EU's Vestager Warns Apple To Treat All Apps Equally Amid Privacy Dispute (reuters.com) 25
Europe's antitrust chief, Margrethe Vestager, has warned Apple to give equal treatment to all apps on its platform amid the iPhone maker's privacy changes that have drawn charges of anti-competitive practices from rival Facebook. From a report: Apple will in the spring ask iPhone users for consent to track their data for personalized ads in what it says is a move to protect users' privacy but which will limit apps' ability to gather data from people's phones that can be used for targeted advertising. Facebook has been among the most vocal of the critics which stand to lose a substantial part of their revenue from Apple's move. Facebook in a December blog post called it anti-competitive behaviour, saying that Apple's own personalized ad platform would be exempt from the new requirement giving users a choice of whether to opt in to tracking by third parties. Vestager said while the issue is privacy-related, it can morph into an antitrust issue if Apple tilts the level playing field. "It can be competition if it is shown that Apple is not treating its own apps in the same way," she told Reuters in an interview on Monday.
Does Apple still have an ad platform? (Score:2)
I thought Apple did away with their ad platform a long time ago to claim the high road. It is pretty clear what they want to do— they want to limit advertising revenue and shift the revenue for developers to subscriptions so it is easier for them to take a cut.
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Why would anyone prefer random ad vs ads one might actually be interested in?
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Because I don't want ads to successfully influence my buying decisions, and it's not "ones I might actually be interested in", it's ones that are measurably more likely to influence my buying decisions.
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So, how are you going to learn about new products that might interest you? Just by incident?
There is bad aspect of advertisement but it's not inherently evil.
There is nothing inherently evil about telling the world that you have a new product or services or that you EXIST at all.
There is nothing wrong to showing local plumber's address to you, if you are likely to need one. Note how small businesses suddenly cannot afford advertising self, if it cannot target only the relevant part of the users. Etc...
Just
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I'll go out and actively research them when I want something to solve a problem.
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But I think there's more we need to demand in these and related scenarios: as end users of this technology we need to have:-
1. Complete transparency in terms of ensuring that we are explicitly told what each application takes from us, when it does so, how it does so, and what it uses that information for. If the use cases change, we need to be informed a
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The App Store has rules, accepted by Parlor to have access to it. Parlor repeatedly failed to respect their side of that contract, thinking that Big Daddy Trump would protect them for ever and ever... Trump LOST and the presidential fig leaf he was clinging to to justify his presence on social media evaporated.
That, and the assault on the Capitol are what got Trump and Parlor banned and good riddance to them both.
As for Vestager complaining about Apple's Ad network, it's hard to see how Apple is favorizing
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Twitter and Facebook respect their declared moderation Policies. Parlor did not. As to the "claims" that you were belittling, read Amazon's reply to Parlor's lawsuit where they detailed hundreds of thousands of violence promoting Parlor posts that Parlor refused to take down for months. Parlor sued AWS claiming that they were denied service for no reason. Amazon's reply detailing exactly why they got the boot has shut that lie down and though the courts do take time, as Trump discovered when claiming massiv
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It's alright when those users' response is "here, have some more money" instead of offering less. I think it's really weird for the owner of a personal computer not be in charge of what it runs, but people still buy ios devices, knowing its limitations.
They can always get out. It's not imposed on them. If you're affected by this problem so you don't have access to your spams(facebook) or scams(parler) then you
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I thought Apple did away with their ad platform a long time ago to claim the high road.
They collect that information for themselves and use their platform to advertise their own services. For all their privacy high-road nonsense they got caught farming out their customers' data to third parties to do voice transcription. It's hilarious how they claim to do all this advanced AI on-device with their neural processors and what-not but if you turn on aeroplane mode all of a sudden Siri can't do anything, not even the most basic voice functions can be performed. Stuff that you used to be able to d
Those would be great points if any were true (Score:2)
You can already opt out of tracking for Apple ads by turning off "Personalized Ads" in Settings. You can also view at any time all the information Apple Ads uses to target ads to you in that same settings panel.
And this new feature doesn't automatically limit tracking, it just tells the user it will be happening, and gives them a choice to opt out. People can still choose to be tracked.
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You can already opt out of tracking for Apple ads by turning off "Personalized Ads" in Settings. You can also view at any time all the information Apple Ads uses to target ads to you in that same settings panel.
And this new feature doesn't automatically limit tracking, it just tells the user it will be happening, and gives them a choice to opt out. People can still choose to be tracked.
That's why this is just a warning and nothing else.
They are saying Apple needs to change their own default too, otherwise it would be illegal.
But your over-all point is why this isn't such a big deal.
It's one default setting change for Apple to be opt-in. All the code and settings and everything is already in place for this to trivially happen.
For all anyone knows Apple was already going to do this anyway.
The other reason is that it is Facebook whining about it. Of course they will say any lies that helps
Re: Those would be great points if any were true (Score:1)
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Is anyone surprised? Apple sans-Woz will be Apple, Google will be Google, the 'new' Microsoft isn't perhaps quite the old Gates-Balmer Microsoft.
But the EU trying to regulate foreign tech firms has an element of pissing in the wind; anti-monopolies should strive to develop their own alternatives.
e.g. Germany's government does provide funding to microg, up and running on the European-designed Fairphone.
https://prototypefund.de/en/pr... [prototypefund.de]
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No, but I thought (and think) that they will do what makes them the most money.
If they make more money by not paying EU fines by changing the default, compared to paying EU fines by not changing it, yes, I would expect them to change the default.
Of course if paying the fines for not changing the default still results in making more money, then I expect them to not change the default.
Being transparent isn't a factor in any of those choices.
This is a great idea (Score:3)
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Tim Cooks believes that all apps are equal (Score:2)
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Don't let the fact that Apple has included a way to turn off targeted advertising from their system on iOS (now iOS and iPadOS) for many years now. It's way past time that the other apps are treated equally.
What about location services? (Score:3)
Why does Find My iPhone get a free pass from the annoying pop-up "this app has used your location X times in the last week, do you want to always allow this or only when using the app"?
Life 360 is a director competitor to Find My iPhone and the app gets that pop-up all the time.
Another example of Apple treating their own apps differently. This is why governments need to go after them with antitrust charges.