Tech Will Block Web Surveillance Again
The Battle for Digital Privacy Is Reshaping the Internet
Equally Apple and Google enact privacy changes, businesses are grappling with the fallout, Madison Avenue is fighting back and Facebook has cried foul.
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SAN FRANCISCO — Apple introduced a pop-upwardly window for iPhones in April that asks people for their permission to be tracked by different apps.
Google recently outlined plans to disable a tracking technology in its Chrome web browser.
And Facebook said concluding month that hundreds of its engineers were working on a new method of showing ads without relying on people's personal data.
The developments may seem like technical tinkering, but they were connected to something bigger: an intensifying battle over the future of the net. The struggle has entangled tech titans, upended Madison Avenue and disrupted small businesses. And it heralds a profound shift in how people's personal information may exist used online, with sweeping implications for the ways that businesses make money digitally.
At the middle of the tussle is what has been the internet's lifeblood: advertising.
More than 20 years agone, the internet drove an upheaval in the advertisement industry. It eviscerated newspapers and magazines that had relied on selling classified and print ads, and threatened to degrade idiot box ad as the prime mode for marketers to reach large audiences.
Instead, brands splashed their ads across websites, with their promotions ofttimes tailored to people's specific interests. Those digital ads powered the growth of Facebook, Google and Twitter, which offered their search and social networking services to people without charge. But in exchange, people were tracked from site to site by technologies such as "cookies," and their personal data was used to target them with relevant marketing.
Now that system, which ballooned into a $350 billion digital ad industry, is being dismantled. Driven by online privacy fears, Apple tree and Google take started revamping the rules effectually online data drove. Apple tree, citing the mantra of privacy, has rolled out tools that block marketers from tracking people. Google, which depends on digital ads, is trying to have it both ways past reinventing the system so it can keep aiming ads at people without exploiting admission to their personal information.
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If personal information is no longer the currency that people give for online content and services, something else must take its place. Media publishers, app makers and eastward-commerce shops are now exploring different paths to surviving a privacy-conscious internet, in some cases overturning their business models. Many are choosing to make people pay for what they get online by levying subscription fees and other charges instead of using their personal data.
Jeff Green, the chief executive of the Merchandise Desk, an ad-technology company in Ventura, Calif., that works with major ad agencies, said the behind-the-scenes fight was central to the nature of the web.
"The cyberspace is answering a question that information technology's been wrestling with for decades, which is: How is the internet going to pay for itself?" he said.
The fallout may hurt brands that relied on targeted ads to get people to buy their goods. Information technology may too initially hurt tech giants similar Facebook — but non for long. Instead, businesses that can no longer rails people simply still demand to advertise are likely to spend more with the largest tech platforms, which still have the near data on consumers.
David Cohen, chief executive of the Interactive Advertising Bureau, a trade group, said the changes would continue to "drive coin and attending to Google, Facebook, Twitter."
The shifts are complicated by Google's and Apple's opposing views on how much ad tracking should be dialed back. Apple wants its customers, who pay a premium for its iPhones, to have the right to block tracking entirely. Merely Google executives take suggested that Apple has turned privacy into a privilege for those who tin can afford its products.
For many people, that means the net may beginning looking different depending on the products they utilize. On Apple tree gadgets, ads may be but somewhat relevant to a person's interests, compared with highly targeted promotions inside Google's web. Website creators may eventually choose sides, and so some sites that work well in Google's browser might not even load in Apple's browser, said Brendan Eich, a founder of Dauntless, the private web browser.
"It volition exist a tale of ii internets," he said.
Businesses that do not proceed upwards with the changes risk getting run over. Increasingly, media publishers and fifty-fifty apps that show the weather are charging subscription fees, in the same way that Netflix levies a monthly fee for video streaming. Some east-commerce sites are considering raising product prices to keep their revenues up.
Consider Seven Sisters Scones, a post-social club pastry shop in Johns Creek, Ga., which relies on Facebook ads to promote its items. Nate Martin, who leads the baker'south digital marketing, said that after Apple blocked some advertizing tracking, its digital marketing campaigns on Facebook became less effective. Because Facebook could no longer become equally much data on which customers similar baked goods, information technology was harder for the store to notice interested buyers online.
"Everything came to a screeching halt," Mr. Martin said. In June, the baker'southward revenue dropped to $16,000 from $40,000 in May.
Sales have since remained apartment, he said. To commencement the declines, Seven Sisters Scones has discussed increasing prices on sampler boxes to $36 from $29.
Apple tree declined to comment, but its executives take said advertisers will adapt. Google said it was working on an approach that would protect people's data only also let advertisers continue targeting users with ads.
Since the 1990s, much of the web has been rooted in digital advertizing. In that decade, a piece of code planted in spider web browsers — the "cookie" — began tracking people's browsing activities from site to site. Marketers used the information to aim ads at individuals, so someone interested in makeup or bicycles saw ads about those topics and products.
Later the iPhone and Android app stores were introduced in 2008, advertisers likewise collected information well-nigh what people did within apps past planting invisible trackers. That information was linked with cookie data and shared with data brokers for even more specific advertisement targeting.
The event was a vast advertising ecosystem that underpinned costless websites and online services. Sites and apps like BuzzFeed and TikTok flourished using this model. Even e-commerce sites rely partly on advertising to expand their businesses.
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Simply distrust of these practices began building. In 2018, Facebook became embroiled in the Cambridge Analytica scandal, where people'south Facebook data was improperly harvested without their consent. That aforementioned year, European regulators enacted the General Data Protection Regulation, laws to safeguard people'south data. In 2019, Google and Facebook agreed to pay record fines to the Federal Trade Commission to settle allegations of privacy violations.
In Silicon Valley, Apple reconsidered its advert arroyo. In 2017, Craig Federighi, Apple tree's head of software engineering, appear that the Safari web browser would block cookies from following people from site to site.
"It kind of feels similar you're being tracked, and that'southward because you are," Mr. Federighi said. "No longer."
Last year, Apple tree announced the pop-upwardly window in iPhone apps that asks people if they desire to be followed for marketing purposes. If the user says no, the app must end monitoring and sharing data with third parties.
That prompted an outcry from Facebook, which was 1 of the apps affected. In December, the social network took out full-folio newspaper ads declaring that it was "standing upwardly to Apple" on behalf of modest businesses that would get hurt one time their ads could no longer discover specific audiences.
"The situation is going to be challenging for them to navigate," Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook's chief executive, said.
Facebook is now developing means to target people with ads using insights gathered on their devices, without allowing personal data to exist shared with tertiary parties. If people who click on ads for deodorant also purchase sneakers, Facebook can share that design with advertisers so they can show sneaker ads to that group. That would exist less intrusive than sharing personal information like email addresses with advertisers.
"Nosotros support giving people more than control over how their data is used, only Apple'south far-reaching changes occurred without input from the industry and those who are most impacted," a Facebook spokesman said.
Since Apple released the pop-up window, more than 80 percentage of iPhone users have opted out of tracking worldwide, according to ad tech firms. Last calendar month, Peter Farago, an executive at Flurry, a mobile analytics firm owned past Verizon Media, published a post on LinkedIn calling the "time of death" for ad tracking on iPhones.
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At Google, Sundar Pichai, the chief executive, and his lieutenants began discussing in 2019 how to provide more privacy without killing the visitor'south $135 billion online advert business. In studies, Google researchers found that the cookie eroded people's trust. Google said its Chrome and ad teams concluded that the Chrome web browser should stop supporting cookies.
But Google also said information technology would non disable cookies until information technology had a dissimilar way for marketers to keep serving people targeted ads. In March, the visitor tried a method that uses its data troves to place people into groups based on their interests, so marketers can aim ads at those cohorts rather than at individuals. The approach is known every bit Federated Learning of Cohorts, or FLOC.
Plans remain in flux. Google will non block trackers in Chrome until 2023.
All the same, advertisers said they were alarmed.
In an article this year, Sheri Bachstein, the caput of IBM Watson Advertisement, warned that the privacy shifts meant that relying solely on advertising for acquirement was at risk. Businesses must adapt, she said, including past charging subscription fees and using artificial intelligence to help serve ads.
"The big tech companies have put a clock on us," she said in an interview.
Kate Conger contributed reporting.
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/16/technology/digital-privacy.html
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