“Facebook has recently launched a campaign touting itself as the protector of small businesses,” Andrés Arrieta writes for Electronic Frontier Foundation. “This is a laughable attempt from Facebook to distract you from its poor track record of anticompetitive behavior and privacy issues as it tries to derail pro-privacy changes from Apple that are bad for Facebook’s business.”
Requiring trackers to request your consent before stalking you across the Internet should be an obvious baseline, and we applaud Apple for this change. But Facebook, having built a massive empire around the concept of tracking everything you do by letting applications sell and share your data across a shady set of third-party companies, would like users and policymakers to believe otherwise.
Make no mistake: this latest campaign from Facebook is one more direct attack against our privacy and, despite its slick packaging, it’s also an attack against other businesses, both large and small…
Allowing users to choose what third-party tracking they will or will not tolerate, and forcing apps to request those permissions, gives users more knowledge of what apps are doing, helps protect users from abuse, and allows them to make the best decisions for themselves.
Facebook claims that this change from Apple will hurt small businesses who benefit from access to targeted advertising services, but Facebook is not telling you the whole story. This is really about who benefits from the normalization of surveillance-powered advertising (hint: it’s not users or small businesses), and what Facebook stands to lose if its users learn more about exactly what it and other data brokers are up to behind the scenes… A number of studies have shown that most of the money made from targeted advertising does not reach the creators of the content—the app developers and the content they host. Instead, the majority of any extra money earned by targeted ads ends up in the pockets of these data brokers. Some names are very well-known, like Facebook and Google, but many more are shady companies [of which] most users have never even heard…
Overall, AppTrackingTransparency is a great step forward for Apple. When a company does the right thing for its users, EFF will stand with it, just as we will come down hard on companies that do the wrong thing. Here, Apple is right and Facebook is wrong. Next step: Android should follow with the same protections. Your move, Google.
We believe users should have the choice over the data that is being collected about them and how it’s used. Facebook can continue to track users across apps and websites as before, App Tracking Transparency in iOS 14 will just require that they ask for your permission first. pic.twitter.com/UnnAONZ61I
— Tim Cook (@tim_cook) December 17, 2020
MacDailyNews Take: Good luck getting Google, an ad monopoly masquerading as a search engine, to go along with letting users protect their own privacy and limit data to the Internet’s No.1 data vampire.
Google will either ignore this, promise to be “working on it,” or come up with a so-called “opt-out” scheme that really still allows those who settle for Android to be tracked like the obtuse prey they are.
As for Facebook:
Blasting Apple for protecting iPhone users’ privacy seems like a losing position – to anyone not named Mark Zuckerberg, it seems.
The bottom line: Mark Zuckerberg was smart enough to steal the idea for Facebook, but isn’t smart enough to run Facebook without trampling his users’ privacy. — MacDailyNews, December 16, 2020
Protecting iPhone users’ privacy by offering control and choice is a winning position for Apple. Blasting Apple for protecting iPhone users’ privacy says just about all you need to know about Facebook.
In essence Facebook is trying to sell this: “Apple is bad for giving users choice and the ability to not be tracked. We’d rather retain the status quo, so we can continue track users in secret and sell their data for our profit.” Good luck with that, Faceplant. You can keep all of the failing newspapers in the world afloat with full-page ads for infinity and that’ll still be a losing campaign.
Facebook doesn’t give a rat’ ass about its users, or “small business,” or any other bullshit their crack psyops team concocts, Facebook just wants to keep tracking users in order to target them with ads. — MacDailyNews, December 17, 2020
A few years ago, users of Internet services began to realise that when an online service is free, you’re not the customer. You’re the product. – Apple CEO Tim Cook, September 2014
We haven’t had personal FaceBook accounts for many years now. And happily so. — MacDailyNews, May 11, 2017
Beyond the privacy aspect, Facebook is Creepster Central. It’s a Narcissists’ Paradise. In general, yuck. — MacDailyNews, March 27, 2015
Mark Suckerberg is afraid, Apple would dent its revenue and profit so it’s attack Apple. Easy solution for Suckerberg, just produces your own phones then you can harvest users data to your heart contents. Plain and simple.
“Elite Lawlessness” is an apt description used by Matt Stoller. So Elite, it’s ok to control and put a clamp on information per what’s “best.” It’s astounding many here justified such decisions because it fits their narrative.
Yes, Zuckerberg is likely fearful of loss, but what’s more of a concern is his complete unawareness that what he posits embodies a ravenous hunger for power/control AND that he’s in the position to “deliver.”
https://the.ink/p/we-can-have-democracy-or-we-can-have
Zuck is taking his cue from 4 years of watching “the big lie” succeed in fooling a large vocal portion of America, and wants to utilize the politician’s fear of this manipulable base to get Facebook’s way. He has the data on how to manipulate them. Underestimate at your own peril.
What is that Franklin quote MDN keeps bringing up?
“Those that would sacrifice the First Amendment in exchange for the Fourth Amendment, shall lose both”?