Apple's iPhone privacy clampdown arrives after 7-month delay
Apple is following through on its pledge to crack down on Facebook and other snoopy software that secretly shadow people on their iPhones so that you can target more advertising at users.
The new privacy feature, dubbed “App Tracking Transparency,” rolled out Monday as part of an update to the operating-system powering the iPhone and iPad. The anti-tracking shield contained in iOS 14.5 arrives after a seven-month delay where Apple and Facebook attacked each other’s business models and motives for decisions that affect billions of men and women around the world.
“What this feud demonstrates a lot more than anything is that Facebook and Apple have tremendous gatekeeping powers over the market,” said Elizabeth Renieris, founding director of the Technology Ethics Lab at the University of Notre Dame.
But Apple says it is just looking out for the very best interests of the more than 1 billion persons currently using iPhones.
“Now is a great time to bring this out, both because of as a result of increasing amount of data they have on the devices, and their sensitivity (about the privacy risks) is increasing, too," Erik Neuenschwander, Apple's chief privacy engineer, told The Associated Press within an interview.
After the software update is installed -- something most iPhone users do -- even existing programs already on these devices will be required to ask and receive consent to track online activities. That’s a shift Facebook fiercely resisted, most prominently in some full-page newspaper advertisings blasting Apple.
Until now, Facebook and other applications have been in a position to automatically conduct their surveillance on iPhones unless users took the time and trouble to get into their settings to prevent it -- an activity that few people bother to navigate.
“This is a significant step toward consumers getting the transparency and the controls they have clearly been looking for,” said Daniel Barber, CEO of DataGrail, a company that helps companies manage personal privacy.
In its attacks on Apple's anti-tracking controls, Facebook blasted the move as an abuse of power made to force more apps to charge for their services instead of counting on ads. Apple requires a 15% to 30% cut on most payments processed through an iPhone app.
Online tracking has long helped Facebook and thousands of other apps accumulate information regarding their user’s interests and habits so they can show customized ads. Although Facebook executives in the beginning acknowledged Apple’s changes may possibly reduce its income by billions of dollars annually, the social media company has framed almost all of its public criticism as a defense of smaller businesses that count on online ads to remain alive.
Apple, in turn, has pilloried Facebook and other apps for prying so deeply into people's lives that it has generated a societal crisis.
In a speech given a couple weeks after the Jan. 6 attacks on the U.S. Capitol, Apple CEO Tim Cook described how personal information collected through tracking by Facebook and other social media will often push persons toward more misinformation and hate speech within the efforts showing more ads.
“What are the results of not only tolerating but rewarding content that undermines public trust in life-saving vaccinations?” Cook asked. “What exactly are the consequences of seeing thousands of users join extremist groups and perpetuating an algorithm that recommends more?”
It’s part of Apple’s try to utilize the privacy issue to its competitive advantage, Barber said, a tactic he now expects more major brands to embrace if the brand new anti-tracking controls prove popular among most consumers.
In a change of tone, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg recently suggested that Apple’s new privacy controls could actually help his company over time. His rationale: The shortcoming to automatically track iPhone users may prod more companies to sell their products on Facebook and affiliated services such as for example Instagram if indeed they can't collect enough personal information to effectively target advertising of their own apps.
“It’s possible that people may even be in a stronger position if Apple’s changes inspire more businesses to conduct more commerce on our platforms by making it harder to allow them to use their data and discover the clients that could want to use their products beyond our platforms,” Zuckerberg said last month throughout a discussion held on the audio tracks chat app Clubhouse.
In the same interview, Zuckerberg also asserted most people realize that advertising is a “time-tested model” that allows them to obtain additional services free of charge or at extremely low prices.
“People get for the most part that if they are likely to see ads, they need them to be relevant ads,” Zuckerberg said. He didn’t say whether he believes most iPhone users will consent to tracking in trade for ads tailored with their interests.
Google also will depend on private information to fuel an electronic ad network a great deal larger than Facebook’s, but it has said it would be able to adapt to the iPhone’s new privacy controls. Unlike Facebook, Google has close business ties with Apple. Google pays Apple around $9 billion to $12 billion annually to be the recommended internet search engine on iPhone and iPad. That arrangement happens to be one factor of an antitrust case filed this past year by the U.S. Justice Department.
Facebook can be defending itself against a federal antitrust lawsuit wanting to break the company apart. Meanwhile, Apple has been scrutinized by lawmakers and regulators all over the world for the commissions it collects on purchases made through iPhone software and its ability to shake up markets through new rules that are making it a de facto regulator.
“Even if Apple’s business model and side in this battle is more rights protective and better for consumer privacy, there is still a question of whether we want a sizable corporation like Apple effectively ‘legislating’ through the iphone app store,” Renieris said.
Source: japantoday.com
