{"id":8984,"date":"2020-07-05T12:00:29","date_gmt":"2020-07-05T16:00:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/?p=8984"},"modified":"2020-07-05T12:00:29","modified_gmt":"2020-07-05T16:00:29","slug":"wanted-the-worlds-smallest-violin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/?p=8984","title":{"rendered":"Wanted: The World’s Smallest Violin"},"content":{"rendered":"

The crybabies making up a Google-backed group of European advertisers are very upset that Apple will shortly require apps to notify users that they intend to track them and ask their permission first<\/a>. As Yoda might say, \u201cThe schadenfreude is strong in this one, Obi-Wan.\u201d<\/p>\n

Apple will enforce this with a popup the first time an app requests a device\u2019s IDFA (Identifier for Advertisers). Users will be asked if they wish to allow the tracking. Despite the one-time nature of the popup, the adtech crybabies are whining that it\u2019s an intolerable burden and users might even refuse to grant permission. They insist that Apple should abide by their<\/i> industry standard for handling such things.<\/p>\n

The group appears to believe that it\u2019s somehow incumbent on Apple and its users to make it easy for them to track us. Their complete disregard for the do-not-track bit shows that they don\u2019t care a whit whether we want to be tracked or not. That\u2019s why the new popup is so unfair: Apple is not letting them do what they want, users be damned.<\/p>\n

Consider for just a moment what the advertisers\u2019 position boils down to. They don\u2019t want Apple to let their users know when they\u2019re being tracked and when, finally, Apple does it\u2019s somehow unfair.<\/p>\n

I get that advertising pays for all that content we consume and that it\u2019s a necessary part of the modern Web. It doesn\u2019t follow, however, that therefore we shouldn\u2019t complain about being tracked. Advertisers do it because they believe\u2014erroneously according to most research\u2014that targeted advertising is more effective but even if it were, that doesn\u2019t mean we should acquiesce to it. Send me advertisements but don\u2019t track me and don\u2019t run scripts on my machine without my permission.<\/p>\n

Finally, an orthogonal point about the press and Apple. This is a story about how Apple is doing the right thing and the adtech industry is upset about it. Why then did Reuters insert the photo and its caption at the top of the article? It has nothing to do with the story and arguably makes Apple look bad. Just another example of why the press is not a favored industry at Irreal.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The crybabies making up a Google-backed group of European advertisers are very upset that Apple will shortly require apps to notify users that they intend to track them and ask their permission first. As Yoda might say, \u201cThe schadenfreude is … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[139,62],"class_list":["post-8984","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","tag-adtech","tag-privacy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8984","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8984"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8984\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8985,"href":"https:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8984\/revisions\/8985"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8984"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8984"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8984"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}