Apple’s privacy tilt shakes Facebook
Apple’s iOS 14.5 update will prevent advertisers from tracking users — but Facebook is not going down without a fight
For the past few years, my favourite tech companies have been Apple and Microsoft. It’s not just that I use a Macbook (the delightful new Pro M1) and an iPhone, or that I use Microsoft Word for all my writing. I like them because they sell me a service which I pay for with my credit card — not by them data-mining everything about me and my online habits so that they can sell me to their real customers, the advertisers.
Yeah, Google and Facebook, I’m glaring at you.
Little wonder that the greatest outcry against an impending update to Apple’s iPhone software — and maybe the only time you’ll remember an update number, iOS 14.5 — is from Facebook and Google.
Most big software announcements (in Apple’s case, annually for its flagship smartphones) are the whole number, like iOS 14. The point one, point two iterations are usually bugs being fixed or vulnerabilities being patched.
This week’s hugely significant iPhone update is an unusually contentious point five, because it introduces an option to stop advertisers tracking us as we move around the internet.
Facebook would have you believe something as significant as the Cambridge Analytica scandal has not happened — but only because it has such a monumental impact on Facebook itself, which makes its billions in revenue from such targeted advertising.
In iOS 14.5, Apple is implementing app-tracking transparency, which requires app makers to inform users what data they will collect, how they will use it and if they will track users.
If you are an iPhone user, expect popup alerts asking for permission to be tracked. Click no, for your own sake.
History will look back at this strange period of humankind and lament how easily, and foolishly, we gave away our personal data in the mistaken belief that automated, personalised advertising is the modern business model for providing services. It isn’t. It’s a con. WhatsApp originally charged $1 a year, which I’d gladly pay, as would many of its over 1billion users.
On another front, CEO Tim Cook has some mounting anticompetitive problems over Apple’s 30% fee for in-app purchases in its App Store, and the billions of dollars Google pays it to be the default iPhone search engine.
But he seemingly cares about privacy and has often been a vocal critic of Facebook and Google’s data-mining.
“At a moment of rampant disinformation and conspiracy theories juiced by algorithms,” Cook said in January, ”we can no longer turn a blind eye to a theory of technology that says all engagement is good engagement — the longer the better — and all with the goal of collecting as much data as possible.”
The great irony is that Facebook has amassed so much data about just about everybody, whether you’re one of its 2.85-billion monthly active users or not, that it probably doesn’t need any more to profile us for advertising.
Last year, when Apple unveiled this app transparency, Facebook head of ads and business products Dan Levy said Apple policies are “about control of the entire internet”.
It hurts when the bigger bully bullies a big bully, doesn’t it?
The iPhone update has an option to stop advertisers tracking us around the internet