German Regulators Open Investigation Into Apple's App Tracking Transparency (macrumors.com) 24
From the MacRumors blog earlier this week:
Germany's Federal Cartel Office, the Bundeskartellamt, has initiated proceedings against Apple to investigate whether its tracking rules and anti-tracking technology are anti-competitive and self-serving, according to a press release. The proceeding announced will review under competition law Apple's tracking rules and specifically its App Tracking Transparency Framework (ATT) in order to ascertain whether they are self-preferencing Apple or being an impediment to third-party apps...
Introduced in April 2021 with the release of iOS 14.5 and iPadOS 14.5, Apple's App Tracking Transparency Framework requires that all apps on âOEiPhoneâOE and âOEiPadâOE ask for the user's consent before tracking their activity across other apps. Apps that wish to track a user based on their device's unique advertising identifier can only do so if the user allows it when prompted.
Apple said the feature was designed to protect users and not to advantage the company... Earlier this year it commissioned a study into the impact of ATT that was conducted by Columbia Business School's Marketing Division. The study concluded that Apple was unlikely to have seen a significant financial benefit since the privacy feature launched, and that claims to the contrary were speculative and lacked supporting evidence.
The technology/Apple blog Daring Fireball offers its own hot take: In Germany, big publishing companies like Axel Springer are pushing back against Google's stated plans to remove third-party cookie support from Chrome. The notion that if a company has built a business model on top of privacy-invasive surveillance advertising, they have a right to continue doing so, seems to have taken particular root in Germany. I'll go back to my analogy: it's like pawn shops suing to keep the police from cracking down on a wave of burglaries....
The Bundeskartellamt perspective here completely disregards the idea that surveillance advertising is inherently unethical and Apple has studiously avoided it for that reason, despite the fact that it has proven to be wildly profitable for large platforms. Apple could have made an enormous amount of money selling privacy-invasive ads on iOS, but opted not to.
Introduced in April 2021 with the release of iOS 14.5 and iPadOS 14.5, Apple's App Tracking Transparency Framework requires that all apps on âOEiPhoneâOE and âOEiPadâOE ask for the user's consent before tracking their activity across other apps. Apps that wish to track a user based on their device's unique advertising identifier can only do so if the user allows it when prompted.
Apple said the feature was designed to protect users and not to advantage the company... Earlier this year it commissioned a study into the impact of ATT that was conducted by Columbia Business School's Marketing Division. The study concluded that Apple was unlikely to have seen a significant financial benefit since the privacy feature launched, and that claims to the contrary were speculative and lacked supporting evidence.
The technology/Apple blog Daring Fireball offers its own hot take: In Germany, big publishing companies like Axel Springer are pushing back against Google's stated plans to remove third-party cookie support from Chrome. The notion that if a company has built a business model on top of privacy-invasive surveillance advertising, they have a right to continue doing so, seems to have taken particular root in Germany. I'll go back to my analogy: it's like pawn shops suing to keep the police from cracking down on a wave of burglaries....
The Bundeskartellamt perspective here completely disregards the idea that surveillance advertising is inherently unethical and Apple has studiously avoided it for that reason, despite the fact that it has proven to be wildly profitable for large platforms. Apple could have made an enormous amount of money selling privacy-invasive ads on iOS, but opted not to.
Speaking of transparency. (Score:3)
âOEiPhoneâOE and âOEiPadâOE
Was the author not willing to outright say what device they use, or were the editors as predictably useless as ever?
Re:Speaking of transparency. (Score:4, Funny)
There are 2 different ways that that says exactly what they're using :D
'iPhone' and 'iPad'. Only the poor Apples desperately try to Unicode Slashdot.
Re:Speaking of transparency. (Score:5, Insightful)
Slashdot's refusal to accommodate Unicode is just backwards and stupid.
Re: Speaking of transparency. (Score:3)
There are knitting forums that have better designed sites. Particularly the mobile version, they don't lose posts if not already logged in, and they don't fling you back to the top of the page after making a post.
Re:Speaking of transparency. (Score:5, Insightful)
Slashdot does support Unicode, the problem is the anti-abuse filter that they built 20 years ago.
People used to troll by using Unicode to do things like reverse text flow direction (right to left instead of left to right), or insert non-breakable spaces to force the page to render too wide to read.
The filter translates some codes and strips others completely. It's a mess.
Re: (Score:2)
They still do, actually. It's just most sites also block the behavior.
But you still run across the odd site or two where someone creates their own home-grown comment system and it starts off good, but after a few months people discover it doesn't filter Unicode and then it's plagued with those kind of comment
Re: (Score:3)
This (âOEiPhoneâOE and âOEiPadâOE) has every sign of shoddy editing.
Springer is back at it again... (Score:5, Insightful)
It's no wonder Springer is behind this, they where also the ones that pushed for the snippet-tax in Germany and EU. They also had their finger-prints all over the "copyright reform".
All the evidence points to that anytime Springer is involved it's bad for the public in some way.
Re: (Score:3)
Governments around the world. (Score:3)
Re: Governments around the world. (Score:2)
First beneficiary (Score:2)
Time to start shouting "Evil government!" The first beneficiary of excusing tracking data will be the German government. When advert companies are allowed to sell data on Apple's customers, then the government is allowed to buy data on Apple's customers.
Of all the behavior Apple engages in (Score:4)
I'm really ashamed of my own government right now. Of all the behavior Apple engages in, my government is investigating the one thing that they're doing right... Wow. There's tons of anti-competitive behavior that Apple engages in, but this definitely isn't one of them.
For those that aren't German: "Axel Springer" is the publisher of (among others) the largest tabloid in Germany (called BILD -- translates to "Image" or "Picture"), and has generally a really bad reputation when it comes to journalism. But even if we don't look at that specific company mentioned here: publishers of newspapers/magazines in Germany have generally had a track record of suggesting awful public policy when it comes to the internet -- and the frustrating thing is that they have been quite successful at getting what they wanted in the past. See for example the Leistungsschutzrecht [wikipedia.org].
Re: (Score:3)
I don't think it's shameful, you just have to look at the detail.
They are saying that the system needs to be fair to everyone, it can't give Apple an advantage. That's reasonable, in Europe using your platform to give yourself an advantage over competitors is frowned upon.
They also assume that publishers will follow GDPR rules, which don't allow for that kind of tracking without explicit opt-in consent. They have to assume that, as a regulator they can't work on the basis that if there was fair competition
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
They are saying that the system needs to be fair to everyone, it can't give Apple an advantage.
I don't disagree with the principle, but the thing is that Apple has done tons of anti-competitive stuff in the last 10 years alone, and none of that has been investigated, but once prominent publishers (who from my experience have an undue influence on politics here, see my link to the Leistungsschutzrecht) start crying because Apple actually does something against tracking users, then they start an action. Other departments of our government have been woefully inadequate at curtailing the tracking of user
Re: (Score:2)
Well, then lern how law works.
If one makes an accusation, the relevant authorities have to investigate.
It is as simple as that, nothing to be ashamed about.
Or would you prefer if I claim Bild and Springer did something wrong, and the authorities would ignore it?
Luckily we live in a society where law is for everyone the same, and gets applied (investigated) the same way for everyone.
Re: Of all the behavior Apple engages in (Score:2)
Apple is protecting it's users (Score:2)
Re: Apple is protecting it's users (Score:2)