How Apple's Privacy Push Cost Meta $10 Billion (economist.com) 78
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Economist: Pop-up notifications are often annoying. For Meta, one in Apple's iOS operating system, which powers iPhones, is a particular headache. On February 2nd Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, told investors that privacy-focused changes to iOS, including the "ask app not to track" notification, would cost the company around $10 billion in 2022. That revelation, along with growing competition and sluggish growth in user numbers, helped to prompt a 23% plunge in Meta's share price and showed Apple's might. But what did Apple actually do, and why was it so costly?
The promise of digital advertising has always been its ability to precisely target people. Before the digital age, companies placed ads in places where they expected potential customers would see them, such as a newspaper, and hoped for the best. Online, companies could instead target ads based on people's browsing history and interests. This fueled the profits of companies like Meta, which held vast amounts of data on their users. For years, Apple helped by offering an "identifier for advertisers" (IDFA), giving advertisers a way to track people's behavior on its devices. Users have long been able to disable IDFA in their phones' settings. But last year, citing privacy concerns, Apple turned off IDFA by default and forced apps to ask people if they want to be tracked. It seems most do not: a study in December by AppsFlyer, an ad-tech company, suggested that 54% of Apple users who saw the prompt opted out.
This change has made digital advertising much trickier. Sheryl Sandberg, Meta's chief operating officer, told investors that the change decreased the accuracy of ad targeting and slowed the collection of data showing whether ads work. Both of these changes make "direct-response ads," which encourage consumers to take an action like clicking or purchasing, less appealing to advertisers. The financial impact on ad-sellers like Meta has been painful. The $10 billion hit estimated by Meta amounts to over 8% of its revenue in 2021. Snap, another social-media company, and Unity, a games engine which operates an ad network, also expect Apple's changes to hurt their businesses. Apple, meanwhile, is doing well: estimates suggest its own ad business has grown significantly since it introduced the app tracking pop-up. (A different pop-up, with a more persuasive sales pitch for opting-in to tracking, appears on Apple's own apps.)
The promise of digital advertising has always been its ability to precisely target people. Before the digital age, companies placed ads in places where they expected potential customers would see them, such as a newspaper, and hoped for the best. Online, companies could instead target ads based on people's browsing history and interests. This fueled the profits of companies like Meta, which held vast amounts of data on their users. For years, Apple helped by offering an "identifier for advertisers" (IDFA), giving advertisers a way to track people's behavior on its devices. Users have long been able to disable IDFA in their phones' settings. But last year, citing privacy concerns, Apple turned off IDFA by default and forced apps to ask people if they want to be tracked. It seems most do not: a study in December by AppsFlyer, an ad-tech company, suggested that 54% of Apple users who saw the prompt opted out.
This change has made digital advertising much trickier. Sheryl Sandberg, Meta's chief operating officer, told investors that the change decreased the accuracy of ad targeting and slowed the collection of data showing whether ads work. Both of these changes make "direct-response ads," which encourage consumers to take an action like clicking or purchasing, less appealing to advertisers. The financial impact on ad-sellers like Meta has been painful. The $10 billion hit estimated by Meta amounts to over 8% of its revenue in 2021. Snap, another social-media company, and Unity, a games engine which operates an ad network, also expect Apple's changes to hurt their businesses. Apple, meanwhile, is doing well: estimates suggest its own ad business has grown significantly since it introduced the app tracking pop-up. (A different pop-up, with a more persuasive sales pitch for opting-in to tracking, appears on Apple's own apps.)
How dare Apple try to protect our privacy! (Score:4)
Sure they sell the one of the most popular smart phones, where their sales over the competition is primary now only with trust in the brand, as you can get a device for cheaper, or performs any particular spec better. For them to actually care about their customers safety, at the expense of a billion dollar company who is often in competition with them for some services, is just unheard of an inexcusable.
Wont someone please think of the Meta shareholders!
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someone was going to pay meta for some information
now they pay apple instead
The writer, and many slashdot posters, posit the narrative that Apple is a hero here.
Who still agrees now that its said plainly?
Re: How dare Apple try to protect our privacy! (Score:5, Informative)
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Please start thinking before you post nonsense. Users donâ(TM)t move data from Facebook to apple, they just refuse to let applications grab that data altogether. Apple doesnâ(TM)t gain from this, except by having happy customers buying more apple devices.
Mods?!?
How is the Parent a Troll?!?!?
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Mods?!?
How is the Parent a Troll?!?!?
It takes a position unequivocally rather than couching it as a snark. You are allowed to posture, but not to postulate.
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Mods?!?
How is the Parent a Troll?!?!?
It takes a position unequivocally rather than couching it as a snark. You are allowed to posture, but not to postulate.
Oh, PUH-lease!!!
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Yes, just like that. Well done!
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Quick call the other apple shills to come and overturn this horrid event.
Aren't you out of your 2-Post Daily Quota?
Suck it, fucktard!
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It suggested Apple might not be evil. You can get a troll mod by posting all sorts of things. The sure fire way is to pick a topic that pisses off some hard core nerd who has a hundred sock puppet accounts, but if it's your lucky day sometimes you can get one on pretty much anything.
The key is the order though. What you really want is a +5 troll, but everything has to align just right for that to happen.
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The talk about "moving data" from Facebook to Apple can be compared the "toll" extracted by bandits at gunpoint on treacherous roads when en route from city to city, while with Apple, one uses secured tube train, with no chance of being waylaid.
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Almost.
You have to pay an arm and a leg to buy that ticket to ride.
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"costing meta $10 billion" can be translated into "apple snatched up that $10 billion in profit before meta could"
someone was going to pay meta for some information
now they pay apple instead
The writer, and many slashdot posters, posit the narrative that Apple is a hero here.
Who still agrees now that its said plainly?
Only idiots. Like you.
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Apple really don't care much for your privacy, they do however care about protecting their walled garden, the more they keep it contained the more they have every other vendor by the balls.
Really?
How is Browsing/Purchasing History "protecting their Walled Garden"?
You Haters are just silly.
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because the only way to get information on users is to purchase it directly or indirectly through Apple. You fucking fanboys are as dense as dogshit.
Citation, or STFU.
Re:How dare Apple try to protect our privacy! (Score:5, Insightful)
Apple doesn't give a damn about your privacy. What they care about is maintaining a competitive advantage in software and services when revenues from hardware are beginning to plateau. By crippling Facebook's ability to track users across applications, Facebook's customers will direct their ad dollars to other platforms who can provide better targeting: Google (who pays Apple billions to be the default search engine on the iOS platform), and Apple's own search products.
Apple only "cares about your privacy" because keeping your data from Apple's competitors is good business for Apple.
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Re: How dare Apple try to protect our privacy! (Score:2)
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I can't get on board with this. Apple may or may not be abusing our privacy, I don't know -- they do offer their own search products, after all -- but their tight control over the app ecosystem is just another form of customer abuse. The fact that I cannot sideload applications or (until recently) use alternative payment processors for my iOS apps puts them squarely into the "blood sucking lampreys" category.
Re: How dare Apple try to protect our privacy! (Score:1)
Apple is totally willing to fuck you anywhere they can. If what is exposed to them even slightly resembles a hole, they WILL try to put their dick in it. Refusing warranty service for bendgate, slowing down older phones (not just by adding more bloat, but by throttling the cpu) to convince you to buy a new one, etc.
Re: How dare Apple try to protect our privacy! (Score:2)
I actually once had a phone that would randomly shut off after the battery went below 30%, two years after I had originally bought it. It was called the Nexus 6P. Two years is an entire year after the warranty had expired. I called Google and they replaced it with a brand new -- not used or refurb, brand new -- Pixel XL. It even had double the amount of storage.
Between that, and throttling the CPU without saying a word, I'll choose that any day.
How's that for haterade?
Re:How dare Apple try to protect our privacy! (Score:5, Insightful)
Apple only "cares about your privacy" because keeping your data from Apple's competitors is good business for Apple.
It's not even that. You have to understand, Apple considers their users their property. They consider all the information their users create their property. They consider every interaction the user has through their devices their property. (This is why they say they "deserve" a 30% cut of any transaction that happens on iOS: because their user reached your service on their device.)
Apple's privacy stance almost entirely comes from a deep jealousy of other companies being able to profit off "their" users. They actively want to hinder that. They don't care who it helps, as long as no one else gets access to "their" data.
If you bother reading Apple's privacy policy, you'll see that they collect all the same data they try and block others from getting. They keep careful track of their users. How you do think the "Find My" network works? It knows where iDevices are because the iDevices constantly report in. The AirTags are just another iDevice to track - they piggy back off the iDevices with "proper" GPS. They constantly track their users and proclaim it a "feature" and the Apple sheep eat it all up.
They just don't want anyone else to get "their" data from "their" users.
Re:How dare Apple try to protect our privacy! (Score:4, Insightful)
It's not even that. You have to understand, Apple considers their users their property.
That'd be Facebook and Google you're talking about. They consider you their property, to be sold to advertisers. Apple isn't in the ads business. That is why they can care about privacy. Of course they only care about it because customers do. But at least with Apple, we are the customers. With FB/Google, we are the product and the ad companies are the actual customers.
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Not sure how you got that (Score:1)
Apple doesn't give a damn about your privacy.
I wonder how it is in your mind you square the facts that Apple does not collect personal data, or Apple not allowing third party cookies in Safari, with the notion that "Apple doesn't give a damn about your privacy".
They don't allow others to collect details on you - nor do they themselves collect said data.
Even if Apple doesn't care about your privacy, they have consistently acted as if they do and that is all that I as a consumer really care about.
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Apple collects loads of details on its users. Just look to their privacy disclaimers to see what they are collecting: https://www.apple.com/legal/pr... [apple.com]
Account Information. Your Apple ID and related account details, including email address, devices registered, account status, and age
Device Information. Data from which your device could be identified, such as device serial number, or about your device, such as browser type
Contact Information. Data such as name, email address, physical address, phone number, or other contact information
Usage Data. Data about your activity on and use of our offerings, such as app launches within our services, including browsing history; search history; product interaction; crash data, performance and other diagnostic data; and other usage data
Health Information. Data relating to the health status of an individual, including data related to one’s physical or mental health or condition. Personal health data also includes data that can be used to make inferences about or detect the health status of an individual.
Fitness Information. Details relating to your fitness and exercise information where you choose to share them
Financial Information. Details including salary, income, and assets information where collected, and information related to Apple-branded financial offerings
Obviously some of this data is necessary to provide specific iOS services, but do you really think they don't use any of this data for competitive advantage?
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I never claimed they were selling the data. My claim was that they are using the data for advantage over their competitors, and withholding the data from competitors is also an indirect benefit to their bottom line because advertising dollars move to their own platforms.
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do you really think they don't use any of this data for competitive advantage?
They only collect data they need for services to function, as long as they don't sell it to anyone else does in matter?
The competitive advance Apple has is in the services, not the data collected to run the services. It's totally the opposite at Google and Facebook where the data is used for things like ad revenue.
Re: Not sure how you got that (Score:2)
Now tell me what justification Facebook has to hav
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Even if Apple doesn't care about your privacy, they have consistently acted as if they do and that is all that I as a consumer really care about.
Well said!
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Of course the change hurting FaceBook / Meta was just icing on the cake because Apple hates competition.
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Sure they sell the one of the most popular smart phones, where their sales over the competition is primary now only with trust in the brand, as you can get a device for cheaper, or performs any particular spec better. For them to actually care about their customers safety, at the expense of a billion dollar company who is often in competition with them for some services, is just unheard of an inexcusable.
Wont someone please think of the Meta shareholders!
Cue the Government to stop Apple from having Monopolistic Control over their Users' Metadata!
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This also hurts non-profits. (Score:1)
I work for a non-profit organization that partially relies on donations from folks to stay afloat, and it is harder to ask for and get those donations if we are unable to target folks who might want to donate to us, but would otherwise never see our ads. It's harder to do "good" if you can't find the folks who might be interested in helping you.
Re:This also hurts non-profits. (Score:5, Insightful)
I work for a non-profit organization that partially relies on donations from folks to stay afloat, and it is harder to ask for and get those donations if we are unable to target folks who might want to donate to us, but would otherwise never see our ads. It's harder to do "good" if you can't find the folks who might be interested in helping you.
Boo-hoo.
If people want to donate to a worthy cause, they will find a way. Having target ads forced down my throat does not inspire charitable thoughts.
Re:This also hurts non-profits. (Score:5, Insightful)
If your operating model has difficulties, forcing others to do things your preferred way is not how to get around the difficulties.
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The purpose of the Internet should be to connect people together. That's the promise that social media made but they abused the user's trust for far too long. I'm worn out from being sold as the product instead of given the bare minimum amount of respect due to a user.
As someone who does donate to a few select causes regularly. I recommend these time tested techniques:
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14B US$ from the Dutch to compensate (Score:3)
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You mean that your high tax country agreed to a slightly lower tax rate to attract a business that will pay more tax euros, and put more money in the pockets of the Dutch?
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For most companies the energy costs are a small fraction of the total costs, so this is an incentive that earns itself back itself by employees being hired and paying taxes.
However for a large datacenter these ratios are completely off.
They will spend about 15 billion on electricity over the next twenty years, and will hire on relatively few people.
Also, they will use a lot of green energy of over a hundred wind turbines, so we will not come even close to
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Dam hard not to (Score:2)
Blocking ads == less users? (Score:2)
I'd like to understand how blocking ads contributed to less users using Facebook. I can understand their ad revenue going down; sure. But less users? Maybe, just maybe, Facebook is becoming less useful. I'm certainly getting fed up with seeing less and less content I want, vs. endless (and outdated) "We got this covered" shitposts.
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It's because Facebook can't show more valuable ads to users with tracking blocked. (This is also why revenue is down: you can't block the ads, just the tracking. Users still see ads, they just aren't targeted.)
Facebook is trying to claim that the less targeted ads also make the platform less useful to users and that's why users are leaving. It's almost certainly BS, but it's something they're trying to sell both to Facebook users (to get them to enable tracking) and to investors, to explain why the problem
Why are we only talking about ads vs tracking? (Score:2)
That comment about Apple using a more (Score:2)
persuasive message for their own spyware vs everyone else's will likely be grounds for a lawsuit if it isn't already.
Apple's platform .. (Score:2)
How about them apples?
And the other 46% ? (Score:3)
Ok, I'll be the one to ask. Who are the other 46% who clicked, "Yes, please track me" when prompted. I would have thought the percentage would be much closer to 90% "No, don't track me", 10% "Yes, track the hell out of me" with that ten percent being about the average for someone fat fingering the wrong button but being to lazy to go into Settings and correct it.
Re:And the other 46% ? (Score:4, Informative)
A lot of apps put scary text in the startup saying that features won't work, or you'll see the same number of ads, it's just that they won't be tailored to you, and that will make a worse experience. I'm sure for some people, it's actually very convincing.
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you'll see the same number of ads, it's just that they won't be tailored to you
Is that inaccurate?
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The "don't track me button" isn't a "show me less advertising" button. It's a "show me less _relevant_ advertising" button. If I'm going to use Facebook/Instagram and I'm going to see ads, I'd rather they at least be relevant.
And, I'm probably in the tiny minority here based on the vitriol towards advertisements that you tend to see on Slashdot, but they are actually useful sometimes. Sometimes I see ads for interesting gadgets on Amazon. I'm in the market for a piece of exercise equipment and recentl
Monopoly Tactics (Score:5, Insightful)
The key point here is the last sentence about how Apple uses a different pop-up for their own apps designed to get a higher acceptance rate. Regulators should go to town on that as an anti-competitive tactic.
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I'm not sure where that came from. No Apple app has ever asked me if it can track me.
What pop-up? (Score:1)
It would sure be good to know what pop-up they are talking about, because I have never seen a pop-up like the one described; all Apple apps I have used use the same system pop-ups for permissions that any other app would have.
victims (Score:2)
54% of Apple users who saw the prompt opted out.
Who are these people? The 46% that answered "sure, track me, I don't mind" I mean. I can't even imagine anyone who would do that. There are people in this world who LIKE tracking and targeted ads? And who would volunarily be tracked? Who are these people?
finally feeling noticed! (Score:2)
people may take it with the feeling that with all the tracking and targeted ads finally they are noticed, something takes care
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I actually like tracking if it is tied to useful services. Google is great for that. I use location tracking all the time for instance. And my personalized feed for YouTube is much better (for me) than the "trending" feed, which isn't personalized.
As for ads, I block them if I can, but out of the two annoyances, I usually have a slight preference for targeted. I will not consent to tracking if it is just for ads though, but if I can get just a tiny bit of utility out of it, then it is ok.
And before you tell
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how is it going to affect me negatively?
Advertisement is essentially the art of making you want things you don't need. Don't know about you but I consider that a negative effect, which is why I block any and all ads that I can block.
FB/Meta can get screwed for tracking (Score:1)
Too bad Mark (Score:2)
Re:in ten years (Score:2)
Why not two years? The world will thank the people responsible for getting rid of this prime example of very smelly bovine excrement.
Easy to solve (Score:2)
This is easy to solve with negotiation. Simply ask uses how much they want to be paid to enable tracking. Either pay them and track them or don't and don't.
WTF (Score:1)
How Apple's Privacy Push Cost Meta $10 Billion
WTF?
Title should read: "Wall Street Values Meta's Privacy-Invading Business Model at $10 Billion".
Hey BeauHD, Is your next article going to try and tell us that Facebook is a champion of online privacy? Kinda like the new misinformation campaign Facebook has launched with their ridiculous TV commercials?
How much is The Zuck paying you to go down on him this yard?
I don't think the title is correct (Score:1)
I trade stocks. Lots of options on stocks. I can tell you it had absolutely NOTHING to do with this and everything to do with their numbers. If you have a brokerage account and access to after hours trading you can see this for yourself and it's definitive. Within seconds of that report being released (just after closing) it tanked big time. All the automated stuff did was look at was numbers and Dump, Dump, Dump! It had everything to do with them losing around 1 million daily users.
Someone inflating Apple'