Control back with app users
Apple’s iOS 14.5 software update is different. David Court finds out what the big deal is all about.
Software updates aren’t usually big cultural events. They happen in the middle of the night, and most of us don’t really notice the new features they bring and are oblivious to the security issues they patch. Apple’s iOS 14.5 – which is available to download and install now – is different.
Why? Because a new feature called App Tracking Transparency is about to land on a billion devices.
This new feature is set to disrupt the status quo by putting us, the users, in control of whether we want to allow apps to track our activity – location, search history, health data, and so on – across other apps and websites (to allow more targeted advertising). Or not.
Each app will only be able to ask users for this permission once. And if users decide to decline permission, that’s it – the data isn’t going anywhere. There’s no compromise to be made either, as Apple is also making it impossible for app developers to deny any of its app’s services to users who decline to share their data.
Hardly, a big deal for us users, is it? We still get to use the same apps in the same ways we always have, regardless of whether we grant or decline the sharing of our data.
Eighty per cent of us are expected to say ‘‘no’’ to this sort of tracking. Which is why software update iOS 14.5 is such a big deal. It marks the beginning of Big Tech giving users the ability to control how their data is used.
This, according to Facebook, is a horrible idea, though, prompting the social network to take out fullpage adverts in American newspapers last December, protesting iOS 14.5’s new feature.
The reason Facebook, which has been the most vocal protestor, dislikes the move is obvious. The social network earns billions of dollars by selling targeted advertising based on the data it collects about its users.
Data collection via iOS is only one way Facebook mines its data, of course. Mark Zuckerberg will still collect as much data about you as he can (and sell it) through noniOS platforms, and first-party sources (Facebook, Instagram, and soon Whatsapp, too). But it has been suggested that iOS 14.5’s rollout could impact up to 5 per cent of Facebook’s US$84 billion (NZ115.8b) annual ad revenue.
So why is Apple doing this now? After all, in the iPhone’s fledgling years, the phrase ‘‘There’s an app for that’’ was a huge part of its marketing campaign. Having popular apps like Facebook on your Apple device(s) was a big selling point.
So what’s changed?
Everything, that’s my guess. The power of big data has become increasingly apparent. And this data, as Apple puts it, is being used ‘‘to predict and influence your behaviour and decisions’’.
Cambridge Analytica famously used data (and Facebook) to influence the result of the 2016 United States election by targeting just 45,000 voters in a handful of swing states.
This, I guess, was a watershed moment for Apple. And the four years that followed, especially the Trump-inspired storming of the US Capitol in January, compounded a shared belief that the hoarding of data isn’t a good thing for its business. Big data led to President Trump, and Trump could have led to the end of democracy in America.
Apple, remember, is the biggest and most profitable company in the world. If, and it’s a big ‘‘if’’, democracy were to fail in the US, Apple is the company with most to lose.
Taking a stand against the influence of data while getting users to care more about their privacy isn’t just a way to sell more products and take a swipe at the Facebooks and Googles of the technology world. It’s a pragmatic risk-management strategy that the world first (US) trillion-dollar company is sensible to implement.