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France fines Apple €150M for “excessive” pop-ups that let users reject tracking
Actually Apple were fined because they don't apply the same standard to their own pop-ups that allow users to reject tracking. On Apple popups you seem to need one click, while on 3rd party popups you need to confirm twice.

So the fine seems to be for treating 3rd parties differently from their own stuff.

They could make their own popups require double confirmation instead...

I'm actually okay with the Apple Camera app asking me once and the Domino's Pizza app having to ask me twice. Who are the consumers being harmed here?
It's anti-competitive. Apple owns the platform and is giving preference to it's own apps on that platform. Every non-Apple app that competes with an Apple app is harmed.
I thought the double pop-ups were because the app asks permission to ask permission, rather than Apple requiring apps to prompt twice.
So the solution is Apple will be forced to trust that apps asked properly, and grant whatever permissions the app claims I agreed to? And that's going to encourage me to use more third party apps?
If they want to own the platform and compete on it simultaneously, they need to abide by the same common carrier rules they impose on everyone else. They could easily achieve this by enforcing the same level of security on their own apps.
They could just ask twice on their own apps.
This is not what this case is about.
Seems like it’s roughly what it is about. Apple has a mandatory consent, but won’t adapt it so that third party apps can integrate their own tracking consent into it. As a result third party apps are treated differently than first party because they have one fewer consent screen. That advantages entrenched incumbents with big, locked-in user bases and disadvantages new entrants. Since Apple owns the platform, it’s anticompetitive to pass regulations (which is what Apple is doing here) that discriminate against other participants in a way that acts as a competitive advantage.
  • dkga
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Yes, but are consumers that knowingly bought into the Apple ecosystem harmed?
Consumers are only part of the competition equation. I bet consumers also love the initial phases of dumping, but regulators have to look beyond short-term consumer preferences.
Regulators don’t have to look beyond short term consumer preference (or rather, consumer benefit) with respect to dumping actually, because only the long term aspect of dumping (when prices are raised on consumers after driving competitors out of the market) is illegal. A company is free to burn as much capital as it wants while it is trying to enter and take over a market.
What mechanism can the regulators use to prevent competition going out of business while maintaining the artificially low prices? Ban price hikes after the competition is dead? What if the dumper decides to leave the market entirely after destroying the competition? [see Walmart leaving small towns, and the resulting food deserts].

The more proactive approach is tractable since it preserves competition (easy) instead of low prices (hard, on shakier legal footing)

What mechanism can the regulators use to prevent potential dumpers from entering a market? Setting price controls on the entire economy? What if the market is currently beholden to a decentralized monopoly with artificially high prices? [see taxis and the arguments people made for Uber’s existence despite it being an obvious dumping operation]

The more proactive approach requires an omniscient regulator that you hope preserves competition but really can only guarantee current prices and incumbent profits.

> What mechanism can the regulators use to prevent potential dumpers from entering a market?

The legal system, including the discovery process, and basic accounting to calculate when the selling price is lower than BoM cost.

Now it's your turn to answer my earlier question.

> The legal system, including the discovery process, and basic accounting to calculate when the selling price is lower than BoM cost.

So price controls is your answer? The Costco rotisserie chicken is illegal monopolization in your world.

> What mechanism can the regulators use to prevent competition going out of business while maintaining the artificially low prices?

The legal system, including the equitable power to split up companies under antitrust law.

There is a reason that the proactive approach has been roundly rejected by courts in the modern day, despite Lina Khan’s best efforts to push it. Despite your comment earlier about preserving competition being “easy” (preserving competition via regulation is never easy) and preserving low costs being “hard” and on “shakier legal footing,” the test for antitrust remains consumer harm, not competition.

Yes. Apple's competitors are suppressed by Apple. Competition would reduce. Thus, consumers would be considered harmed.
Yes. Reducing competition harms consumers in the long term. If Apple's behavior drives out all third party apps, consumers will be harmed.
Does Apple list all the advantages they give themselves over the competition on the iPhone boxes in stores & on their websites? Otherwise the customer can't "knowingly" buy into the ecosystem, they only discover the extent of this once they've bought the device.
> Yes, but are consumers that knowingly bought into the Apple ecosystem harmed?

It seems that this logic would prevent any regulation of what happens on macOS or iOS, since anyone who is using either has knowingly bought into the Apple ecosystem. (And analogously for Windows, since anyone who is using it has knowingly bought into the Microsoft ecosystem.)

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Were Windows 98 users "harmed" because IE5 was bundled with the OS? They "knowingly bought into the Microsoft ecosystem", after all.

Clearly the consensus is that YES, they were harmed, and the proof is the Web 2.0 revolution driven by the eventually broken browser monopoly by Firefox and Chrome. But at the time the tech industry trenches were filled with platform fans cheering Gates et. al. and claiming sincerely to want the benefits of the unified Microsoft Experience.

Every time you take an Uber or reserve an AirBnB you're demonstrating the fallacy of that kind of thinking.

Basically: yes, competition is good always, no matter how tempted you are to believe the opposite.

Microsoft basically invented AJAX and spurred the entire web 2.0 revolution. Other browsers weren't prevented from being installed.

Compare what Apple does on iDevices. Safari comes pre-installed, and every competing browser can only skin the OS engine; competing browsers can't actually port their own offerings. On top of that, if you actually want to sell a browser, Apple will get a cut of your sales.

And yet, Apple's app store and ecosystem doesn't seem to be treated as a monopoly in this regard. If not here, why wouldn't they also get away with all of their other anti-competitive practices?

FWIW, I think they should be treated consistently as a monopoly. As a backup option, I'll settle for consistently treated as not-a-monopoly.

Mixing and matching rulings will only serve to hurt in the long run.

> And yet, Apple's app store and ecosystem doesn't seem to be treated as a monopoly in this regard.

... except in the EU where it's now legal to deliver a non safari browser engine through alternative app stores.

It's just that no one will do it for just the EU...

The “consensus” was only in the EU. The US never had a browser mandate and never forced Microsoft to ship Windows without IE.

And browser choice in the EU had little long term affect

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2014/12/windo...

FWIW, that's just saying that government antitrust action didn't break the monopoly in question, not that it wasn't harmful. Clearly it was harmful. And Apple's is too.
And yet and still without government intervention, Chrome now dominates to the point where Microsoft gave up and now uses the Chromium engine.

Just maybe if the EU spent more time encouraging innovation instead of passing laws, they would have a real tech industry.

Every Mac and Windows user who uses Chrome made an affirmative choice to download Chrome and didn’t need the government to help them make a decision.

Today in the US, even though the average selling price of an iPhone is twice that of an Android where there are dozens of choices and Android is backed by a trillion dollar company, 70% of users in the US choose iPhones.

In every single country, people with more money choose Apple devices using their own free will even though there are dozens of cheaper Android devices to choose from.

Just like people said “no” to ad tracking when given a choice and now the ad tech industry isn’t happy with that choice.

You might be ok with it, but the regulators want Apple to treat third parties the same way they treat their own apps, and that's a good thing. Either everyone would generate two prompts, or no one, but excluding yourself is just favoritism.
Yup, it's much, much better for the rules to be exactly the same than any debate about how much difference is permitted. No difference unless you can demonstrate a compelling reason for it.
If we could expect the same level of compliance from our governments.
Apple doesn’t have a track record of abusing user privacy, unlike the plethora of third party apps that want to aggressively track you and sell that data.
Apple makes more than 10B $ on advertising unless you've been leaving under a rock, and it's virtually all targeted ads.

In fact them limiting more and more third party access to data is just a play to boost their own selling of your data.

There is a big difference between targeting and tracking.
Tracking is just targeting integrated over time. If you can be targeted a number of times, and somebody can connect those data points, that's tracking!

So I guess the question hinges on if the data Apple shares with their partners can be fingerprinted or not.

Apple does not share identifiable personal data with partners for the purpose of advertising, which is why its apps don’t ask for permission to track. Almost everyone arguing against Apple in these comments seems to misunderstand this, likely because of motivated reasoning.
What are Apple apps asking permissions for?

As as I understand, declining to use the ATT framework just means they don't share the system advertising identifier (IDFA). That does not mean the information they do share cannot be fingerprinted.

Losing access to IDFA is the technical mitigation, but the ATT prompt also places policy obligations on developers. Preventing tracking technically entirely is a technical dead end. There are too many sources of entropy. ATT primarily operates at a policy level.
  • wpm
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I don't care. We don't have to wait for Apple to show they're untrustworthy before we hold them at arm's length like we hold any other app developer or advertiser.

Apple has convinced a lot of people through sheer PR force that they are 100% trustworthy and therefore all of their restrictions and self-bypasses of those restrictions are warranted. Either all of it is OK, or none of it is, unless Apple enjoys getting it wrong and getting fined.

Apple's track record on privacy isn't really much better than Google's.

Google and Facebook also insist that they never sell the massive amounts of personal data they collect on their users.

That doesn't mean that your data isn't being exposed to random people or that it isn't being used against you.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/jul/26/apple-con...

So? In that case they should have no issue at all for adhering to the same rules as others.
It doesn't really matter if you are "fine" with their anti-conpetitive behavior. They should comply to regulations properly.
Why do we have regulations? Who do they benefit?
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>Why do we have regulations? Who do they benefit?

Weird you still have no idea why.

So let me tell you, there was a tribe in a village and they had many rules, some young boys hated the rules so they left and made their own village with no rules. One day one of them made a fire and let it unsupervised and many of their shacks burned so the boys decided that there should be one rule about not letting fires unsupervised.... the story continues with similar issues happening and they reluctantly adding one more tule, then one more rule until they get tot he same original rules from the original village.

There's a WKUK comedy sketch that fits this story pretty well: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fibDNwF8bjs
  • kypro
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This isn't a good analogy though?

A good faith interpretation of the parent's comment might assume the tribe's leaders started making arbitrary rules about fires which were of questionable benefit to the tribe and when the tribe did things there own way the leaders took bananas from them as a punishment.

If the rules being made are not of clear benefit to the tribe then surely it is right to question them? Your point that rules can be good should be self-evident, as is the inverse - that rules can be bad. What's important here who is the beneficiary of those rules.

I like this.

Imagine if people from the old village came to the new village and said that they wanted to set up the rules they had in the old village but they want to live in the new village. Some people are perfectly happy in the new village, but the people who came from the old village say that the rules are unfair.

As someone who actively wants Apple provide a tighter experience, this is how I feel. I have a nice garden that I'm playing in, and others have a sandbox. They like my garden because it's sunny, but they want the rules of their sandbox to apply to my garden. The grown ups let them in, and now there's nowhere to play that doesn't have sand anymore.

>As someone who actively wants Apple provide a tighter experience, this is how I feel. I have a nice garden that I'm playing in, and others have a sandbox. They like my garden because it's sunny, but they want the rules of their sandbox to apply to my garden. The grown ups let them in, and now there's nowhere to play that doesn't have sand anymore.

The laws are created for all, all people, all companies. We do not give Apple exceptions because reasons like this guy likes it as it is. When Apple decides to do business in a country it accepts the laws there, if they do not like the laws then they can just refuse to do business there.

You’re right - I got sidetracked into the other conversation (which is other people wanting to see Apple punished for having a walled garden)
That's some nice story, not relevant facts.
>That's some nice story, not relevant facts.

My response is on topic for the comment it responds. But in case someone else fails to understand the message, the rules are added because someone made something bad intentionally or now,

so can you guess why the companies were forced to add "Unsubscribe" in their emails? do you think someone imagined this rule for no reason ?

You
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Allegedly, and even then only sometimes.
Think of the poor multi-billion dollar corporation! Have you no heart?
That is borderline tautological. Apple should comply with the regulations, because they are the regulations. The regulations are there to protect users, a 3rd party application is more likely to harm the user, so less trust is warranted.
> That is borderline tautological. Apple should comply with the regulations, because they are the regulations.

Correct.

> The regulations are there to protect users

Also correct.

> a 3rd party application is more likely to harm the user, so less trust is warranted.

Not sure if I agree or not, but it doesn't matter.

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There is no Apple country, at least not yet.
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And if it weren't a dominos app, but an otherwise identical or better third party app? Which through this now has a disadvantage compared to Apples app. Making it worse (regardless of how small or large that downside is) compared to whatever Apple offers, not because of having the worse product in the category, but because Apple also happens to own the otherwise unrelated operating system.
Domino's doesn't have to ask twice. They're choosing to.
> Domino's doesn't have to ask twice. They're choosing to.

According to the article, the French agency believes they would have to ask twice:

> Third-party publishers "cannot rely on the ATT framework to comply with their legal obligations," so they "must continue to use their own consent collection solution," the French agency said.

I always thought it was because where you to deny in the Apple popup, that decision is “final”, whereas if they can gauge your mood before that, they can keep pestering you about it in the future.

I’ve seen confirm (app) -> confirm (Apple), but never deny (app) -> deny (Apple).

I don't think the Camera app asks for permission to use the Camera.

You could argue that choice is questionable because Apple needs to follow its own rules, but also .. it is the Camera app. I think if you don't want the Camera app to use the Camera you probably should not have opened the app at all.

ATT (App Tracking Transparency) is the dialog that says something like "Facebook would like permission to track you across apps and websites owned by other companies. Your data will be used to ... $AppProvidedExcuseHere." with "Allow Tracking" and "Ask App Not To Track" buttons.

ATT is the First consent.

The SECOND consent this case is about is the in-app consent that needs to happen according to French law. I can't give an example of that because I do not live in France but I assume this is probably some horribly designed page inside a French app that asks you to share your data with the ad surveilance industry.

> The SECOND consent this case is about is the in-app consent that needs to happen according to French law. I can't give an example of that because I do not live in France but I assume this is probably some horribly designed page inside a French app that asks you to share your data with the ad surveilance industry.

I don't live in france but I'm familiar with the popups. many apps on first install will give you an in-app prompt asking if they can send you push notifications. If you accept, you get the system prompt. if you decline, you don't. I'm not a regulator, but it seems they've misread this one IMO - they only need to provide the conseent at the platform level and can opt out at the platform level if they so wish.

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Are you also okay with Apple only asking once for Apple Advertising and making other advertising ask twice?

I don't mean ads for Apple products. I mean the ads that Apple sells in News, the App Store, where they track your behavior to personalize the ads you see and to see if you ever buy what the ad is selling.

it's not the consumers, it's the competitors. Instead of comparing apples to pizas, compare something like the Notes app compared to a 3rd party notes app. Any web/app dev knows each extra click adds friction and reduces retention, so that extra pop up can be a subtle advantadge to the one who manages the platform.
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Domino's?
US-based Pizza restaurant
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I know what it is. They were asking who was harmed.
Double conformation would presumably help Dominoes as it would encourage people to accept tracking.
To clarify across 10’s of millions of people even slight inconvenience really does push people to accept 3rd party tracking.

There’s a lot of dark patterns websites use because AB testing shows even slightly more effort works.

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You should decide for everyone whether Apple gets a pass.
The Camera app wouldn't need an ATT confirmation, of course. Apple has some other products which do feature targeted advertisements, including News and even the App Store itself.

Apple created this problem for itself when they decided that they wanted to double dip and become advertisers (while conveniently making advertisement less effective for everyone else). The amount they net from it surely can't be worth the trouble is causes. It's also simply scummy and always puts conflicting interests at play.

Still don't understand the two versus one confirmation thing. I have tracking entirely disabled so apps can't even request it, but it'd be nice to see some workflow of how Apple's tracking works versus everyone else. The complaint almost seems that Apple apps simply do track your details and use them for targeting, without any confirmation (which Apple argues is okay because there is no third party getting the deets), where others have to do the confirmation.

The pen pushers in France. As a consumer your choice does not matter much as much as the government servants who have decided that they know what is good for you.
>The agency said there is an "asymmetry" in which user consent for Apple's own data collection is obtained with a single pop-up, but other publishers are "required to obtain double consent from users for tracking on third-party sites and applications."
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What's even the "double confirmation" that's required?

1. the ATT permission prompt from iOS

2. a prompt from the app itself

?

Yes
Then it's not a problem and France is just throwing some hissy fit.
I'm genuinely confused. Where's the double part?

When I install an app I get a single popup asking whether I want to share with advertisers or not.

I don't have to do anything twice.

Is it different in Europe or something? Is there a second popup there, and if so, what?

This is for system-level permissions. In third-party apps, the app asks whether you want to enable X permission and then you get an OS-level confirmation request. It's not just in Europe.

Likely they'll fall back in Europe to double-prompting as well in system apps.

Afaik the apps don't have to ask you, they could just request the OS-level permissions. They don't do that because if you reject the request at the OS level, they can't request it again, you have to go to the Settings app to enable it and it's harder to do. So apps prefer to just nag you again and again until you say you're ready.
Do we only care now that the permissions being requested are related to tracking?
I've never gotten that, I don't think? I only get the OS-level request. For ad tracking we're talking about? But even for stuff like Bluetooth or location.

I mean, I've had apps show a popup beforehand explaining what they want me to answer. But that's not required, nor does it seem common.

I'm assuming there are additional GDPR compliance asks in Europe when using apps. If that's the case I don't see how that is Apple's fault. I wish this article was a bit better but after reading a few of them I still don't get what the actual complaint is.
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Right, but that second click isn't coming from Apple and they can't control it. The article specifically says that many apps feel like they need additional consent which means they have to request it through two channels.

If Apple doesn't feel like they need additional consent and/or doesn't use ATT-blocked systems then they don't need that.

This is stupid.

Right.

I'm not sure this is fixable?

Or maybe there is widespread misunderstanding of the requirements in this scenario? But I also thought the rule was tough enough to require verifying that extra consent? Maybe it's not?

Truly confused here.

> I'm not sure this is fixable?

Not from Apple's end.

Apple mandates that all requests for permissions go through a single, OS-provided dialog. If a user accepts, the permission is granted; if the user rejects, the permission is not granted, and the app can't ask again. Simple enough.

App developers try to maximize their chances of getting that permission granted by adding another warm-up dialog before actually doing the official permissions request. Since those other dialogs aren't part of Apple's permissions request chain, they can be rejected by the user without consequence, and the app can present them as often as it wants.

There is nothing which requires third-party developers to use these additional dialogs. It's a design pattern (and an annoying one at that) which many developers have gravitated towards. Not all developers use it; in particular, Apple doesn't use it for their first-party apps. And apparently FCA is faulting Apple for not following that pattern themselves.

It's part of acceptable use by Apple [1], with guidelines how to show the first popup.

[1] https://developer.apple.com/design/human-interface-guideline...

The link you posted is about not giving the user a choice. It's an optional pre alert screen that only leads to the system request. Apps are choosing to allow users to say no/cancel on that screen that then lets them ask again and again without wasting their one chance with the system prompt pop up.
It's considered acceptable within bounds (i.e. no tricking the user into tapping "accept"), but not required. At least, not by Apple.
That, “we need to maintain the ability to pester the user again” pattern is really annoying. Apple should add a screen at initial setup that allows the user to default every permission that it’s possible to use that pattern with to “no” and skip the one time dialog just to screw with apps that do it.
> There is nothing which requires third-party developers to use these additional dialogs.

Well, yes there is: I don't have carte blanche to do whatever I want with your data because you tapped an Apple dialog: I have to obtain your consent first.

I don't see why that matters? Your app triggered the Apple dialog to be shown, asking a question about what your app is allowed to do, and you can see what the answer the user gave is. Why wouldn't that be enough?
This is interesting to me—are you an app developer that does this pattern for that reason? I definitely figured it was exclusively because they can request repeatedly for the fake prompt, and only “use” their prompt when the user is inclined to accept. There are times where I’ll accept the first prompt and reject the second prompt when apps are spammy about it.
> The article specifically says that many apps feel like they need additional consent

Are they right about that? Does Apple provide the app with confirmation that the user consented, and if they do, is it legal to rely on that confirmation?

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You can definitely check on whether the user answered yes to the prompt, because if they declined you'll get a null (ie. all 0s) uuid. Whether app developers can rely on that as confirmation for tracking on their side is a purely legal question, and I wish the French government would try to resolve it on their side rather than going straight to fining Apple.
As a European Apple user I welcome any and all fines that can be levied on Apple for their anticompetitive practices.
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As a European Apple user I want politicians and bureaucrats leave the company alone!

They are not a monopoly, they never will be and won't have Microsofts 90% desktop market share, so let the damn market sort it out.

The market does not work unless the rules of fair play are enforced, just like any other endeavour of humanity from sports to politics.
I agree, Apple is enshittifying itself at the speed of light. They are were the least worst, but with a competitor like Android ...

All I want is a decent map and signal and sometimes a browser.

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What's "anticompetitive" here? If the description provided in my previous comment is correct, it seems to be more of a failure on the part of the regulators than anything else.

The EU (through GDPR) also wants some sort of affirmative consent for tracking. That's fair, and results in one prompt. However, iOS obviously can't accept a "trust me bro" from the app itself that it's okay to enable cross-app tracking, so you need a second prompt. The obvious solution would be to combine the two, by allowing the ATT prompt to be used as consent for the purposes of GDPR. Why didn't French regulators go with this solution and decide to fine Apple instead?

"there is an "asymmetry" in which user consent for Apple's own data collection is obtained with a single pop-up, but other publishers are "required to obtain double consent from users for tracking on third-party sites and applications."

more @ https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24109695 (via https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnkoetsier/2020/08/07/apple-a...)

EDIT: Throttled, so reply can go here:

> My previous comment directly addresses the "asymmetry" aspect.

Apologies, you asked what the asymmetry was and I guess I'm still rather confused even after reviewing the thread. I think I've had too much caffeine...or not enough? :)

> The obvious solution would be to combine the two, by allowing the ATT prompt to be used as consent for the purposes of GDPR. Why didn't French regulators go with this solution and decide to fine Apple instead?

I've been involved in regulatory stuff before and it's considered overreach, generally, when the government does UX design for you. Hopefully, that's a solution Apple can consider, it's a great idea on your end, excellent for users and competition.

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My previous comment directly addresses the "asymmetry" aspect.

>The obvious solution would be to combine the two, by allowing the ATT prompt to be used as consent for the purposes of GDPR. Why didn't French regulators go with this solution and decide to fine Apple instead?

edit:

>Apologies, you asked what the asymmetry was and I guess I'm still rather confused even after reviewing the thread. I think I've had too much caffeine...or not enough? :)

The point is, I can see where the "asymmetry" is, but I don't understand why they went decided to fine Apple rather than do something on their side (ie. rework the idea of consent in GDPR to allow for reusing the ATT prompt) to fix the "asymmetry". I think most people would agree that the ATT prompt from iOS must stay, and it's better to address the "asymmetry" by making third party apps more streamlined, than by making iOS worse[1]. That would be entirely within the French regulators' remit.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harrison_Bergeron

> but I don't understand why they went decided

You're assuming the regulators have no other motivations besides increasing consumer privacy?

As a European Apple user, I don’t. I specifically WANT the walled garden. It’s one of the reasons why I buy Apple.
It's not as if this will remove that. The same with the sideloading. Nobody's forcing you to use it.
And again, this argument is invalid.
> Third-party publishers "cannot rely on the ATT framework to comply with their legal obligations," so they "must continue to use their own consent collection solution," the French agency said.

This absolutely sounds like a problem caused by the law and not apple. Apps can’t rely on the prompt for legal authorization (presumably because it is filtered through apples apis?) and must therefore ask themselves.

The only two solutions I see to this is either Apple can’t prompt which means they can’t protect the user or the law can change to accept the prompt as authorization to track.

> The article specifically says that many apps feel like they need additional consent which means they have to request it through two channels.

Surely the same argument can be applied to the cookie law - many sites feel like they need consent therefore it's unfair over people who think they only need one prompt.

> Benoit Coeure, the head of France's competition authority, "told reporters the regulator had not spelled out how Apple should change its app, but that it was up to the company to make sure it now complied with the ruling,"

Sounds like a good shakedown to me. Wait until they tweak it then fine them again for getting it “wrong”. I wonder if they even got the chance to change anything before they were fined the first time. And all because the regulator wants users to be advertised to more?

Funny how this is exactly the process that one has to go through for getting an app through a review for an app store - you're told you've done something wrong, and it is up to you to fix it. The reviewer will never point out the specific issue they have with your submission.
Worse yet, if you fail to identify and fix it after several attempts, your entire account and all your apps get permanently banned with no feasible recourse.
Regulation around competition is quite clear. It’s unfortunate that Apple is the kind of company that only reacts after getting sued or fined instead of doing the right thing in the first place.
> "told reporters the regulator had not spelled out how Apple should change its app, but that it was up to the company to make sure it now complied with the ruling,"...shakedown

I wonder if this sheds light: if they said exactly what to do, there's a strong argument that they went too far when business regulators became UI designers.

> Wait until they tweak it then fine them again for getting it “wrong”

I don't worry too much about it, I used to work at Google, companies and regulatory authorities are in constant contact. Generally, I haven't yet seen a company claim to have addressed a situation then gotten fined again.

> And all because the regulator wants users to be advertised to more?

I can't find that bit in the article and I haven't heard it before: could you share some more?

> I can't find that bit in the article and I haven't heard it before: could you share some more?

The second paragraph has what you want. From the article:

> The App Tracking Transparency (ATT) framework used by Apple on iPhones and iPads since 2021 makes the use of third-party applications too complex and hurts small companies that rely on advertising revenue ... The system harms "smaller publishers in particular since, unlike the main vertically integrated platforms, they depend to a large extent on third-party data collection to finance their business," the agency said.

Is there another way to interpret this than that the agency wants to protect advertizing and data collection practices by small businesses?

"by small businesses", and large businesses, and businesses like ad agencies that specialize in data collection and tracking.
> I can't find that bit in the article and I haven't heard it before: could you share some more?

> The Autorité also found that the rules governing the interaction between the different pop-up windows displayed undermined the neutrality of the framework, causing definite economic harm to application publishers and advertising service providers.

https://www.autoritedelaconcurrence.fr/en/press-release/targ...

“Economic harm to … advertising service providers” says it implicitly.

I'm sorry, I'm sure I'm still missing something: my simpleton understanding is taking action to ensure neutrality, implies they want consumers to see more ads?
Which of these options in isolation will result in economic harm to an advertising company?

A) A consumer seeing more of their ads B) A consumer seeing the same number of ads C) A consumer seeing less of their ads

I feel talked down to :) C. It sounds to my simpleton ear like I should assume demand for ad slots will grow due to a supplier having less of a monopoly, but I'm struggling to find a step to add to my little overly(?) rational analysis that leads to that conclusion.
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No good deed goes unpunished. Don't protect users' privacy, and you get flak from regulators for "not doing enough". Protect users' privacy, and you get flak from regulators because it's "too complex and hurts small companies that rely on advertising revenue". You see similar levels of cynicism directed at Google. When firefox banned third party cookies, it was almost universally welcomed, but when Chrome does it the cynics come out and say how it's actually some sort dastardly ploy to cement their position in the ad market because third party adtech firms are disproportionately harmed.
One benefits directly while the other doesn't. Plus many people complained.
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>One benefits directly while the other doesn't.

That's the exact of cynicism I'm talking about. It doesn't matter whether banning third party was good for users or not, only whether Google (or Mozilla) stood to benefit. This is absolutely toxic because it means objectively good changes get shouted down.

> Plus many people complained.

For what, Firefox?

>It doesn't matter whether banning third party was good for users or not, only whether Google (or Mozilla) stood to benefit.

Well, yes. These are billion dollar companies. Always follow the money. The incentives change everything.

>This is absolutely toxic because it means objectively good changes get shouted down.

Probably because "objectively good" changes often follow before even more harmful decisions. Many have long lost their benefit of the double for these Big Tech trillionaifes. And the reputation is deserved.

Chrome never actually did away with third party cookies
The advertising industry was who filed the complaint, it wasn’t a bunch of normal users. If the ad industry wasn’t so shitty, I might give them the benefit of the doubt.
The difference is that Firefox didn't do it as an excuse to sneak in a new tracking system instead.
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You mean this? https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/privacy-preserving-attr...
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You're completely unaware of the financial shenanigans that US tech does in Europe.

I'll just leave you with the fact that Apple across two decades paid pennies in taxes in Italy (claiming few millions in revenues) because they would have bullshit like Apple Ireland selling Apple Italy iPhones for 1000€s and selling them for 1000€s plus vat.

Meanwhile Apple Ireland was buying those iPhones for the pennies it costs to make them (few hundred $ at best) and thanks to Irish corporate taxes being close to non existent (0.5%) Apple has paid virtually nothing for decades.

If you believe that us European voters love our countries to be subsidized by rich American countries you're out of your mind, but what we dislike is being taken advantage over and over.

The Double Irish arrangement is 45 years old and used by basically every multinational in Europe.
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You seriously underestimate the size of EU countries' budgets if you think $150M would even register.
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Indeed. If they really gave a shit they'd be getting Apple to open up their APIs so we can get data out of Reminders and Notes etc without having to resort to necromancy and hacking...

Apple need one of these https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/openspecs/

They literally did that too via DMA. Why are you bullshitting? :)
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Where’s the documentation and API contracts? How can I get my notes data out?
As an Apple user, I don’t want third party apps to be able to have access to that data. Apple has earned my trust, but most third party apps have not.

I buy Apple specifically because I want the level of privacy that their platform provides. If third party devs don’t like it, they can ship for Android.

You know you're free to just not use a feature, application, or deny consent?

Privacy is about making access transparent, not by having customers in tiers.

I swear there's a parallel world with lunatics saying they are glad that only XCode can access their file system and processes and they don't want that Vim, VSC, Emacs or IntelliJ crap.

Funny, they burned that trust for many by being so opaque on every level of their pipeline, from consumers to developers, from hardware to software.
Do other apps require double consent or is it actually a dark pattern they’ve adopted:

* explain and prompt the user for consent

* if they acquiesce pop the real modal

* otherwise bide your time and try again later

The reason for this is because once you receive a rejection in the official modal you are not allowed to ask again.

Or snapchat repeatedly asking for my contacts access knowing it’s denied.
Or WhatsApp not allowing you name contacts unless you gave it access to your entire address book so FB can have your entire FOAF graph.
I'm traveling to Europe right now and had to install WhatsApp, and this absolutely infuriated me. You cannot start new chats with anyone (on Android at least) unless you grant it the contacts permission. I'm sure other things are limited too, like you say.

Workarounds include having the other person message you first, or manually typing wa.me/+number into your browser.

Slightly more info: https://android.stackexchange.com/questions/229390

It is clearly an invasion of privacy and huge overreach by FB.
Install OpenContacts from F-Droid and store your contacts there.
Yes this practice should really be banned.

It's constantly whinging it's been denied camera access too. I really hate that app but some people I talk to use it.

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>Do other apps require double consent or is it actually a dark pattern they’ve adopted:

It's specifically recommended by apple.

https://developer.apple.com/design/human-interface-guideline...

Apple's recommendation (as posted) actually doesn't look like double consent to me - in fact, their recommendation calls out that it should be treated like a consent form (You shouldn't be able to exit the explanation page, only continue).

App Publishers have instead used the explanation page as a "soft" consent form, so they can bug you later without being disabled at the system level.

In adtech and social media it is a calculated strategy to maximize user compliance.
Speaking of dark patterns: if you try to initialize your Mac without logging in to your iCloud account, the installation process doesn't ask you to encrypt your drive, so everything is in clear by default...
Some apps have a “pre permissions” pop up telling users about what permissions they’re about to ask for, before then initiating the iOS permissions pop up.

The Apple apps go straight to the permissions pop up.

How is it Apples fault they do this?

I think with Apple you agreed to let them do human experiments in the EULA when you’re unboxing your device. With yet-another-tower-defense games the agreement needs to be done on a per-app or at least per-publisher basis.

The native iOS permission dialog is only a consent about what the app can do locally, and doesn’t list the 1034 close partners that they will share your DNA with.

Makes me think.. one potential risk here is that vendors will band together under a common ”publisher” where apps can piggyback on consent from previous apps, just like the big guys do but without being part of the same feudal kingdom. Wouldn’t surprise me if this already happens.

can we start also fining companies for not easily offering "no and never ask again"? the "maybe later" trend needs to die ASAP
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If the EU isn't fining someone for tracking users too much, they're fining them for not tracking users enough.
That's not what is going on here, right? The complaint is that the consent process is much harder for third-party apps than Apple apps and Apple cannot give itself advantages because Apple is a gatekeeper w.r.t iOS.

A simple yes-no for third-party applications makes it easier for the user to reject tracking and doesn't make the process more cluttered than for Apple apps.

Where did you get that part from?

> Third-party publishers "cannot rely on the ATT framework to comply with their legal obligations," so they "must continue to use their own consent collection solution," the French agency said. "The result is that multiple consent pop-ups are displayed, making the use of third-party applications in the iOS environment excessively complex."

It's not harder at all. France are just mad that their small advertisers have to ask for permission again which is their own choice.

The part where you said

>Third-party publishers "cannot rely on the ATT framework to comply with their legal obligation

Yeah, as apple loves to do, rules for thee but not for me.

>France are just mad that their small advertisers have to ask for permission again

Because Apple's isn't good enough, but in apple fashion you must use it (but they dont). Yeah, anti-competitive.

List of 2560 GDPR enforcements: https://www.enforcementtracker.com/

Granted, not all are fines for tracking users, but all sorts of violations. Reasoning is included in the table.

Having US corporations fund our infrastructure, culture and subsidy programs is amazing!
Can we just frikkin ban tracking completely and just see how that goes?

I do not really care if some businesses can no longer make money in the way they like to. I’m sure they’ll figure it out if they have to. Businesses existed for a loooooong time without tracking their customers. I’m sure they can do it again.

If governments would just ban the bad shiat app vendors do that Apple tries to curb, that’d be great, as it’d remove the main reason I have little practical choice but to use Apple devices.
Yeah I so wish the EU would simply do this.
>pop-ups that let users reject tracking

No pop-up is needed to reject what is already banned union-wide. Therefore, a banner that is trying to collect my explicit+specific+informed+voluntary consent to partially lift that ban is not a "pop-up that lets users reject". Its a "pop-up that lets users surrender" some of their rights & freedoms.

I think Apple will need to make a new phone line. Call it the ePhone.

In a few years we can compare who got it right.

Refreshing to see a huge fine for too many pop-ups. It’s usually the other way around, which can be frustrating for those of us who don’t like pop-ups.
At this point, I am convinced EU fines American tech companies for fun.
And you're wrong.

That being said in that specific case this is odd because in general:

- EU (albeit not France) gives plenty of time to OS developers to adapt and often talks to them directly when they are as big as Apple

- The timing makes it look like with a different less disruptive administration it would've went differently

In any case US companies abusing any possible loophole for paying pennies for decades in Europe don't get any sympathy by me.

It still surprises me how far the US has declined in pretty much all qualities of life. But Hacker News still has this sect of a community that despite EU regulations. Ones they crave from American governments.

Like, do we want protections from corporations or to continue to let them stomp on using hopes they become the corporation one day?

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I would ordinarily say something along the lines of “don’t blatantly break laws and you won’t be fined”, but this is a minor implementation detail. There are so many bigger fish to fry in consumer rights space that it just looks petty. And it’s questionable whether a law is even broken.
To Apple, that's just a Tuesday
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Most of you won't read the past the headline but this isn't accurate

>The agency said there is an "asymmetry" in which user consent for Apple's own data collection is obtained with a single pop-up, but other publishers are "required to obtain double consent from users for tracking on third-party sites and applications." The press release notes that "while advertising tracking only needs to be refused once, the user must always confirm their consent a second time."

They take issue with Apple making it easier for their apps but applying a different standard for third parties. I think this fine is fair.

Is Apples third party though? I don’t know, genuinely asking.

If no, then first party vs third party having different standards of consent seems reasonable?

This is referring to Apple's first party apps so no they aren't third party. I can understand why someone would make that argument but the French regulator argument here is that in the spirit of competition, third-parties should have the same barrier to entry as Apple's first party apps and I can see the argument they are making.
I feel like if the apps have their own tracking then yes one click makes sense. If they include third party then multi consent also makes sense. They’re not contradictory points.
And most can't. It's an absurdly high barrier to interest and thus uncompetitive. That's what the ruling is based on. Most of us can't just whip up our own tracking network just to save on one click.
Yeah.

Not sure how you collect all the necessary consent clicks without at least two clicks if a third party is involved?

Do they get a pass on collecting a consent click for one of the parties?

Or do you only ever need the consent for the third party to track?

My understanding was you needed to get consent for every company in the chain. Is that untrue?

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150M is ridiculously low for a company with a 3.34T market cap.

It's the equivalent of fining a millionaire 150 EUR, or a regular person fifteen cents.

That's not a fine, it's a show put on for people who can't do division.

Agree it's a slap on the wrist for Apple. But the punishment fits the "crime" in this case, in my opinion. Enough to pay for the legal costs of enforcement, and get Apple's attention. But nothing terribly punitive, which I don't think is warranted in this case.

I believe Apple's goal with the popups is to protect consumers' privacy from 3rd party apps, which is admirable. But where they went wrong is that they didn't apply the same process to themselves.

Comparing a fine with market cap doesn't make a lot of sense.

More logical is to compare it to their yearly profit. Net income was $74B last year.

So the fine is ~0.2% of that, which is pretty significant for something as tiny as having two pop-up messages rather than a single combined one.

And for a regular person making $50K/yr, it would equate to a $100 fine. Not fifteen cents.

No, you'd need to first take the expenses out of the person's salary. Assuming the person needs 35k to live it's a 30$ one.
Good point! I've never seen it compared that way before but I like it.
It is not the right question. The goal is not to destroy Apple, it is to force them into compliance. In order to force them into compliance, you only need the fine to be higher than what it costs to comply.

And €150M is a lot of money, you can have on the order of a thousand people working on the problem for a year to get even. I am sure they can figure out a way.

Same idea with, say, a parking ticket for nonpayment. It may be nothing to a millionaire, but the important part is that in the long run, it is more cost effective to simply pay for parking.

> Same idea with, say, a parking ticket for nonpayment. It may be nothing to a millionaire

It's telling that the former CEO of Apple was famous for driving a car without plates, and parking in handicapped parking spaces, just because he could.

Do you actually agree with the fine?

Don't give users a choice in tracking: complaints Give users a choice in tracking: now it's too many pop ups

The issue here is that Apple only needs one click to sell your data (and yes they do it, they made 11B $ on ads last year) and others need two.

In fact Apple is making more and more money on ads because they limit data access to third parties, but still sell yours in search and store.

No, the issue in the article is that 3rd parties feel they need additional consent. That's on them if they choose to do it.
Yes, to comply with regulations. Because apple's forced solution isn't enough. So it's apple's fault.

This is just more an extension of the DMA lolly gagging they are doing where there's a clear solution that Apple takes its sweet time strolling towards.

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Perhaps they should fine the companies that want to do such intrusive tracking? Apple’s not sharing data with third parties for their internal stuff, that’s a big difference when Dominos wants to share with someone that isn’t Dominos.
>Apple’s not sharing data with third parties for their internal stuff

Yes, they do.

>Apple does not sell your personal data including as “sale” is defined in Nevada and California. Apple also does not “share” your personal data as that term is defined in California.

From their privacy policy (C. 1/31/2025) It's enough to comply for a definition under a single state in a single country. They make a billion off ads so I'm sure they loophole the heck out of that.

You can make still money off untargeted ads (just not as much).
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Apple only blocks sharing links from outside the app Dominos app to other apps (bolstering Apple's ad monopoly). Apple does nothing to stop Domino's from sharing the actual important data 3rd parties track in the Domino's app.
Huh? Basically every sentence in your comment is wrong. Apps can link to other apps. There's an entire framework called Universal Links to support this. And Apple is the only platform maker that requires apps to ask for permission before sharing data for tracking.
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Apps can link to other apps, but the receiving app can't track where that link came from (unlike HTTPS where you append anything you want, ie ref=otherapp.com). This has led to the large companies that reverse engineer this via web server hops, S2S calls and SDKs.
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So much dumb in this article that it's hard to figure out what's actually going on.

I have to assume this this is the same "issue" with all Apple permissions. They can only be requested once by the app and if the user denies it then the user has to dig into Settings to turn it on later. To avoid/work around this a lot of app developers prompt the user before they trigger the OS-level prompt so that if the user says "no thanks" they don't "burn" their one chance to request a permission.

Apple, it seems, doesn't use those "pre-consent" screens so it's only 1 dialog. Also, to my knowledge, Apple doesn't allow it's apps to prompt with the system dialog multiple times either so they are on equal footing it appears.

As always it's important to see who is complaining/behind this:

> The French investigation was triggered by a complaint lodged by advertising industry associations.

Ahh, got it.

The "Autorité de la concurrence" seems to suffer from the same issue almost all government regulators suffer from, they know fuck-all about technology which is perfectly summed up with this:

> Benoit Coeure, the head of France's competition authority, "told reporters the regulator had not spelled out how Apple should change its app, but that it was up to the company to make sure it now complied with the ruling,"

Not only is it a "You need to make _A_ change but we won't tell you what it is"-type thing which is super annoying [0] but "Apple should change its app". If you don't understand the difference between an "App" and an "OS" then you should not be making rules for either.

ATT is a 100% win for consumers and I don't for a second believe the BS around "but what about small businesses!", just look at all the people championing small business, it's check notes, ahh, yes, Facebook and large ad agencies, bastions of small business /s.

[0] Yes, it's even more annoying when Apple does it to developers and I think we are all feeling a little bit of Schadenfreude over it.

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"We will not tell you how to fix what we found to be 'wrong', reserve the right to find your fixes 'wrong' again, and will charge you more"

At which point do we admit that this is simply extortion?

Reminds me of app store submissions.
Meanwhile, if they gave a specific solution

"at what point do we admit that the EU is strongarming US tech to their will"?

You can't win here.

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I’m curious how things like this play into Trumps recent reciprocal tariff threats.
Probably it will. Vance even threatened to leave NATO if the EU regulates X. But EU countries are not satellite states of the US. At some point we just have to draw a line in the sand and stand by our own values, even if it comes at an expense. It's not as if tariffs and the retaliatory tariffs it will lead to is good for the US economy either.

It's all just silly.

a lot of european nations are also discussing on how to create more inhouse and become digitally sovereign from US tech firms. (the dutch government for instance[0])

5 or even 10 years ago this would have been unthinkable in dutch politics, even if this has been called out a lot as a risk in tech circles.

[0] https://www.dutchitchannel.nl/news/602753/tweede-kamer-neemt...

Europe has been pushing this politically for over a decade now.... It's just every European initiative to fix it has failed.
Yearly EU tax bill
Any update on noscript/basic (x)html interop of french administration web sites?

It is good to straighten the other guys, hopefully they do not forget about themselves.

This is such a bizarre move from Apple honestly. They're acting like they're letting users make a choice when realistically all users are going to choose not to get tracked. It's like a "do you want to install malware?" button. They just did it for the lulz and to hurt the finances of companies they don't like.
Wow, do you work for these ad-tech companies? You’re totally correct that I don’t want to be tracked and I’m happy that Apple is trying to protect me from these predatory companies. If “hurt[ing] the finances” of these privacy invasive companies is your definition of “companies they don’t like” please sign me up. It’s a bizarre thing to say any one actually wants to be tracked.
Shouldn’t a user be able to choose if they want to be tracked? Of everyone says no, I’m not sure that’s a problem — unless your business model is intrusive tracking.