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Comment by coldcode | Hacker News Reader

The problem is people want "total privacy" but also want everything free. Advertising pays for the latter but people decry both. IDFA is there for advertisers to use without being able to explicitly identify the user but still provide some measure of knowledge to present ads more than random. Once it's no longer opt out, I doubt anyone turns it on.

Eventually everything on the web will require payment without there being a universally supported payment method, which is what should be the solution everyone is working on (read an article, pay 1¢ out of a fund you provide under your control for example). But instead we get ranting about privacy. Shouldn't HN discussions be about finding a better way rather than ranting?

My programming blog used to get 300,000 readers a year, which would have netted me $3K a year at 1¢. I had too much work and gave had to give it up a couple years ago.

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There is no implicit social contract on the web that we trade privacy for free access.

Someone doesn't want to pay to read your blog, what do you do? Allow shady third parties to install trackers on your readers' browsers to monitor what they are doing, without them really knowing nor understanding the long term consequences? I don't know about that...

Blogs are probably not a good example. There are so many useful services people are used to have for free on the internet, which will need to be paid without ads. Most of those could be subscription-based though. As for blogs—IMO articles that are written for money aren’t blogs, they are just old-school magazine articles that happen to be on the internet. So having them in a subscription-based closed platform seems appropriate.

The IDFA is specifically designed to prevent it from being used to monitor users behaviour across apps and sites.

how does that work? if I collect a unique identifier on two different sites how am I prevented from connecting the dots?

> The problem is people want "total privacy" but also want everything free. Advertising pays for the latter but people decry both. IDFA is there for advertisers to use without being able to explicitly identify the user but still provide some measure of knowledge to present ads more than random. Once it's no longer opt out, I doubt anyone turns it on.

Do advertisers pay Apple for the use of IDFA?

Do I pay Apple for the phone?

You are saying people should pay for stuff OR get their data sold.

Where can I get my free iPhone?

You paid for your computer, too, and Facebook, Google, and many other companies track that.

It's not about the price of the phone. It's about the price of the services you get online—everything from Facebook to HackerNews.

Some of these free websites are subsidized by other means (like YCombinator itself). Some are funded by subscription, with a partial paywall that lets you access a portion of their content free. Others are funded by gathering your data and selling it to advertisers.

Stop treating Apple as if they're the ones who should be responsible for everything under the sun, just because they make iPhones (and truckloads of money).

Seems like we should outlaw or severely limit one of those business models.

> You paid for your computer, too, and Facebook, Google, and many other companies track that.

To my knowledge neither Gigabyte or Intel (though TPM etc has other issues) pre-installed ad tracking in my system that I can't remove.

It's entirely about the price of the phone, if the thing I paid for is tracking me for ads.

Whether I use free web services that sell my data on my computer or not is, while interesting, a completely separate issue.

The New York Times has a paid subscription AND targeted advertisements AND trackers AND sells your information to third parties. If we want these practices to stop, they need to be made illegal.

I hardly call the €800 I paid for my phone 'free'. I should not be tracked at that price.

Apple does not track you. You can pay your €800 and not be tracked.

It is when you choose to install apps by third parties that the IDFA may be used.

The IDFA is also specifically designed so that it can not be used to track you across apps and sites, but only for limited cases by one vendor.

The property owner does not track you. You can pay your $2000/month and not be tracked.

It is when you choose to have a pizza delivered to you, or a package sent to you by third parties that hidden cameras overlooking your bed, your kitchen, and your toilet, may be used.

The camera is also specifically designed so that it cannot be used to track you across other buildings, but only for limited cases by one vendor.

There is not much evidence that invasive targeted ads are any better than traditional advertising.

There were plenty of free things and advertisements worked fine before targeting was invented.

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