Nobody’s allowing Facebook to track them. So what now?

Your five-minute guide to what’s happening in tech this Wednesday, from the early data that shows Apple’s tracking pop-ups are a nightmare for Facebook to the debate that has defined Epic v. Apple.

Writer: David Pierce May 12, 2021

Good morning! This Wednesday, it appears Apple’s “Ask not to Track” popups are a disaster for Facebook, Apple and Epic can’t stop arguing over what counts as a game, Chinese companies are building opinionated voice assistants and Coinbase is done negotiating salary.

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The Big Story

‘Ask app not to Track’ is winning 

Anna Kramer writes: Facebook was right to be afraid of iOS 14.5. Apple’s new privacy tracking opt-out is proving even more popular than expected: About 85% of users worldwide have opted out of ad-tracking when prompted, Flurry Analytics found, and that number leaps to around 94% for U.S. users. 

• This might still be early-adopter behavior, though. Flurry data showsthat it can take three to five weeks for about 60% to 75% of users to adopt a major iOS update. 
• And it’s not a perfect representation. The Verizon-owned analytics company says that Flurry is used in over 1 million apps, and that it is collecting and publishing daily updates to its opt-in data aggregated from user behavior for those apps.

This will be making a lot of people very nervous. Developers have tried everything to get people to allow tracking. Some we’ve seen simply explain how the ad business works, while others make veiled threats about what might happen if the business goes away. None of it seems to be working. 

• Analyst predictions for user opt-out before the update launched tended to estimate that about half of all users would opt out. So the data so far indicates a worse situation than expected for Facebook and other advertisers, if the same pattern continues as more people update to the latest iOS.

Let’s assume this isn’t going to get better, or at least not a lot better. This level of opt-out means a huge hit to the company’s advertising business. What does Facebook do? 

• It’s going to invest even more in first-party products, hoping to keep users inside the Facebook universe where it can still track them. 
• It’s also going to accelerate things like AR and VR, trying to move the world onto platforms it owns so that it doesn’t have to play these games anymore. 
• And it’s going to throw even more weight into its fight with Apple, as it becomes yet another developer who feels wronged by the App Store.

Meanwhile, Apple presses on. It’s currently hiring for dozens of slots on its advertising team, and as we mentioned yesterday it added Antonio García Martínez, the former Facebook exec and “Chaos Monkeys” author, to its roster. Its job listings make a point of the company’s privacy-focused approach. It’s definitely easier to be “the privacy option” when you’re also the only option. But as long as Apple’s allowed to control every pixel of its platform, it’s going to do so. And make a killing in the process.

Source: Protocol.com