data in their own apps. It’s only right and expected that I would know the same about anything I buy from them with the expectation of protection.

 

[MEJHarrison]

Thats the same BS argument so many make yet you don't live in the world of making apps so you just don't know.

I don't care how good the app is, if it can't make it TODAY as a paid only app it won't make it ever as a paid only app.

If the app isn't good enough to survive without my data, then I'm fine with that. The App Store isn't a welfare system. No one is owed the ability to make a living from advertising. Getting an app in the store doesn't grant the developer the right to make money through shady methods (taking something that belongs to me without my knowledge or consent). If that leads to some failures and a thinning of the herd in the app developer community, I'm fine with that too. I say this as a developer (web developer, not app developer). The talented developers will survive and the rest can find other schemes to part people from their money.

 

[I7guy]

It's anticompetitive because it puts Apple in a privileged position compared to other apps and networks. Apple has access to your demographic info and knows what apps you use, and won't have to display these prompts (or respect them!) in its own apps.

That said, it's a weaker argument than with Google, because Apple itself isn't primarily an advertising network (except for App Store ads) and thus isn't directly competing with the ad networks it's crippling.

Because to Apple you are a customer and not the product?

 

[daveak]

And yet because of the EU we have to click on stupid cookie acceptance policies (and as a developer I have to implement them). Meanwhile advertisers don't even care about that as they mine our data from our devices directly. Get with the times, EU! Apple is correct here.

The way most of these cookie acceptance things work they aren’t even complying with the law. The problem is the exact same one as this, surveillance capitalism.

There is also no way they should win in the EU here either, only potential get the wording changed. Gathering data cannot be opt out under GDPR (where consent is being used as the reason for processing), has to be opt in (again how many of these cookie things comply with that?). Apple are actually making things more compliant here.

 

[iDento]

Go Apple Go and don’t worry! They’re French, they will surrender immediately, use your Light Sabre.

 

[lordhamster]

This is particularly ridiculous considering how hard the French pushed for GDPR. If this kind of anti-tracking user notification isn't in the spirit of GDPR, i don't know what is.

I swear the French like to be difficult just to be difficult. If I were Tim Apple, I'd just pull out of France.

 

[GumaRodak]

I believe that pages and apps will simpy reject you if you will not allow to track you...so it will end up accepting all tracking if you want the content

 

[ScottHammet]

This already exists (Settings > Privacy > Tracking).

That setting appears, at least to me, to rely more on the honor system, versus an explicit ability to enforce. It's the enforcement piece that I had in mind...if app developers don't like a prompt to opt in/out, then install a wall against all of them.

 

[H2SO4]

"Advertising companies and publishers have filed a complaint against Apple with France's competition authority, arguing that the enhanced privacy measures would be anticompetitive"

Because our data can't be mined for profit unless we consent it is anticompetitive? Give me a break, Zuckerberg & friends.

Seriously, one of the best things about Apple is how much they value privacy. I thank them for doing this.

You mean Apple, the company that takes, I think it was $8B from Google, the company that apparently sells everything there is about you, (according to this forum)?
Yes, your privacy is paramount.

/s

 

[btrach144]

These 3rd parties have no right to my phone. Kick rocks ad companies.

 

[DblHelix]

So, France has some of the strictest rules around convent but when a company goes a step further then other companies fight it as anti competitive. Can’t have it both ways

 

[iReality85]

Starting early next year, iOS 14 will require apps to get opt-in permission from users to collect their random advertising identifier, which advertisers use to deliver personalized ads and track how effective their campaigns were.

The mere fact that there are advertising identifiers for things like computers and mobile phones is a sad commentary on modern day capitalism and privacy invasion. It's one of the greateast, if not the greatest, short sightings of the digital age. Our data should have been ours from the beginning, not there to be mined for profit.

 

[makitango]

„Your data will be shared with third parties“ -> fixed.

 

[wolfshades]

According to the report, the complaint alleges that the wording of Apple's permission prompt will lead most users to decline tracking of their device's advertising identifier, which could result in lost revenue. In August, Facebook warned advertisers that the prompt could lead to a more than 50 percent drop in Audience Network publisher revenue.

Kind of making Apple's argument for them, wouldn't you say? I really appreciate how Apple's on our side with this.

 

[Drogba11]

Does this new feature to show the prompt do anything different than turning off allow apps to track setting that already exists?

 

[Labeno]

You mean Apple, the company that takes, I think it was $8B from Google, the company that apparently sells everything there is about you, (according to this forum)?
Yes, your privacy is paramount.

Are you thinking that Apple is giving personal information to Google (unethical) in exchange for the $8B, or is Apple only making Google the default search option (ethical from the standpoint of privacy)?

 

[VermontsFinest]

You mean Apple, the company that takes, I think it was $8B from Google, the company that apparently sells everything there is about you, (according to this forum)?
Yes, your privacy is paramount.

/s

You have the choice to use Google or not. Come on now. All they are doing is setting it as the default search engine.

 

[Rafagon]

I hope so. Completely blocking tracking, such that ad networks can't get any info about users at all, will only kill the quality of ads (you'll just get junk ads rather than for products that might actually be relevant for you), and thus kill revenue for a lot of independent app developers.

But at the same time, users absolutely have a right to privacy and to not be individually tracked between apps and websites.

There must be a technical middle ground that respects both goals.

The ads I get are already junk ads.

If I need to buy something, I shop around and get it.

I don't need advertisers' help with the purchases I make.

 

[H2SO4]

You have the choice to use Google or not. Come on now. All they are doing is setting it as the default search engine.

Apple. The fine upstanding company. Have taken money. Lots. From Google. The company they claim is the antithesis of what they do/are.
Take the blinkers off.

 

[StevieD100]

Amen brother! I use PiHole!

Other Firewalls are available but the PiHole does the job. Just block the domains of the ad slingers. They are even farther down the scumbag ladder than lawyers. The only people they beat are the Politicians... well some of them are so far down the ladder that they are only one rung above hell.

 

[StevieD100]

I'm consistently amazed that companies think I give a damn about the "quality" of ads I see or how targeted they are at me. I do everything I can to not look at ads so it doesn't much matter what they're for.

I go farther than that. Any products that get repeatedly advertised to me gets put on my 'Do not buy' naughty step. So far no company has managed to come off the step.
Repeatedly advertised == Do Not Buy ever!
Simple really.

 

[theotherphil]

Another day, another company(ies) claiming anticompetitive practices when they don’t like Apple’s business model.

Brought to you by the generation where everybody gets an award.

 

[polyphenol]

Facebook is nervous because you KNOW that's the one EVERYONE is going to turn off first.

I prefer the other approach to facebook. Never signed up. Never used the app. Avoid everything to do with it to the greatest extent I can.

But too many people fall into the trap of putting useful or important information on facebook and nowhere else. Damn them!

(I usually ask partner for the information so I can avoid accessing facebook at all. She uses it occasionally.)

 

[aka777]

This is why I now deploy every single ad-blocking measure possible.

 

[Wahlstrm]

I hope so. Completely blocking tracking, such that ad networks can't get any info about users at all, will only kill the quality of ads (you'll just get junk ads rather than for products that might actually be relevant for you), and thus kill revenue for a lot of independent app developers.

Ads on the Internet actually didn’t bother my half as much back when they were “low quality” and “irrelevant” because then I at least got to see some new and interesting products and services.

Since ads became “high quality” and “relevant” I basically just get ads for the last gadget I looked at on the internet.. And I have too see that gadget about a million times in every app or website I visit..

If tracking gets banned then people might not need adblockers as much.