Facebook vs. Apple 2021-03-04, 20:08:24 c|net has an interesting article titled Facebook vs. Apple: Here's what you need to know about their privacy feud, and it's a fitting topic for us.QuoteA coming update to Apple's iOS will let you know if an app wants to track you. Facebook isn't a fan.A privacy change coming to the software that powers Apple's popular iPhone has prompted a war of words in Silicon Valley.The iPhone maker will in the coming months roll out an update to its iOS 14 operating system that prompts you to give apps permission to track their activity across other apps and the web. That change may seem small. Lots of apps already track our web activity through default settings we accept when we install them.Facebook, however, has been fuming about the change, which threatens the source of its $86 billion in annual revenue: targeted ads. The social network has waged a months-long campaign against Apple, running full-page ads in national newspapers and testing pop-ups inside the Facebook app to encourage users to accept its tracking. It's also alleged that Apple's changes are designed to help the iPhone maker's own business, rather than protect consumer privacy."Apple may say that they're doing this to help people, but the moves clearly track their competitive interests," Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in January during the company's fourth-quarter earnings call. Apple CEO Tim Cook says the change is rooted in the company's belief that "users should have the choice over the data that is being collected about them and how it's used."The dispute underscores a fundamental difference between the tech giants: how they make money. Apple sells smartphones and laptops and takes a cut of fees charged to app developers. Facebook sells ads that it can target precisely based on the trove of data it collects on its 2.8 billion monthly users. Those business models inform their approach to privacy.Here's what you need to know about the fight between Apple and Facebook:Google has even followed me around, including on my travels out-of-town! I know because they informed me of such, and showed me their lists of where I'd been...So: Should we take sides? Or just order-in more popcorn?
Re: Facebook vs. Apple Reply #1 – 2021-03-05, 07:03:45 Loathing of Facebook practices is probably something we all can agree on.Silicon Valley pushed corporate surveillance as a business model, and none more so than Facebook.But opt-in is flawed, whether GDPR or this scheme, and Apple's is weaker. A stronger, simpler, better scheme is not to allow these companies to opt-in in the first place. For a decade now we have lived under 1984-style two-way screen, Silicon Brother is watching us whilst we are browsing the grass. Combined with way more effective use of Big Data, this leaves a path open to each our favourite dystopia. So plug that peekhole now while we can.EU’s top privacy regulator urges ban on surveillance-based ad targeting 2 Likes
Re: Facebook vs. Apple Reply #2 – 2021-03-06, 14:49:25 For now, I'll just live with it... (One of the advantages of being old! Ahem! I mean, oldish... )
Re: Facebook vs. Apple Reply #3 – 2021-03-06, 22:17:55 Quote from: article on 2021-03-04, 20:08:24It's also alleged that Apple's changes are designed to help the iPhone maker's own business, rather than protect consumer privacy.I guess I'd have to read up on it, but I'd say those aren't necessarily opposed. In fact it seems to me to be something of an Apple selling point.
Re: Facebook vs. Apple Reply #4 – 2021-03-07, 06:12:27 I grew up with commercial television... Advertising is part of everything.
Re: Facebook vs. Apple Reply #5 – 2021-03-07, 13:03:19 Quote from: the articleApple CEO Tim Cook says the change is rooted in the company's belief that "users should have the choice over the data that is being collected about them and how it's used."If so, then why not start making smartphones where it is possible to use all functions without having to register yourself as a user in the app store? You know, the way non-smartphones used to be. Why not? Maybe because, in Apple's true opinion, users should have no choice over the data that is being collected...At this stage, I am radically anti-everything that adds popups and other prompts.Quote from: OakdaleFTL on 2021-03-04, 20:08:24Google has even followed me around, including on my travels out-of-town! I know because they informed me of such, and showed me their lists of where I'd been...OMG Did you perhaps accidentally enable location tracking?Quote from: OakdaleFTL on 2021-03-07, 06:12:27I grew up with commercial television... Advertising is part of everything.I am anti-ads. Thus far it is still possible to go through some hoops to eliminate them in most places on the internet. It is of course impossible to eliminate them on live radio and tv broadcasts, which is one of the reasons why I have not looked in their way this century.If I want something, I download it, and watch-listen-read when I find the time.Great job, @jax, on including a link that tracks Not just ads, but also links are used for tracking. It requires special care to clean urls from the tracking junk before clicking.We have not even managed to evolve so far as to ban obviously false advertising. For example, apps can advertise themselves as "free" while you can only download them for free. To actually use them or even just to install them you may need to sign up with credit card information, so how is that free?And for quite a while now, Google's app store does not show app file sizes. Crucial missing information. Is anybody doing anything about it? Nope, nobody is doing anything. It's "free market" all over the place. Last Edit: 2021-03-07, 13:35:25 by ersi
Re: Facebook vs. Apple Reply #6 – 2021-03-07, 15:20:30 Quote from: OakdaleFTL on 2021-03-07, 06:12:27I grew up with commercial television... Advertising is part of everything.Up until this century you watched/read advertisements. Advertisements didn't watch/read you. No, @ersi, that URL doesn't track. The web site will of course, if you let it.
Re: Facebook vs. Apple Reply #7 – 2021-03-07, 16:15:17 Quote from: jax on 2021-03-07, 15:20:30No, @ersi, that URL doesn't track. The web site will of course, if you let it.Now it looks like your link is clean indeed. Sorry if I accused you for no reason. I am paranoid enough to look at links about 50% before clicking (and 90% after clicking), but I should aim for a 100% before clicking.Quote from: jax on 2021-03-07, 15:20:30Up until this century you watched/read advertisements. Advertisements didn't watch/read you. I have always wondered how tv show popularity figures were construed in the previous century. How did they have the confidence to say that such-and-such show was watched by such-and-such many people? How could they tell if anybody's tv set was turned on at the time? If the numbers were construed by simple polling after the fact, well, why does anyone consider these numbers reliable to any degree?And by the way, in USA at least advertisements have always been rather targeted. They often do several sets of ads for the same product, for the whites, blacks, Hispanics, and Asians, and place them accordingly. Right now the same is happening in the Baltic countries between Russian-speaking and non-Russian-speaking communities.
Re: Facebook vs. Apple Reply #8 – 2021-03-07, 20:28:58 Quote from: ersi on 2021-03-07, 16:15:17I have always wondered how tv show popularity figures were construed in the previous century. How did they have the confidence to say that such-and-such show was watched by such-and-such many people? How could they tell if anybody's tv set was turned on at the time? If the numbers were construed by simple polling after the fact, well, why does anyone consider these numbers reliable to any degree?I don't know if we do the same thing here, but in the US they installed spy boxes in some people's homes. You can read more about it here. Then they extrapolate from there but it seems to me that the sample size must be a bit biased.
Re: Facebook vs. Apple Reply #9 – 2021-03-07, 21:18:51 Here it's done by market research for BARB (Broadcasters’ Audience Research Board) by a selected number of people. I've no idea how many people but I guess it's got to be a good few thousand to be of any use. So the figures are very much an estimate based on the average feedback they receive.I was selected to do it many years ago and I did it for 2 years, then it's time up and someone else gets selected. I have never known anyone else that has ever been selected, so why the hell I was I have no idea. When you are selected and approved, you receive a weekly booklet full of all channels and programs. You tick a box and note the time the length of time you watched any given program. Anyone in your house at the time of watching counts as an extra viewer and go into the figures. End of the week you stick it in the post and send it to them.It's not the most exciting thing I have ever done.
Re: Facebook vs. Apple Reply #10 – 2021-03-08, 09:42:46 Quote from: ersi on 2021-03-07, 16:15:17Now it looks like your link is clean indeed. Sorry if I accused you for no reason. I am paranoid enough to look at links about 50% before clicking (and 90% after clicking), but I should aim for a 100% before clicking.I habitually remove all gunk from URLs before posting, and I knew I did it here. That also includes Google AMP URLs, and when I bother the mobile URLs, and all that is not referring to the real resource. As far as I know sites are not really currently using this information to build up a profile, but it is morally wrong anyway. 1 Likes
Re: Facebook vs. Apple Reply #11 – 2021-03-08, 16:08:35 Quote from: jax on 2021-03-07, 07:20:30Up until this century you watched/read advertisements. Advertisements didn't watch/read you.Deftly put, jax! Quote from: ersi on 2021-03-07, 05:03:19OMG Did you perhaps accidentally enable location tracking?Nah. I did it on purpose... I was just surprised at how accurate it was!Of course, I seldom carry my phone with me.
Re: Facebook vs. Apple Reply #12 – 2021-03-08, 18:33:03 Quote from: OakdaleFTL on 2021-03-08, 16:08:35Quote from: ersi on 2021-03-07, 05:03:19OMG Did you perhaps accidentally enable location tracking?Nah. I did it on purpose... I was just surprised at how accurate it was!What was the purpose? And did you really expect it to not work when you turned it on?I have turned it on occasionally to see where I am going when I am in strange places, particularly when I want others to find me. I do not expect it to be any less accurate on the Google side compared to what I can see on G Maps myself.
Re: Facebook vs. Apple Reply #13 – 2021-03-09, 08:20:41 Quote from: ersi on 2021-03-08, 18:33:03I have turned it on occasionallyHow do we know that it's really off after turning it off? They tell us that is off, just that. I don't consider them honest people to blindly believe them.
Re: Facebook vs. Apple Reply #14 – 2021-03-09, 09:13:34 As long as you're connected to cell towers your location is often known within 50 meters (a few 100 outside of cities).But not to Google, of course.
Re: Facebook vs. Apple Reply #15 – 2021-03-09, 10:09:06 Quote from: Frenzie on 2021-03-09, 09:13:34your location your phone location is often knownFirst, you send your phone to inside a truck with destiny to Portugal.Second, you can rob a bank there.Third, you say you never did it, you were in Portugal by that time.Pleased to help. 2 Likes
Re: Facebook vs. Apple Reply #16 – 2021-03-09, 12:18:09 By the way, hard intrusion into mobile phones and smartphones makes the phones behave as if being actually used, i.e. the screen turns on, you see apps open etc. On this point, surveillance is still at a very crude level. It needs to evolve some more.
Re: Facebook vs. Apple Reply #17 – 2021-03-10, 09:12:03 Quote from: Belfrager on 2021-03-09, 10:09:06First, you send your phone to inside a truck with destiny to Portugal.Second, you can rob a bank there.Third, you say you never did it, you were in Portugal by that time.I'd get the coronapolice after me for going on vacation! 2 Likes
Topic: Facebook vs. Apple (Read 3034 times)
