Apple vs Facebook
With Apple’s upcoming iOS 14.5 update there is a small feature being released that could significantly change the tech landscape.
It’s called App Tracking Transparency.
With the release of iOS 14.5, developers are now required to ask for and receive your permission before an app access your random advertising identifier, which is used to track your activity across apps and websites. It will look something like this:
According to Flurry Analytics, only 4% of users are opting in to allow apps to track them. Considering that personalized advertising revenue is almost 98% of Facebook’s revenue in 2020 and 92% of that is from mobile advertising this will have a huge impact on Facebook and other “advertising” internet companies.
The internet has long been thought of as a paradise of free services, from e-mail to social media to search, it’s all free to the users. But as the saying goes, if you’re not paying for it, you are the product. Over the last few decades entire ecosystems have been built on building services that people would use, and then to capture the user data to build personalized advertising services to businesses looking to target certain markets. Business has been good, with Facebook pulling in over 27 Billion in 2020 from advertising.
With this new app tracking transparency feature Apple will potentially hamper apps ability to track user across different apps. By anonymizing the IDFA (ID For Advertisers) unless to user opts in advertising companies will have a more difficult time tracking user activity across different apps or to provide targeted advertising across different apps. One notable aspect of this change is a requirement that developers not track you in other ways to skirt the preferences that you select for anti-tracking, so if you choose not to allow an app to track you with a random advertising identifier, that app is not allowed to use non-Apple sanctioned tools to get around the rules.
User privacy rights have advanced a lot over the last years. With California’s CPRA passing in 2020 and Europe passing GDPR in 2018. But this Apple update may be another additional hurdle to companies that rely on selling user information to make a profit.
Facebook is not taking the fight sitting down, they have taken a full page ad out of the WSJ, claiming to stand up for small businesses. But these claims are falling flat.
Instagram may also threaten to charge users that do no allow app tracking.
It may be that in a few years we may need to rethink the entire internet ecosystem. Perhaps the giants of today may be the NetScapes of tomorrow. Or perhaps users with more control over their data may need to be enticed with revenue sharing options or perhaps even pay to use services that do not hand out their personal information.
