As part of iOS 14.5, Apple’s App Tracking Transparency forces developers to ask permission for something they used to be able to do for free: track iOS users. Today, Twitter is joining the ranks of other developers and adding a prompt that asks users to enable tracking on iOS (via MacRumors).
Twitter’s main justification for listening to its request is straightforward — having the feature enabled allows it to serve “better” ads. The company includes a link to settings so you can make those changes, but read Twitter’s explanation before you decide:
Keep ads relevant to you by allowing Twitter to track data from other companies on this device, like apps you use and websites you visit.
The company also includes a link to a support post in the Twitter help center which explains why it has to ask for permission, includes a link to its current App Privacy Policy, and goes over what enabling or disabling tracking does in iOS.
The new Twitter ad tracking prompt.
It’s a surprisingly low-key attempt to get users to allow Twitter to track them, considering the company highlighted Apple’s addition of App Tracking Transparency in iOS 14.5 as a potential risk in its recent earnings statement (PDF):
We continue to expect total revenue to grow faster than expenses in 2021, assuming the global pandemic continues to improve and that we see modest impact from the rollout of changes associated with iOS 14.5. How much faster will depend on various factors, including our execution on our direct response roadmap and macroeconomic factors.
Facebook and Instagram took a far more aggressive approach to convince users its use of ad tracking is on the up-and-up — even going as far as including a vague threat that enabling tracking will “help keep Facebook/Instagram free of charge.”
Companies like Twitter and Facebook rely on tracking users to support their separate, often very lucrative ad businesses. After all, it’s usually ad sales that pay for free social networks, and customer data helps to target those ads. As a company that’s more interested in selling hardware and subscription services, Apple doesn’t really have to worry about things like that, but brash changes like the new tracking permissions can leave developers scrambling.
App Tracking Transparency has proven popular, though — around 96 percent of US users are opting out of tracking according to some recent surveys. And with Google considering developing its own methods for blocking tracking on Android, we might just have to get used to apps coming to us and begging for free data.
Instagram removed and restricted posts related to the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem after its moderators confused its name with a group designated as a terrorist organization. In an internal company message first obtained by BuzzFeed News, a lead on the company’s Dangerous Organizations and Individuals policy team called the removals “enforcement errors.”
Facebook, which owns Instagram, provided a copy of the internal post to The Verge. In it, the employee wrote: “While Al-Aqsa (الأقصى) refers to a location, it is also unfortunately included in the names of several restricted organizations – by itself, however, this term should not and does not violate our policies.”
BuzzFeedNews reports that there is an armed group known as the Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades which is deemed a terrorist entity by the United States and European Union, and other groups with similar names are considered parts of its support network by the US government.
Removal of the posts comes as the Al-Aqsa Mosque, one of Islam’s holiest sites, has been at the center of clashes between Israeli police and Palestinians. It’s part of a wider escalating crisis that has claimed the lives of at least 72 people in Gaza, including 16 children, and seven people in Israel, The Guardian reported on Thursday. When trying to share footage highlighting the violence at the mosque, Instagram users found that their posts were being restricted from view or were being removed entirely, according to BuzzFeed News.
The blocked hashtag is “#AlAqsa” written in Arabic, the third holiest mosque in Islam that Palestinian folks got stun-grenaded & tear-gassed at during their Ramadan prayer earlier today.
It’s like blocking “#StatueOfLiberty” when police are brutalizing innocent people there. https://t.co/nLkoL6xr9R
— Rami Ismail (رامي) (@tha_rami) May 8, 2021
“To be clear – we have never designated the Al-Aqsa Mosque under our Dangerous Organizations policy, but rather an organization with the name ‘Al-Aqsa,’” the internal Facebook post said. “[A]ny removals based solely on a mention of the name of the mosque are certainly enforcement errors and they never should have happened under our policies.”
The post goes on to say that Facebook has a legal obligation to remove posts that support or represent organizations sanctioned by the US, although it will not remove news reporting or condemnation of such groups. The employee said Facebook was updating its guidance to moderators, that it had removed the term “Al-Aqsa” from its moderation list, and that it has replaced it with a more descriptive alias of the sanctioned organization.
TikTok launched a new feature today that combines the existing duet and green screen formats, letting people use other TikToks as the background for their own. “Green Screen Duet” now appears as an option in the duet layout menu. Like all duets, the creator of the original video is tagged in the caption of the new one. This could be great news or a portent of even more sensory overload in the app, depending on your sensibilities.
The green screen option among duet layouts.Image: TikTok
The new feature will likely be a useful tool for people who already use TikTok’s “green screen” to put images in the background of their videos, or edit videos to create a similar effect. It also might make TikToks that are reactions to other TikToks more visually cohesive than Duets (where videos are tiled next to each other) and Stitches (where a clip of the original video plays for a few seconds before the new one starts).
TikTok continues to roll out new formats as other companies add TikTok-like features to their own apps. Instagram’s Reels can now be “remixed” like TikTok duets. Snap says its TikTok competitor Spotlight reached 100 million users two months after it launched, and YouTube is planning to pay creators who use YouTube Shorts to encourage them to keep posting.
For a better idea of how the feature works, here’s someone adding sign language interpretation to a TikTok that’s already a running bit between several users:
Instagram is making it easier to address people by their defined pronouns. The company announced today that it’s allowing people to add up to four pronouns to their profile, which they can then choose to display publicly or only to their followers. (Users under 18 will have this setting turned on by default.) Instagram says people can fill out a form to have a pronoun added, if it’s not already available, or just add it to their bio instead. Instagram says this is available in a “few countries,” but doesn’t specify further. We’ve reached out for more information and will update if we hear back.
A couple Verge staffers already have the pronouns setting available to them, suggesting it’s live in the US. You can get a better sense of the feature’s user flow in the screenshots below, courtesy of news writer Jay Peters.
Instagram’s pronoun feature allows users to choose from a set of options to add pronouns to their profile.
Instagram’s pronoun feature allows users to choose from a set of options to add pronouns to their profile.
Instagram’s pronoun feature allows users to choose from a set of options to add pronouns to their profile.
Instagram’s pronoun feature allows users to choose from a set of options to add pronouns to their profile.
Other platforms also allow their users to add pronouns to their profiles. Dating apps, like OkCupid, have already introduced the feature, as have other apps like Lyft. Interestingly, Facebook allowed users to define their pronouns starting in 2014, although the feature limited people to “he/him, she/her, and they/them.” This appears to still be the case while Instagram will offer more options.
TikTok’s next move to compete with Facebook might be to add an in-app shopping feature, according to a new report from Bloomberg. The publication writes that TikTok is testing in-app sales in Europe by partnering with several brands, including UK-based streetwear company Hype.
TikTok’s made some shopping moves in the past, like giving creators the ability to sell merchandise through an integration with Teespring, partnering with Shopify, and reportedly working on some kind of live-video informercial product. This new prototype sounds more like how shopping’s been integrated on Instagram, with a separate shopping tab under a brand’s account that lists products with images and prices, Bloomberg writes.
The Hype account page on TikTok shows what looks like a shopping tab.
The Hype account page currently does show what looks like a shopping section (though it’s blank for my US account) and the company did confirm to Bloomberg that it was participating in the test. We’ve also reached out to TikTok for further confirmation the shopping test is happening.
Shopping and TikTok seem like they could have a real peanut butter and jelly type of relationship. The bite-sized length and “stickiness” of TikTok videos seem perfectly suited for advertising, while the passive watching that TikTok encourages (at least in me) makes it easy to consume a lot of content. So far, this shopping prototype doesn’t sound quite as video-focused as whatever informercial-style feature TikTok was previously considering, but I wouldn’t be too surprised to see links to the hypothetical shopping tab littered throughout a brand or creator’s videos at some point in the future.
It’s also more or less exactly what Facebook’s on its way to doing with Instagram, its TikTok competitor Reels, and the normal Facebook app itself. The company went on a slightly different kind of shopping spree in 2020, adding commerce functionality like the previously mentioned shopping tab, product information in Reels, and it hasn’t stopped there. Facebook is also testing sticker ads in Stories.
Wherever TikTok lands with shopping, tests like these seem to show the viral video app is ready to take advantage of its status as a household name and grow — whether it’s shopping or spreading TikTok features across other apps.
YouTube plans to pay $100 million to creators who use YouTube Shorts, its TikTok competitor, throughout the next year. The goal is to encourage creators to pick up and continually post to its new service, which doesn’t otherwise give creators a built-in way to make money.
Exactly how much creators can earn is still up in the air. YouTube says that it’ll reach out to creators on a monthly basis, looking for people with the most engagement and views. “Thousands” of creators could get paid each month, YouTube says, and basically anyone who posts to Shorts is eligible. The one caveat is that their videos have to be original content, and, of course, abide by YouTube’s community guidelines.
YouTube started launching Shorts in the US in March. The short videos appear in YouTube’s mobile app and, just like TikTok (or Instagram Reels or Snapchat Spotlight), you can swipe from one to the next in an endless full-screen feed.
Other companies have taken the same approach to encouraging creators to stick with their platform. TikTok launched a $200 million creators fund in July 2020, and Snapchat paid out $1 million per day for a period of time after its TikTok competitor, Spotlight, launched in November 2020.
Payments will be available in the US and India — the two regions Shorts has launched — to start, but YouTube plans to expand its availability as it rolls out the service to more regions. There’s no specific date yet for when YouTube will start offering payments. YouTube says the fund will last from its start this year through some point in 2022.
In an open letter today, the National Association of Attorneys General called on Facebook to abandon plans for an Instagram platform focused on children under the age of 13. The letter is signed by 44 different state-level attorneys general (including non-states like Guam, Puerto Rico, and the Northern Mariana Islands), representing a majority of US territories.
“It appears that Facebook is not responding to a need, but instead creating one, as this platform appeals primarily to children who otherwise do not or would not have an Instagram account,” the letter reads. “The attorneys general urge Facebook to abandon its plans to launch this new platform.”
Plans for the child-focused Instagram were first reported by Buzzfeed News in March, and subsequently confirmed by the company. But while internal emails reported by Buzzfeed identified the project as a company priority, Facebook insisted at the time that there was no specific timeline for release.
While the letter has no formal legal power, it emphasizes the significant legal risk Facebook will face in undertaking the project. In the US, children under 13 are subject to enhanced legal protections under the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (or COPPA), which places particularly stringent rules against data collection.
Social networks have traditionally complied with the act by banning users under the age of 13, but it has not entirely protected them from regulatory action. Most recently, Google agreed to pay $170 million after a Federal Trade Commission investigation about the company’s data collection from YouTube videos featuring children’s content.
State attorneys general have been particularly active in the enforcement of COPPA protections, so the NAAG letter carries with it an implicit legal threat: if Facebook proceeds with its plans for an Instagram for kids, these same attorneys general will be watching very closely for COPPA violations and will be eager to file suit over any violations they find.
Reached for comment, Facebook said it would not sell ads on any Instagram app targeted at young children but did not back off on its interest in developing the app.
“We’ve just started exploring a version of Instagram for kids,” said Facebook policy representative Andy Stone. “We agree that any experience we develop must prioritize their safety and privacy, and we will consult with experts in child development, child safety and mental health, and privacy advocates to inform it. We also look forward to working with legislators and regulators, including the nation’s attorneys general. In addition, we commit today to not showing ads in any Instagram experience we develop for people under the age of 13.”
Nobody was ever in doubt that Apple’s new anti-app tracking (ATT) feature, rolled-out with iOS 14.5 would have a major impact on the way targeted advertisement works and consequently, any company with a business model built around it. Like Facebook and its subsidiaries, like Instagram – some of the most severely-affected parties and naturally among the most vocal against ATT.
Having a hunch that a certain change is significant, though, is not the same as getting some actual data on just how significant it is. The Verizon Media-owned Flurry Analytics has its mobile analytics services integrated in over 1 million mobile applications and collects aggregate insights on over 2 billion mobile devices each month. According to Flurry’s data, just around 12% of global users have allowed app tracking for apps that requested it on their devices post the iOS 14.5 update. And that number is just 4% in the US.
Anti-app tracking daily opt-in rate
Just to clarify, in case you are not familiar with how ATT works, it is basically like a permission pop-up that every app has to present the user before being able to gain access to their anonymized (in theory) tracking ID to be able to associate that with in-app activity, as well as activity within other apps and services. If a user chooses to deny tracking, the app in question can’t properly “know” the user. That is to say “know” them in the ad-targeting sense. Opting out of app tracking does not disable say Facebook or Instagram or any other app’s ability to see and potentially use any of the personal data you have shared with them in your profile or any connected authentication service. It just means that the particular app can’t, for instance, know that you just spent the last few hours browsing for a new hat online and then present you with ads for hats. Also worth noting is that disabling app tracking does not disable ads. Those will still be there, just less targeted to you, personally.
These are definitely points worth clarifying, even if they don’t quite add-up as neatly as Facebook might want you to believe in its ad campaign to small businesses reaching users through Facebook. We won’t dig too deep into the broader debate on targeted online advertising and privacy. It is a subject definitely worth researching, though, since it has many facets. While outright blocking tracking might sound perfect for end users on the surface, it could make more than a few online services unsustainable in their current form. Just food for thought. Flurry has some more statistics somewhat related to this as well – the percentage of iOS 14.5 users who have taken the time to set their app tracking preferences to “Restricted” altogether in settings. These are 5% worldwide and 3% in the US.
Saturday Night Live will be live from New York— and streaming to 100 countries around the world for the first time ever, NBC announced. Elon Musk is hosting the show for the first time (in case you have not read anything else on The Verge today), and Miley Cyrus will be the musical guest.
“‘SNL’ is a global phenomenon and this livestream marks the first time audiences around the world will experience the show simultaneously along with the US,” Frances Berwick of NBCU said in a statement. “It’s incredibly exciting to create this worldwide event with host Elon Musk and musical guest Miley Cyrus. We thank our international partners and YouTube for helping us make it happen.”
Musk tweeted a link to the international feed:
The show gets underway at the usual 11:30PM ET. Musk’s girlfriend, the singer Grimes, posted to her Instagram that she would be making an appearance as well.
The Blade 11 Prime offers a 6.5-inch screen and Qi wireless charging in a well-priced budget device.
If you’re already invested in a wireless charging lifestyle, the Blade 11 Prime is a budget phone to match it
The ZTE Blade 11 Prime offers one standout feature in a field of largely similar sub-$200 phones: wireless charging.
In the smartphone trickle-down economy, wireless charging is basically guaranteed on any flagship-level phone, but it’s still hit-and-miss among midrange phones and all but absent from the budget class. You’re much more likely to find a really big battery on a sub-$200 phone than wireless charging.
Outside of that feature, the $192 Blade 11 Prime’s specs are much the same as competing models like the Galaxy A12 and Moto G Play. Like those models, it offers a 6.5-inch 720p LCD, though it includes a little more RAM (4GB compared to 3GB) and a little less battery capacity (4,000mAh compared to 5,000mAh).
Choosing a phone that’s priced under $500 means you need to pick your priorities carefully, and that’s even more true of a $200 phone. If wireless charging is your chosen priority, then I have good news: the ZTE Blade 11 Prime is the budget-priced phone for you. If it’s not a major priority and more of a nice-to-have item, then I’d suggest looking elsewhere. You won’t do a lot better on any individual feature, like a better screen or camera, but you can do a little better.
The Blade 11 Prime supports the Qi wireless charging standard at 5W.
ZTE Blade 11 Prime screen, battery, and performance
The Blade 11 Prime is on the bigger side with a 6.5-inch display. Its 720p resolution is stretched a little thin here, and you’ll notice certain images looking a little pixelated if you look closely. The screen gets nice and bright, but its auto-brightness setting kept bringing the level down a little too dim for my liking. I also noticed faint repeating vertical lines on dark parts of the screen indicative of a low-quality panel — not a huge distraction but visible.
It doesn’t have the biggest battery in its class, but the Blade 11’s battery performance is generally good anyway. I got about two days of light, mostly Wi-Fi use on a single charge. Spending a full day out and about on LTE would drain the battery faster, but most people could expect to get through at least a full day of heavy use before needing to charge up again.
The Blade 11 Prime’s marquee feature, wireless charging, works well if a little slowly; the phone supports Qi charging at 5W. Taking it from 50 percent to a full charge took almost exactly two hours, during which the phone got warm but not worryingly so. As long as you don’t expect incredible speeds, wireless charging is a convenient option on the Blade 11 Prime, particularly if you’re the type of person who charges your phone overnight.
We don’t expect dazzling processing speed from a $200 phone, but the ZTE Blade 11 Prime falls a little short even considering its price. It uses a MediaTek MT6762 Helio P22 chipset with a relatively healthy 4GB of RAM, but this combination struggles with even light tasks like scrolling through Instagram or Twitter.
Apps open quickly enough, but there was significant stuttering and hesitation just browsing my usual social media timelines or scrolling through the home screen app drawer. Some slowness is expected in this price bracket, but I didn’t see as much consistent stuttering using the Motorola Moto G Play recently.
The ZTE Blade 11 Prime ships with Android 11, which is nice — some of its slightly less recent competitors are still on 10 waiting for an update. ZTE says there’s no plan to offer any additional Android OS upgrades, only that it will offer security patches as needed. That’s not too surprising given the phone’s price point; the Blade 11 Prime just isn’t built for longevity past a couple of years of use. There’s also 64GB of built-in storage, which isn’t a lot. If you don’t download too many apps or store too many photos on your device, you’ll be able to get by, otherwise adding a microSD card for additional storage to your purchase is a good idea.
Camera hardware is modest: on the rear panel, you’ll find a 16-megapixel main and 8-megapixel ultrawide camera.
ZTE Blade 11 Prime camera
The rear camera system on the Blade 11 Prime includes a 16-megapixel main camera and an 8-megapixel ultrawide, plus a 2-megapixel depth sensor. It’s a basic setup, and it does fine in good lighting conditions. It’s a little more prone to clipping very bright spots in photos than other systems I’ve used recently, but it does a nice job overall with exposures of high-contrast scenes. In moderate indoor lighting, some detail-smoothing noise reduction is visible, and low-light photos look smeary even at the reduced image sizes used for social sharing.
Taken with ultrawide
Taken with ultrawide
Taken with ultrawide
As for the other cameras, they’re just fine. The ultrawide doesn’t handle high-contrast scenes as well as the main camera, with some noticeable noise appearing in shadows. There’s also a short delay after pressing the shutter button before you can take another photo that isn’t present when using the main camera. The selfie camera thankfully avoids over-smoothing faces, and photos look good as long as there’s plenty of available light.
If you aren’t already a wireless charging devotee, it would be best to look elsewhere in the budget phone class.
If your budget is strict and wireless charging is a must-have, then the ZTE Blade 11 Prime is the right phone for you. But if you can make do without wireless charging, I’d strongly encourage you to look elsewhere. Iffy performance with basic tasks will be more of an inconvenience in the long run than having to plug in your phone every night to charge it.
This year’s Motorola Moto G Power would be a worthwhile alternative if you can spend a little more; you’ll get a faster processor and better battery life, though you should definitely plan on buying a microSD card to supplement its meager 32GB of storage. The G Play is a good alternative, too, even with a processor that’s a bit slower than the G Power’s.
Head of Instagram Adam Mosseri has tweeted an apology about a bug that deleted users’ story posts on Thursday. The timing was unfortunate for activists trying to raise awareness about missing Indigenous women, with organizations Red Dress and National Day of Awareness of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls (MMIWG, abbreviated by some as MMIWG2S to include two-spirit people) questioning whether their posts had somehow been erased deliberately. According to Instagram, however, the bug affected stories, archives, and highlights of Instagram users across the globe.
Mosseri and Instagram’s statement about the deletions say this isn’t the case and that the stories were not removed because of anything content-related. He specifically addressed the Indigenous people’s concerns. “This day is incredibly important to raise awareness of this critical issue and support our Indigenous community on Instagram,” Mosseri tweeted. “We apologize to all those who felt like they could not bring attention to these incredibly important causes, and many others around the world.”
Many people thought we were removing their content because of what they posted or what hashtag they used, but this bug wasn’t related to the content itself, but rather a widespread issue that has now been fixed.
— Adam Mosseri (@mosseri) May 7, 2021
The issue of the high rates of violence against Indigenous people — especially women, girls, and two-spirit people — isn’t one that often gets a spotlight outside of reservations, so spreading awareness is especially important, activists say. Speaking to CBC News about the importance of days like May 5th, community organizer Kakeka Thundersky said that “[e]veryone’s just stuck at home on their phone, unable to gather and able to go to the rallies, unable to talk to face to face with people,” making online platforms like Instagram a key tool for activists.
Emily Henderson, an Inuk arts and culture writer, said that “[t]he digital space in general is really, really important right now just for maintaining community connections or connections.”
WhatsApp is again rolling out its payments service in Brazil, after the service was suspended by Brazil’s Central Bank in June of 2020 a few days after it launched there. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg made the announcement in a video aired in Brazil, where he spoke about how the payment information added to WhatsApp will also be able to be used on Facebook and Instagram.
According to David Marcus the head of Facebook Financial, the service returning to Brazil will be part of a “gradual rollout,” but it seems like the company is serious about it returning: it’s already posted a video promoting the service, and has published a page that states the underlying Facebook Pay system has been authorized by the Central Bank (Facebook is WhatsApp’s parent company).
When the service originally launched in Brazil, the country’s central bank suspended it, citing concerns about competition in the payment system market. The bank said it planned to evaluate whether the service was compliant with regulations, despite the fact that Facebook said it had been in contact with the authority before the launch.
In late March of this year, it was reported by Reuters that the bank had approved the service, after Facebook had obtained formal approval to run payments. According to a press release, WhatsApp users will be able to connect debit, prepaid or combo cards from several banks that are working with its payment processor.
Instagram now has a captions sticker for Stories, which will automatically transcribe speech in videos. The sticker will be available only in “English and English-speaking countries” for now but will eventually roll out to other languages and countries. Instagram says it will also start testing automated captions in Reels soon.
Captions have been available in IGTV and the Threads app, and Instagram says it’s adding them to Stories and Reels to make them more efficient and inclusive to watch. The feature should be a welcome addition for people who are deaf or hard of hearing, are not native English speakers, or just generally watch videos without sound.
The edit option lists each word of the captions separately. You can tap on individual words to make adjustments.
Like other text options in Stories, users can adjust the style and color of the captions after they’re generated. People can also edit individual words in the captions to correct spelling, punctuation, or any words that weren’t transcribed accurately. Auto captions rarely have perfect accuracy, especially for people with accents or atypical speech, so editing is crucial. There’s currently no option to have the text highlighted for better visual contrast, but you can use the draw tool or a sticker behind the captions to make them easier to see.
Other platforms and services have recently added or improved auto-captioning options. Zoom, Google Meet, and Microsoft Teams all offer automated captions for video calls. Google expanded its Live Caption feature across the Chrome browser in March, and TikTok launched automatic captions for American English and Japanese last month. Twitter announced Monday that it’s planning improvements for the captioning it offers in Spaces.
An internal presentation at Epic Games showed ambitious promotional plans for the game, including a basketball mini-game and a planned “Party Royale” featuring Zion Williamson and LeBron James. Made public as part of the ongoing Epic v. Apple trial, the document comes from a quarterly business review performed in June 2020.
In addition to detailing the game’s revenue and promotional outlook, the presentation lays out a new kind of “experimental” venture to be built inside of Fortnite, including plans to implement a basketball mini-game as part of a broader NBA partnership.
One slide describes the project as “a Fortnite version of arcade basketball,” which would allow players to take to the courts as an alternative to the traditional Battle Royale. A subsequent slide teases the release of themed emotes, playoff events, and potential NBA post-game shows inside the game.
A slide detailing the planned basketball mini-game.
Notably, rumors have circulated that Season 6 of the game might include a skin of LeBron James, beloved basketball player, driven by close analysis of recent update packages. Zion Williamson’s participation is less clear; the document makes no reference to him outside of the graphic above.
Epic Games declined to comment.
Many of the events detailed in the presentation have already taken place, including an extensive Marvel crossover and the skin partnerships with Brazilian soccer star Neymar and popular streamer LazarBeam.
The presentation also suggests Epic is working on a themed skin with Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson as part of the game’s Icon series, timed for the first quarter of 2021. No official partnership has been announced yet, but there have been significant rumors around some kind of crossover, driven by unusual visual similarities between Johnson and a mysterious Season 6 character, as well as a cryptic Instagram post from the star.
Facebook is continuing its campaign against Apple’s iOS 14 privacy updates, adding a notice within its iOS app telling users the information it collects from other apps and websites can “help keep Facebook free of charge.” A similar message was seen on Instagram’s iOS app (Facebook is Instagram’s parent company). Technology researcher Ashkan Soltani first noted the new pop-up notices on Saturday. They appear as part of an explanation of the updates to iOS 14 rules.
“This version of iOS requires us to ask for permission to track some data from this devices to improve your ads. Learn how we limit the use of this information if you don’t turn on this device setting,” the pop-up screen reads. “We use information about your activity received form other apps and websites to: show you ads that are more personalized, help keep Facebook free of charge [and] support businesses that rely on ads to reach their customers.” (I wasn’t able to get this nag screen to show up on my iPhone which is running iOS 14.5).
The new opt-in requirements in the latest versions of iOS 14, including iOS 14.5, require developers to get express consent from device owners to allow their Identifier for Advertisers (IDFA) to be shared and collected across apps. Under Apple’s new policy, app developers are still able to use other information a user provides for targeted advertising, even if the user opts out of letting the app track them, but that information can’t be shared with another company for ad tracking.
If developers try to get around the opt-in requirement, or try to replace the IDFA with another piece of identifying information such as an email address, that app will be considered in violation of the opt-in requirement. The rules also apply to Apple’s own apps.
Facebook has been a vocal critic of Apple’s iOS 14 privacy updates, arguing that the privacy changes could hurt small businesses which may rely on Facebook’s ad network to reach customers. In statements to the press and in newspaper ads, Facebook has said Apple is encouraging new business models for apps so they rely less on advertising and more on subscriptions, which would potentially give Apple a cut.
But the “keep Facebook/Instagram free” tactic seems to run counter to Facebook’s long-standing tagline which indicated the company was “free and always will be.” Of course, Facebook quietly removed that slogan from its homepage in 2019, and CEO Mark Zuckerberg didn’t rule out a paid version of Facebook when he testified before Congress in 2018. “There will always be a version of Facebook that is free,” he said.
Facebook didn’t reply to a request for comment Sunday. But Zuckerberg called Apple out during Facebook’s January earnings call, referring to Apple as one of his company’s biggest competitors. “Apple has every incentive to use their dominant platform position to interfere with how our apps and other apps work, which they regularly do to preference their own,” Zuckerberg said. “This impacts the growth of millions of businesses around the world, including with the upcoming iOS 14 changes.”
Apple didn’t immediately reply to a request for comment Sunday.
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