I’ve been a big fan of Daring Fireball for years. Sadly, of late it’s devolved from being a tech blog that occasionally mentioned politics to a political blog that occasionally mentions tech. Nevertheless, Gruber can still bring it when a tech issue captures his imagination or raises his ire.
He’s at his best in this post about online tracking and privacy. He starts by mentioning the new anti-tracking features of iOS 14 and how the advertising industry—led by his bête noire, Facebook—is up in arms about the changes. So much so that there are rumors that Apple may delay enforcing the new policies for a few months.
I don’t understand why Apple would do this and neither does Gruber. Or if he does, he’s definitely not sympathetic. As Gruber says, the sense of entitlement of these people is unbelievable. They have no right to our private data and browsing habits but because they’ve been getting away for so long with taking them anyway, they find any attempt to stop them unreasonable.
Gruber notes that we wouldn’t tolerate this in the real world where it would most accurately be described as stalking. But because the tracking is invisible to most people, the adtech industry has been able to spy on us with impunity for many years. Now that Apple is threatening to put an end to this malignant behavior, the adtech industry is crying foul.
So what are these onerous changes that Apple is proposing? Simply that before allowing access to the iOS device ID—more accurately the IDFA: Identifier for Advertising—the user would have to okay the access. Nobody is going to agree to being tracked, of course, so the adtech miscreants are crying Danger Will Robinson, Danger.
My hope is that Apple does not delay this common-sense, user-friendly change and that when it is finally implemented it will strike a fatal blow to the adtech industry.