No-one cares about privacy — even if they say they do.
For years, that has been the argument whispered in Silicon Valley. Yes, we may all grouse about being tracked and targeted by Big Tech, but when it comes to clicking “accept” on the terms of this bargain — we track you, and in exchange, we charge you nothing — we always do.
This “privacy paradox” has defined the nature of the web in its first 25 years. It is about to be put to the test.
Apple is pushing out an update to iOS, the operating system for its billion-plus iPhones and iPads. This will include a feature that, when you open an app, generates a pop-up that asks whether you want to allow it to “track” your activity across the web. Most people are expected to say no. Apple rolled out a beta version of iOS 14.5 last week, with a final release expected this month.
For those who built empires on surveilling our digital lives, this is a problem — for none more so than Mark Zuckerberg. The Facebook chief has taken out newspaper ads decrying the change, claiming it will kneecap the millions of small firms that rely on hyper-targeted ads.
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While his sympathy for small-time business owners may be heartfelt, Zuckerberg is also worried about his own bottom line. Apple’s move will deprive him of some of the data that underpins the Facebook ad machine.
The conflict is animated by an increasing animus between Zuckerberg, 36, and his nemesis Tim Cook, the Apple chief. Cook, 60, said this year that a business built on “misleading users . . . deserves reform”. He did not name Facebook, but no one doubted his intended target. It was not the first public jab that Cook has thrown at it.
Cook paints Apple as the anti-Facebook, the privacy-loving foil to Zuckerberg’s ravenous data machine. There is some realpolitik to Cook’s gambit. Facebook is increasingly powerful in the world of apps. Cutting it off could dampen its influence, and strengthen Apple’s hand.
Which brings us back to the privacy paradox, and the Faustian data-for-access deal. Daniel Solove, a George Washington University law professor, argued that just because we undermine our own privacy, it does not mean we don’t want it. The problem is that the digital landscape is too complicated.
“Managing one’s privacy is a vast, complex and never-ending project . . . it becomes virtually impossible to do comprehensively,” he wrote. “People will never gain sufficient knowledge of the ways in which data will be combined, aggregated and analysed over the years by thousands of organisations. Resignation is a rational response to the impossibility.”
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Apple’s solution: change the default setting on its devices from open to closed, from public to private. It is the opposite of the system that Facebook and Google, in particular, have created and exploited.
Apple’s mechanism for turning the web upside down revolves around its IDFA, Identifier for Advertisers, a unique number linked to a given device that monitors how it engages with apps. Facebook, for example, can match your IDFA to what you browsed in its newsfeed — and which shopping app you used to buy tea — and serve ads based on your interests.
In iOS 14.5, apps cannot access your IDFA unless you expressly allow it.
Analysts have estimated that Facebook could take a $5 billion (£3.5 billion) hit in this quarter alone from the change. It is also why Zuckerberg has doubled down on features such as Facebook Shops, which encourages brands to set up stores with its app, negating the need for the IDFA to follow users to other sites.
Apple is simply making explicit a choice that has long been implicit. And as Apple has said, if what Facebook is doing is so wonderful, why is Zuckerberg so worried?
