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Every Major Advertising Group Is Blasting Apple for Blocking Cookies in the Safari Browser (adweek.com)
The biggest advertising organizations say Apple will "sabotage" the current economic model of the internet with plans to integrate cookie-blocking technology into the new version of Safari. Marty Swant, reporting for AdWeek: Six trade groups -- the Interactive Advertising Bureau, American Advertising Federation, the Association of National Advertisers, the 4A's and two others -- say they're "deeply concerned" with Apple's plans to release a version of the internet browser that overrides and replaces user cookie preferences with a set of Apple-controlled standards. The feature, which is called "Intelligent Tracking Prevention," limits how advertisers and websites can track users across the internet by putting in place a 24-hour limit on ad retargeting. In an open letter expected to be published this afternoon, the groups describe the new standards as "opaque and arbitrary," warning that the changes could affect the "infrastructure of the modern internet," which largely relies on consistent standards across websites. The groups say the feature also hurts user experience by making advertising more "generic and less timely and useful."
Who could have predicted that consumer privacy would be a lesser concern than revenue flow to industry trade groups?
I bought a motorcycle helmet years ago, I still get ads for the helmet and others I researched. Fucking ads suck.
Unless Apple has a patent on it...
I have to manage enough other stuff and generally ignore cookies.
That said, cookies do show me what my wife is shopping for on Amazon, but I don't need to see that (it is funny to call her and implicitly talk about what's she's looking at, but that only worked a couple of times).
BlameBillCosby.com
This might just get me to use Safari.. The idea that advertisers have any right to users browsing habits is a concept that needs to be crushed.
If I have to see ads on a web site, my preference is that they are "generic and less timely and useful" since I'm going to ignore them anyway.
Popisms.com - Connecting pop culture
If "Every Major Advertising Group" hates this, then it shows that Apple is probably doing the right thing :-)
These guys killed "Do-Not-Track" in the US and made a joke of "cookie laws" in the EU. Looks like now they have found a stronger opponent.
I hadn't thought about it, but all major browsers allow users to block third-party cookies. If they would only make this the default behavior, it would do a world of good. And piss of the marketeers even more.
The only problem I ever have is when I want to read comments on a site that has outsource them to an external service like Disqus. But then, that's usually a good reason to skip the site entirely...
Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
Yes, Microsoft has a long history of enriching companies it works with to their mutual benefit.
When someone says, "Any fool can see
For all of the complaints people have about Apple, I feel the one thing that really sets them apart is their continuing effort to protect the user's privacy, even at the cost of software functionality. Siri has been lagging far behind other services, and at least some of it is due to her inability to track a user's preferences and habits. Apple is now introducing changes to the software that attempt to solve this by storing the information locally on the user's device so that government and law enforcement officials can't "demand" the data from Apple.
The idea that "consumers" want ads, much less that they want "timely and useful" ads is mistaken.
Ultimately though, I imagine it is good for Google, Facebook, and other advanced tracking providers; they can easily evade any tracking avoidance strategies... unless Apple decides to proxy everything via iCloud.
Apple doesn't subsidize their hardware by selling your private information to people.
Ever wonder why Google gives away Android?
My Other Computer Is A Data General Nova III.
So on my Mac I have Chrome, Firefox and Safari. Firefox has a whole heap of extensions that help keep things tight so I'll use that in the darker regions of the net, and Chrome works well with Google Docs so that's pretty much all I use it for. Safari is my main browser and that's what I'm using now. For all the hate Apple gets they did kill Flash and if they can kill cookies then all the better, especially on mobile.
As others have said, Google is an advertising company and for all the good things about Android, that's the main thing that keeps me away. You would think though that the rise of AdBlock, and do not track, and cookie controls would be enough to tell these advertisers that we don't like what they're doing? Don't they track that stuff?
"I have the attention span of a strobe lit goldfish, please get to the point quickly!"
As has been pointed out, Google is an advertising company cubed and won't do this unless they're forced to. But Mozilla and Firefox (and it's descendants) could, and I hope they will. All the more reason to switch (back) to Firefox.
If the advertising industry is opposed to this move, then I'm all for it. Fuck them.
The internet has ads?
The groups say the feature also hurts user experience by making advertising more "generic and less timely and useful."
If timely and useful advertising is so valuable to us users, then why are they giving it away for free?
They should make us pay a subscription fee to get timely and useful ads.
And seeing what percentage of the population that signs up to pay for "timely and useful" ads would indicate whether the advertisers are full of shit or not.
So everyone can hear how upset you are about a marginal loss of ability to stalk users as they move from website to website.
Phone the press... demand they cover this very important issue before it's too late. Better still.. launch a public awareness campaign... after all stalkers have rights and are people too.
I can't believe that the ad agencies are still trotting this out:
The groups say the feature also hurts user experience by making advertising more "generic and less timely and useful."
It's almost as if they actually believe that spying on everyone is a good thing. But then, they also say this:
collectively representing thousands of companies that responsibly participate in and shape today’s digital landscape
Judging by their use of the word "responsibly" there, I'm thinking that they simply don't understand what words mean.
To the Interactive Advertising Bureau, American Advertising Federation, the Association of National Advertisers, the 4A's and two others:
Your ads hurt my user experience.
Your tracking hurts my privacy.
Your infected ads hurt my computer.
Basically, you hurt people. If you disappear that will be a good thing.
"Grab them by the pussy" -- President of the United States of America
Apple has never given any indication that they'd be willing to fork over user data. They've fought harder for user privacy than any other company.
No, not because they are better human beings, but because *that's what their business model demands*.
They make money by selling physical devices and they are judged by how well those devices work. They have every financial incentive to improve the actual user experience.
I can't recall a single time in my entire internet history that I've ever purposefully clicked on an ad. Relevant or not, I blanket ignore them and always have. I've been trying to figure out how so many people use ads on the internets that they're a lucrative business.
I SEE them. Sometimes they're for things that I might actually want or use. But even when Google shows me exactly what I want in my search, I skip past the advertised slots. There's 1/100th of a penny they may not get, but there's a slightly weaker advertising profile they have on me.
This sig isn't original enough, it's time to come up with something witty...
It will be when most sites will become paywalled. More high quality sites will go down the drain because of the lack of funds, so they'll either have to block completely (there are some already doing this) or devolve into clickbait.
Fine by me. Most sites -- and especially sites that rely heavily on advertising -- aren't exactly indispensible to me. The ones that are, I'm already paying cash money to.
I think it's high time for the web to break its addiction to advertising. There are other, better, ways to pay operating costs, but none of them will be adopted as long as it's easy to do ads. I don't think that it's a coincidence that the overall quality of web offerings dropped when advertising became the predominant revenue model.
In an open letter expected to be published this afternoon, the groups describe the new standards as âoeopaque and arbitrary,â warning that the changes could affect the âoeinfrastructure of the modern internet,â which largely relies on consistent standards across websites.
When will people learn that what is provided to a web browser is merely a series of suggestions? The browser can take the suggestions, or discard them, and there is only so much the server side can do about it. I've seen website refuse to show content to browsers that block JavaScript or cookies but that's fine, I don't have to go to your site.
If their advertising model can be broken with a web browser that provides a feature that people want then perhaps they should change their advertising model. Disposing of cookies that want to exist until the end of time is a place to start. Ignoring autoplay requests would also be nice. If I want to watch your video then I'll hit the play button, thankyouverymuch.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
^^^
This really needs modding up. I am surprised the advertisers are even slightly concerned about cookies anymore when browser fingerprinting is a far more insidious and (currently) difficult to overcome privacy invasion for the end-user.
Since Google has persuaded almost everyone and their kid brother to run adsense code on the page, they have a canvas-fingerprint-trackable record of clickstream from page-to-page/site-to-site.
Tools like panopticlick and ipduh can give you an immediate sense of the problem, but trying to reduce it is tricky.
To sidestep fingerprinting pretty much means running the Tor browser or Firefox with Random Agent Spoofer, Decentraleyes, and a custom user.js set up with something like pyllyukko's prefs.
Meanwhile, Nabisco’s board of directors hold an emergency meeting to discuss the eminent demise of cookies and alternative confectionary marketing synergies.