I am totally in support of this shift in business model.
Paying for the service you are using in a transparent and predictable way vs deceptively having your personal information monetized should be the norm.
Google and Facebook have been hiding behind an army of lawyers writing opaque TOS and lobbyists defending their user hostile monopolies.
This is wrong. Paying for a service does not automatically mean the service doesn't take your personal information.
* You pay for Windows but Microsoft still tracks you.
* You pay for iPhone & Mac but Apple still tracks you.
* You pay for Android phones but they still track you.
And so on..
I don't understand the shift from "usage tracking" towards "usage tracking for ads". The goal should be no tracking at all instead of "we don't track you to show ads".
But there is a huge difference between usage tracking and usage tracking for ads. Usage tracking of the kind Microsoft engages in (outside of Bing and their ad focused usage tracking that is), is largely telemetry used to change their product.
Usage tracking for ads, however, is used to change your behavior both within the product and outside the product.
Usage tracking for ads is significantly more damaging to humans as individuals as well as societies.
Perhaps tracking ought to be opt-in only. I don’t remember ever installing Debian and not opting in to the popularity contest (popcorn). Angular CLI also asks if it may do some telemetry. I don’t buy that opt in means we are stuck with bad data.
An exception is for testing.
I use Firefox nightly and developer edition where I can. I think by installing a pre release version of Firefox I opted into telemetry. I’m volunteering for telemetry. However, I don’t consent to opt out tracking in the production version of Firefox or running nonsense marketing-driven “experiments”.
This is the basis of the GDPR, which requires explicit, freely-given, revocable, and opt-in consent before any tracking can be done. I wish the US would get its act together and pass something similar for us in the US.
If you ever get that in US, I sure hope your people are more competent than ours and they come up with something that actually works. Because in EU, GDPR didn't actually solve anything. It's a pain in the ass both for businesses and consumers, and it only had one real (good) effect: it made (some) people aware of the fact that software tracks their lives. Nothing more than that.
The problem with GDPR is the EU member states' cowardly lack of enforcement. You'd think that as soon as they had a stick as big and powerful as GDPR, they'd immediately start beating the big, worst offenders with it. Yet, how often have we seen headlines about "BigScummyCorp fined 4% of annual global turnover" in the news?
Does GDPR even allow the 4% fine at first? I thought the point was to start “small” and ramp up if they don’t improve. Because, while GDPR applies to Facebook, it also applies to everyone. So that small business down the street may not be able to handle a 4% fine while FAANG could. If a 0.5% fine fixes the problem, then going to 4% is unnecessary and would only serve to satisfy vengeance (which laws are not supposed to do[a]).
There’s also the fact that GDPR is a directive. Each state (nation) has to implement it in their own laws. So the EU itself can’t enforce it, only the member states.
[a]: The purpose of laws are not to be an “eye for an eye”, but to curb bad behavior (theoretically)
> There’s also the fact that GDPR is a directive. Each state (nation) has to implement it in their own laws. So the EU itself can’t enforce it, only the member states.
> This is wrong. Paying for a service does not automatically mean the service doesn't take your personal information.
No, but it does mean the developer has a lot of incentive to write software for you as opposed to catering to the advertising companies who are paying their bills.
The advertisers only pay the bills as long as users are using the software. But yes, with a "free" software users probably are quite a bit more tolerant to issues.
I prefer "we don't track you around the entire internet, just our site" to "we track you around the whole internet." That's frequently the ad tracking tradeoff. Plus ad tracking is just so egregiously one sided in the loss of privacy for the user for minuscule user benefit and large tracker benefit.
And furthermore an ad-supported product doesn't necessarily misuse your personal information either. Whether the user pays in dollars or ad impressions doesn't change the need to build a product that people actually want to use, otherwise there is no market for ads to begin with.
> And furthermore an ad-supported product doesn't necessarily misuse your personal information either.
What you mean is they don't necessarily intend to misuse my personal information. The reality is many companies with the best intentions end up spilling that information in a variety of ways.
- They get acquired and their new parent abuses that information.
- They get breeched.
- Employees abuse the information they have access to.
- Employees leak your information to a third party.
- Government employees get access to that information and abuse it.
All of these things have happened to companies where people thought their information was being safely held. Many of these things have happened at the biggest, supposedly secure workplaces. The best way to avoid this is to not put your information out there.
The poster I replied to suggested advertising supported companies won't mis-use your data. My point is anyone—advertising company or not—who has my data is a risk.
You're absolutely right, non-advertising companies are a risk too. The difference is most developers who collect $2.99 for their app usually don't ask me for personal information unless they have a need which benefits me.
Incentives matter, and not all "tracking" is created equal.
You are right that paying for a service doesn't guarantee you won't be tracked. What is important is that that business model makes it possible for you to not be tracked. This is critically important, because it is extremely improbable to win a fight against tracking when billions of dollars are stacked against you.
Exactly I don't understand this idea that paying mean they won't track you. IMHO unless strong legislation and its enforcement comes into effect, nothing will change.
Of course anyone would agree that transparent and predictable payments are better than deception...
But I don't think it's that clear cut or even about that. Usually we favour open markets, where companies can compete on features and price. The App Store has a monopoly on iPhones as it's the only App Store, and the only reason the fees are that high is because Apple owns both the market and the only player, and they can set the fee to whatever they want.
If Apple wasn't the only one running the App Stores on iPhones, it's not as clear cut that they would act in the same way. But since they are, it makes sense they push people towards apps and paid apps from the App Store.
> the only reason the fees are that high is because Apple owns both the market and the only player
The fact that Google enforces the same fees while allowing competing app stores and varied OEMs access to that market paints a different conclusion than yours.
I agree with the "free market" point but in reality the market is just about as free as the biggest players (with the most capital, whatever that may represent) allow it to be. Sure, consumers have the same power as a whole to sway the market. Unfortunately it's fragmented among billions of people all veering in their own direction, uncoordinated. On the other side the power is concentrated with a few big players who just happen to have more or less the same goals and aim to achieve them almost single-mindedly.
And unfortunately the free market comes at a cost even when it works: a sort of dictatorship of the majority. The free market will want cheaper and will accept the compromise of paying in other ways. You don't get something for nothing and since laws aren't keeping up with this it's up to the tech giants to police themselves. You pay with money and with your data, the ratio is up to each company.
The reason this works to to the user's advantage (read: more money - less data) with Apple is because they saw the business opportunity of this policing. They wanted to compete with Google and Facebook at their own game but had to admit defeat so they realized a much better business model is to position themselves as the antithesis of those and cater to a different market Google and FB cannot target, by design.
There probably are ways in which Apple can open up the store and still retain control on what is allowed or monetize on that but make no mistake, if an app is present on Apple's (spun out?) app store for $1 but free of any shady data collection, and also present on the Apps'R'Us store for $0 but encrusted with data collection modules we all know what most users will pick.
Of course - but Apple here are working to make that much harder, to get to a state where harvesting and selling data won't really be an option regardless of if you're paying for it or not.
Practically speaking, even if you did pay for free services, I'd expect the data to be monetized. You pay your ISP, yet there's tons of data being sold, for example. When it's free, at least you don't pay twice.
You always pay once with your data. You might pay twice with actual cash. There's no way to prevent the former, even if the latter occurs because they aren't mutually exclusive.
We “need” it because governments in certain jurisdictions won’t do it.
But wherever you may fall on the government regulation spectrum, there’s a simple response if you don’t like Apples action. Don’t use iOS. Go to Android where FB and friends are free to track and sell your data only constrained by your government policies.
Apple isn't altruistic, they're a business. However their business interests can be aligned with privacy.
Back in the days, Microsoft was evil, and FOSS was good. That's what sprouted Facebook and Google. They contribute to FOSS, as does Microsoft. They have proprietary applications (including web applications), as does Microsoft. They're into advertising and profiling, as does Microsoft. Microsoft's software stack is partly FOSS (e.g. Edge), just like Google's (Chrome, Android, ...). I still prefer Unix/Linux over Windows but other than that its more of the same these days.
I was one of these people who was happy with Windows 10 free upgrade. But thinking back of it, perhaps I'd rather pay and then keep my privacy (without hassle).
The danger is that the poor are indirectly paying for devices and services with their privacy while those who are wealthy are able to afford privacy-friendly Apple. Its already more or less like that. The cost of privacy when it boils to Android devices, and how much profit it yields, isn't transparent.
That's great! That is exactly what I would like to see happen. Software comes at a cost, and nobody should expect to get software "for free", where "free" is actually a lie, because you pay by giving up your privacy.
Unfortunately, that comment precludes the Free Software and the Open Source software side of things. In those cases, it is free code under a usually strong license of permissions.
And tracking for the most part, has been a manner of "Do you want to allow tracking? Default:OFF" (thinking of Debian Popcorn)
> Unfortunately, that comment precludes the Free Software and the Open Source software side of things.
I don't think this precludes free software at all.
Free software has always co-existed with paid commercial software. I suspect it always will. There are always going to be corners of the software market OSS developer aren't interested in pursuing. I doubt there are a lot of developers interested in building garbage collection routing software in their spare time. There are however plenty of developers who want to pay their rent who will.
"Free" is also not nickel-and-diming or bait-and-switching people with in app purchases. I'm not saying data mining my PI for profit is better, but the app store as a market place is an extremely toxic place.
I've saved a comment I read on reddit that perfectly captures my point of view on this, I want to share because this way of thinking in either-or is what I believe is wrong when playing the card of "but Apple is not altruistic as well" as I'm very aware of that and think many others are:
> Both Apple and Facebook are evil corporations that only care about profits, but Apple’s priorities benefit me and my desire for privacy while Facebook’s absolutely do not. I hope Apple’s new privacy controls are so effective that they put Facebook out of business. Fuck Facebook.
No idea what the source is, but it's exactly my perspective as well. Whether Apple is a "Good" megacorp or not is irrelevant. Their policies and their profit incentives are fairly well aligned with mine. Not always, they also do lots of shit which frustrates the hell out of me too. But more often than their competitors. That is about the best you can hope for.
Like most phone manufacturers, they're incentivised to exploit the people manufacturing phones. I'd pay money for iCloud, but never for their hardware (until they clean up their act, anyway).
The mere fact that Facebook is protesting that consumers get a choice on whether they are tracked, something that many countries have literally legislated to be a lawful right, shows that this is absolutely necessary.
At that point, it matters very little what Apple's motives are, and it matters little what this change means for any business.
What matters is that Apple is implementing a change that represents a technical necessity for consumer rights.
All current measures do not work. These opt-out websites largely do not work and, besides, the law in most places legislates opt-in and not opt-out.
Apps continue to ignore any privacy setting, including facebook.
It is sad that we need to rely on Apple to make that change, but I am happy for any incentive Apple has to do so. I am sure it will take quite some time before we see something comparable on Android, if ever.
Again: Our rights as consumers are blatantly ignored. All current methods that are supposed to implement these rights are useless and largely ineffective.
Devices need to ensure that no one can grab data without consent. Apple does this.
It is good.
> By choking off in-app ad revenue, they force developers who want to monetise towards paid and freemium apps.
If you write software that is supported by advertising, you are selling your software to the advertisers. If you aren't paying for software, it's not written for your benefit. If you enjoy ad-driven software, it is, at best a happy coincidence or altruism on the part of the developer.
What ad driven software has done is rob developers of good quality paid apps of the ability to charge a reasonable price for their goods. So we have a market place filled with mediocre to terrible ad supported apps. The few developers who do spend the time and effort make good quality software get constant complaints about pricing and charge more than $0.99 for software that actually does what people want.
This is great and could actually help us get rid of advertising! If iOS delivers a completely advertisement free user experience, that's gonna be a huge reason to buy Apple.
This is a load of rubbish. Apple does not have an “ad network”, they show some sponsored content in their stores. They have no way of tracking users across apps, because contrary to Facebook they do not distribute SDKs to do that to apps developers. That’s the main point; the rest of the post is just as wrong.
I see this response in almost every thread about Apple and privacy and it’s such a weird reply. Do things that are good only count as good if you don’t have a financial interest in them?
I am much happier that they’re motivations aren’t altruistic. Absent appropriate regulation — I want to be able to support privacy with my consumer dollars and support a sustainable business model with them, I don’t want to rely on the altruistic grace of a company.
Without third-party tracking advertisers buy specific audiences, so a bike helmet seller would buy ads in some outdoor magazine sites and ride-tracking apps. The incentive to pester the user with the same ad is minimal.
With third-party tracking and retargeting that same advertiser just buys access to the same user via an agency which would pester the user with retargeted ads throughout their network in hopes that at some point, after X amount of views, the user will feel inclined to perform the monetizeable action (e.g. finally click on that abandoned cart and purchase the bike helmet).
In this system each property on the network is relegated to showing as many ads as possible, since each ad is essentially a lottery ticket. You might resurrect the cart and finally buy that bike helmet on nytimes, instagram, Angry Birds - whoever commands your attention at that moment.
Companies who complaint about Apple tend to hold a vast amount of such lottery tickets. Companies that do not, tend to have access to specific monetizeable audiences they can sell access to.
How does this play out? So ad companies' revenue gets shifted to Apple's app store, Apple gets even bigger than the biggest it already is. Then advertisers put their ads in-app. When Apple has all the marbles we willingly gave them, what's next or was that it: dominate, do whatever you want.
The safest thing we can do as consumers it not give any one company all the marbles.
> So ad companies' revenue gets shifted to Apple's app store,
This presumes that everyone who is currently using add supported apps will start paying for apps which is unlikely.
There will continue to be ad supported software, it will just be less profitable. Likely at least some developers will shift to paid, but not nearly all.
They don’t have to be altruistic, nobody sane expects them to be. They just have to align their interests with those of their customers and go roughly in the right direction.
You are noticing the manipulative use of narrative. Lots of ways to do it, but a very powerful one is the choice of whose perspective you use to frame the story. Here, you can imagine the focus on a scrappy young developer, trying to make their mark in a tough world, having their income choked off by a heartless Apple.
If you structure your company around an ethical business model, then changes to the marketplace to become more ethnical inevitably end up benefitting your business model. I'm not actually seeing the problem here. It's like saying Tesla benefits from there being high carbon taxes. Of course they do, but so does everyone else.
Why is "not entirely altruistic" a good measurement? Nobody is saying that's what their motivation is, so isn't yours a criticism of purity, or the nirvana fallacy? Like 50 people have replied to this red herring!
well obviously. who is going to expend the resources and headache to fight the powerful evil wraths of Google and Facebook on such a notion as altruism
I wish Apple would implement a reasonable method of selling upgrades to apps so that an app wouldn’t get pulled from e App Store if a dev produced a significant upgrade.
I suspect the above poster was referring to the fact that Apple doesn't allow developers to have upgrade pricing. Developers instead must either switch to subscription pricing or release a new app "Tweetbot 5" which resets the apps review count.
It would definitely be nice if Apple allowed developers more flexibility in terms of pricing models.
(I suspect you know this, just wanted to touch all the bases)
Are they choking off anything by being transparent? I kind of like to know what I put in my body, doesn’t mean that I will stop eating ice cream on sunny days.
By choking off in-app ad revenue, they force developers who want to monetise towards paid and freemium apps.
That shifts revenue away from the ad networks (Facebook and Google) towards the app store, on which Apple can take their 15-30% share.