Apple and Facebook are fighting again, and how you feel about it says something about who you trust to represent your interests in the strange tech landscape of 2020.
Start with a rather academic question that may make your eyes glaze over in spite of yourself: When does pro-privacy regulation overstep its bounds to become anticompetitive? It’s a question I found myself asking last year, when Apple canceled Facebook’s enterprise certificate temporarily following revelations that the company had been using those certificates to conduct market research. And it’s a question I’m thinking about today, as Apple intervenes to unilaterally reshape a market — in ways that once again put Facebook on the defensive.
The issue at stake is a technical one, but it’s worth learning a little bit about — if only for the fact that, assuming you use an iPhone, it’s going to result in a lot of pop-ups on your phone once you upgrade your device in a month or so. The advertising industry assigns a unique code to each device called an Identification for Advertisers, or IDFA. Knowing your IDFA can help advertisers tell whether their ads are effective, particularly when they’ve shown you the same ad in multiple places. Facebook uses the IDFA as part of Audience Network, its ad network for developers.
Starting with iOS 14, which will ship this fall, Apple will begin requiring that developers show you a warning that they are collecting your IDFA, and you’ll have to opt in to sharing it. Some large percentage of users can be expected to say “no thanks.”
On Wednesday, Facebook said it would stop collecting IDFA altogether. Here’s Kurt Wagner at Bloomberg:
Facebook on Wednesday said it won’t collect IDFA through its own apps on iOS 14 devices, a decision that will “severely impact” Audience Network. Thousands of developers use the Facebook platform to fill the ad inventory within their mobile apps, and without IDFA information to help target those marketing messages, Audience Network revenue could drop as much as 50%, the company said. Facebook is considering eliminating the service altogether for iOS 14 users.
“This is not a change we want to make, but unfortunately Apple’s updates to iOS 14 have forced this decision,” Facebook wrote in a blog post. “We know this may severely impact publishers’ ability to monetize through Audience Network on iOS 14, and, despite our best efforts, may render Audience Network so ineffective on iOS 14 that it may not make sense to offer it on iOS 14 in the future.”
Facebook’s own ad business will be mostly fine, since your profile and activity on its apps contain data way more useful than a simple device ID. But the company says that a lot of its advertising clients will suffer.
A common reaction to all this on Twitter today was: boo-hoo. “Aww, poor baby, Facebook,” says my pal Joanna Stern, in a representative tweet. “Now it has to ask permission to track everything you do on your phone.” Said the pseudonymous Internet of Shit: “I like how Facebook is spinning this as a bad thing.”
To be clear, Apple’s move here legitimately promotes privacy, if only at the margins. And it does so in the same way that Facebook often congratulates itself for doing: by putting the user in control. My friend Walt Mossberg picked up on this point: “In the forthcoming version of iOS, Apple is simply switching from an obscure opt-out system for apps that want to track users across the web to an explicit opt-in system,” he wrote. “At last! In my view, we should have a law requiring explicit opt-ins for the collection of personal data.”
Apple isn’t a big player in online advertising, but it does have its own small business that personalizes ads shown in the App Store and on Apple News based on where users go and what users do in Apple’s apps. The company is applying separate rules for its own ad-personalization; to opt out, users must find an option in the iPhone’s settings.
Apple says it’s applying one standard everywhere. The IDFA restrictions apply only for developers who want to move data between companies; all developers can get access to the data generated from within their own apps. But this neatly sets aside the fact that Apple doesn’t have to move data between companies to run its ad business — because it owns the device, the operating system, the App Store, the data, and the advertising network.
“It makes it much harder for us to monetize our Apple app users, who are an incredibly loyal readership. And quite frankly, it puts at risk our ability to provide an Apple app,” says Martin Clarke, publisher of DMG Media, which owns the UK’s Daily Mail and other publications; the company says its MailOnline iOS app attracts 1.2 million users per day. “There’s no point in providing an app for a platform that monetizes less well than other platforms.”
I’m not in love with ads, I swear. I pay extra each month to turn them off on YouTube, Hulu, and even The Verge. But it’s also true that ads subsidize a lot of important services. The less money you have, the more you rely on free services from companies like Facebook to live your daily life.
There should absolutely be hard limits on the kinds of data advertisers can collect, what they can do with it, and how they can store it. There should arguably be more limits on all of those things than there are today.
Few will cry any tears for Facebook over IFDA. I understand the impulse many have to view this particular dispute through the lens of the good team beating up the bad one. But the events of this summer have folks I know in Silicon Valley asking the same question over and over: who will Apple put the squeeze on next?
The Ratio
Today in news that could affect public perception of the big tech platforms.
⭐ Two protesters in Kenosha, Wisconsin were killed Tuesday night. The violence may be tied to a Facebook event posted by a self-described militia, which referred to the event as a “call to arms.” Facebook has taken down the event, as well as the group’s Facebook Page. Here’s Russell Brandom at The Verge:
For three days, Kenosha has been racked with protests over the shooting of Jacob Blake, a 29-year-old father of six who was shot in the back by police. The protests have incurred significant property damage, destroying a local Department of Corrections facility on Monday night.
In a post Tuesday afternoon, the Kenosha Guard Facebook group encouraged an armed response to the ongoing unrest. “Any patriots willing to take up arms and defend our city tonight from the evil thugs?” the post reads. “No doubt they are currently planning on the next part of the city to burn tonight.”
At 11:45PM Tuesday night, two people were killed after a confrontation between protestors and men armed with long rifles, with a third sustaining injuries. Video of the shooting appears to show an armed militia member firing at protestors. The local sheriff’s office is still investigating the shooting, and the perpetrator has yet to be identified.
For example, it was found a few years ago that an admin of Croatian Wikipedia was a Holocaust denier, and was inserting those views into Croatian Wikipedia articles. There was little anyone could do to stop them. Because Wikipedia ranks so highly on Google and has become seen as a trusted, neutral source of information, it is often used by machine learning researchers as a corpus to train languages on, and by ordinary people as a first entry point into a topic.
The Reddit post goes on to argue that the damage done by Amaryllis may be more severe than anyone anticipates. Before all of this had even started, there was apparently a poor conception of the Scots language that stemmed directly from the state of its Wikipedia. As a result, “this person has possibly done more damage to the Scots language than anyone else in history.” Because of their “cultural vandalism,” it’s possible that many people think Scots is a “horribly mangled rendering of English” rather than a language of its own.
SoftBank is considering getting involved in a possible TikTok acquisition. It’s unclear whether SoftBank wants to team up with another entity on an existing bid or create a new effort. But because SoftBank is a Japanese firm, it seems unlikely the Trump Administration would go for it. (Jessica E. Lessin / The Information)
LONDON (AP) — Most people have accumulated a pile of data — selfies, emails, videos and more — on their social media and digital accounts over their lifetimes. What happens to it when we die?
It’s wise to draft a will spelling out who inherits your physical assets after you’re gone, but don’t forget to take care of your digital estate too. Friends and family might treasure files and posts you’ve left behind, but they could get lost in digital purgatory after you pass away unless you take some simple steps.
Here’s how you can prepare your digital life for your survivors:
Apple
The iPhone maker lets you nominate a “ legacy contact ” who can access your Apple account’s data after you die. The company says it’s a secure way to give trusted people access to photos, files and messages. To set it up you’ll need an Apple device with a fairly recent operating system — iPhones and iPads need iOS or iPadOS 15.2 and MacBooks needs macOS Monterey 12.1.
For iPhones, go to settings, tap Sign-in & Security and then Legacy Contact. You can name one or more people, and they don’t need an Apple ID or device.
You’ll have to share an access key with your contact. It can be a digital version sent electronically, or you can print a copy or save it as a screenshot or PDF.
Take note that there are some types of files you won’t be able to pass on — including digital rights-protected music, movies and passwords stored in Apple’s password manager. Legacy contacts can only access a deceased user’s account for three years before Apple deletes the account.
Google
Google takes a different approach with its Inactive Account Manager, which allows you to share your data with someone if it notices that you’ve stopped using your account.
When setting it up, you need to decide how long Google should wait — from three to 18 months — before considering your account inactive. Once that time is up, Google can notify up to 10 people.
You can write a message informing them you’ve stopped using the account, and, optionally, include a link to download your data. You can choose what types of data they can access — including emails, photos, calendar entries and YouTube videos.
There’s also an option to automatically delete your account after three months of inactivity, so your contacts will have to download any data before that deadline.
Facebook and Instagram
Some social media platforms can preserve accounts for people who have died so that friends and family can honor their memories.
When users of Facebook or Instagram die, parent company Meta says it can memorialize the account if it gets a “valid request” from a friend or family member. Requests can be submitted through an online form.
The social media company strongly recommends Facebook users add a legacy contact to look after their memorial accounts. Legacy contacts can do things like respond to new friend requests and update pinned posts, but they can’t read private messages or remove or alter previous posts. You can only choose one person, who also has to have a Facebook account.
You can also ask Facebook or Instagram to delete a deceased user’s account if you’re a close family member or an executor. You’ll need to send in documents like a death certificate.
TikTok
The video-sharing platform says that if a user has died, people can submit a request to memorialize the account through the settings menu. Go to the Report a Problem section, then Account and profile, then Manage account, where you can report a deceased user.
Once an account has been memorialized, it will be labeled “Remembering.” No one will be able to log into the account, which prevents anyone from editing the profile or using the account to post new content or send messages.
X
It’s not possible to nominate a legacy contact on Elon Musk’s social media site. But family members or an authorized person can submit a request to deactivate a deceased user’s account.
Passwords
Besides the major online services, you’ll probably have dozens if not hundreds of other digital accounts that your survivors might need to access. You could just write all your login credentials down in a notebook and put it somewhere safe. But making a physical copy presents its own vulnerabilities. What if you lose track of it? What if someone finds it?
Instead, consider a password manager that has an emergency access feature. Password managers are digital vaults that you can use to store all your credentials. Some, like Keeper,Bitwarden and NordPass, allow users to nominate one or more trusted contacts who can access their keys in case of an emergency such as a death.
But there are a few catches: Those contacts also need to use the same password manager and you might have to pay for the service.
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LONDON (AP) — Britain’s competition watchdog said Thursday it’s opening a formal investigation into Google’s partnership with artificial intelligence startup Anthropic.
The Competition and Markets Authority said it has “sufficient information” to launch an initial probe after it sought input earlier this year on whether the deal would stifle competition.
The CMA has until Dec. 19 to decide whether to approve the deal or escalate its investigation.
“Google is committed to building the most open and innovative AI ecosystem in the world,” the company said. “Anthropic is free to use multiple cloud providers and does, and we don’t demand exclusive tech rights.”
San Francisco-based Anthropic was founded in 2021 by siblings Dario and Daniela Amodei, who previously worked at ChatGPT maker OpenAI. The company has focused on increasing the safety and reliability of AI models. Google reportedly agreed last year to make a multibillion-dollar investment in Anthropic, which has a popular chatbot named Claude.
Anthropic said it’s cooperating with the regulator and will provide “the complete picture about Google’s investment and our commercial collaboration.”
“We are an independent company and none of our strategic partnerships or investor relationships diminish the independence of our corporate governance or our freedom to partner with others,” it said in a statement.
The U.K. regulator has been scrutinizing a raft of AI deals as investment money floods into the industry to capitalize on the artificial intelligence boom. Last month it cleared Anthropic’s $4 billion deal with Amazon and it has also signed off on Microsoft’s deals with two other AI startups, Inflection and Mistral.
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — The tiny Mideast nation of Kuwait has banned the release of the video game “Call of Duty: Black Ops 6,” which features the late Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein and is set in part in the 1990s Gulf War.
The video game, a first-person shooter, follows CIA operators fighting at times in the United States and also in the Middle East. Game-play trailers for the game show burning oilfields, a painful reminder for Kuwaitis who saw Iraqis set fire to the fields, causing vast ecological and economic damage. Iraqi troops damaged or set fire to over 700 wells.
There also are images of Saddam and Iraq’s old three-star flag in the footage released by developers ahead of the game’s launch. The game’s multiplayer section, a popular feature of the series, includes what appears to be a desert shootout in Kuwait called Scud after the Soviet missiles Saddam fired in the war. Another is called Babylon, after the ancient city in Iraq.
Activision acknowledged in a statement that the game “has not been approved for release in Kuwait,” but did not elaborate.
“All pre-orders in Kuwait will be cancelled and refunded to the original point of purchase,” the company said. “We remain hopeful that local authorities will reconsider, and allow players in Kuwait to enjoy this all-new experience in the Black Ops series.”
Kuwait’s Media Ministry did not respond to requests for comment from The Associated Press over the decision.
“Call of Duty,” which first began in 2003 as a first-person shooter set in World War II, has expanded into an empire worth billions of dollars now owned by Microsoft. But it also has been controversial as its gameplay entered the realm of geopolitics. China and Russia both banned chapters in the franchise. In 2009, an entry in the gaming franchise allowed players to take part in a militant attack at a Russian airport, killing civilians.
But there have been other games recently that won praise for their handling of the Mideast. Ubisoft’s “Assassin’s Creed: Mirage” published last year won praise for its portrayal of Baghdad during the Islamic Golden Age in the 9th century.
