Ask HN: Why hasn’t Apple created an ad-blocker in the system level for iOS?

Because Apple makes a shitton of money selling ads on iOS using its Ad ID.

Wait, did you seriously buy into their marketing BS about how they care about your privacy? Apple cares about making money, and that's it. They hamstrung Google and Meta on iOS simply so they would have a monopoly on advertising trackers on the platform.

How does Apple make money with this exactly?

They collect your data and sell ads to advertisers based on segments you fall into

What data do they collect? Where/how do they collect it? Are they mining my camera roll and notes or just my browser history? What about my text messages?

You don’t remember being asked to opt in?

Oh wait that’s because they created that rule for others

Go Settings -> Privacy -> Ads

>>You may still be served ads based on the criteria listed below. Your personal data is not provided to third parties.

Contextual Information On the App Store, relevant ads may be selected using your search query, information about the page you're viewing, or the app you're downloading. On Apple News and Stocks, the type of story you read may be used to select relevant ads. In addition, information about your device’s keyboard language settings, device type, OS version, mobile carrier, and connection type may be used to serve ads to you. If Location Services is enabled and you’ve granted permission to App Store, Apple News, or the Apple TV app to access your location, your location may be used to serve you geographically relevant ads in each respective app.

So basically absolutely nothing..

?????? The stories you read, the words you type

Apple is selling ads on its iAd platform, developers can opt to display them in apps to receive a percentage.

that used to be the case, but they discontinued iAd [1] about 7 years ago

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

I'm old enough now to have both been:

- the person rushing to comment about Apple because there's no way Apple would ever do that

- the person complaining about clearly rushed and motivated comments denying something obvious about Apple

Read up here: https://www.apple.com/legal/privacy/data/en/apple-advertisin...

i'm not denying anything. the comment i replied to stated that developers can use iAd to "display [ads] in apps to receive a percentage", which i pointed out is no longer the case.

in no way does my comment deny that there's other ads sold by apple (there are, obviously, e.g. app store search ads), but that's a completely separate issue from the specific iAd program the parent comment was talking about.

Ok, thank you

https://searchads.apple.com

It's also worth including https://support.apple.com/guide/adguide/welcome/icloud.

If Apple can convince your cohort, herein referred to as "you" for simplicity, that everyone else is toxic, then you'll only use Apple products. If you only use Apple products, Apple has higher quality user data about you than their direct and indirect competitors, herein referred to as "anyone else" or "others". This means Apple is uniquely positioned to sell more effectively targeted advertising to you than anyone else. This is especially true when Apple takes steps to improve privacy and security for you by making it more difficult for others to track you.

Apple said they cared about your privacy [from others, not from them]. To be clear, I'm trying to be objective. They're not selling individual personal data or recklessly leaking your data. They have promised to keep your data secure, and I think they've often lived up to that promise, especially compared to others (full disclosure: I own a multitude of Apple devices, but I'm not a fanatic).

However, the bottom line here is that using Apple products means you're putting a kind of centralized trust in Apple, and Apple never said they wouldn't take advantage of that trust where possible.

The same way anyone makes with ads, you charge people to show them to others. Apple's ads division alone has revenue in the same ballpark as Netflix. And now that they're cracking down so that first party is the only way to go, they will do really well.

Where are the ads on iOS?

Buy more icloud! Buy apple music! Buy appletv! Buy apps! Buy stuff in apps! Buy apple home! Buy apple clock! Buy apple airpods!

Where are you seeing this? I am a heavy apple user and dont see this. I do use those services, so maybe that stops adverts?

I dont really care except about the icloud popup on my mac which is annoying. But notifications on the phone mostly for apple music sometimes appletv, preinstalled app for the watch and for apple home products, some guide popped up for apple home once, theres a space in the pull down menu for apple home I probably removed it, mail campaigns for new products i probably unsubscribed. Obviously a lot of copywriting in the app store. Anyway I already have the ecosystem so to speak so its not expensive relatively to just buy icloud but I have no need for it. Music is worse than spotify. Appletv I watched only for "for all of mankind".

i've only ever seen ads for apple music and the new devices. everything else is an exaggeration imo

When my phone’s eligibility for renewing applecare approached I got a red bubble on my setting app and there was no way to say “yeah, I got it but stop telling me” except by waiting for the eligibility to run out.

Nearly every company does that. There’s nothing particularly nefarious about Apple here.

This may surprise you, but Microsoft, Google, Samsung, Amazon, and nearly every other major tech company use similar tactics to try to get you to use their other products.

Im not surprised I just answered in hyperbole because to not notice or pay attention to any ad surfaces or product placement in iOS, presumed if you use it often, I envy that level of mind filtering

I have an ipad, an iphone and a macbook pro, and the only time i get asked to “buy more icloud” is when i’m running low. I got an add to try out apple music once when i got a device and maybe whenever i get a device i get ads for subscriptions, once. You’re exaggerating

Yes I'm exaggerating I'm glad it was noticed I should make my next comment on this site sagely and confucian again rather than attempt hyperbole humor against the largest company in the world on a venture capitalist tech forum

I don’t know of any mainstream computer platforms with any less of that sort of advertising. No, Linux desktops and de-Googled Android phones are not mainstream. I don’t understand why Apple is being singled out here.

> Buy more icloud!

Except you can’t get more than 2tb which is a joke these days, esp when you share with 5 family members.

If you subscribe to Apple One you can add 2TB of iCloud+ to that for a total of 4TB. I agree that there should be a better way to do this though.

> https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT211784

Apple One Premier not available in my family country. Switching to my actual country disables TV/Music subscription sharing...

Besides all the Apple ads, Apple News is one such place where 3rd party ads exist prominently.

Apple does care about your privacy and has repeatedly proven so. You have to give credit where it’s due.

It certainly is good for business to appear to care about it

This is cynical to the point of uselessness. This is true of anything any business does. Customers still benefit even if a company is "only doing it for the money", or whatever.

> This is true of anything any business does.

Exactly, now you get it. It's especially true for FANG, which literally exists only for the purpose of squeezing as much money as possible out of us.

I'll give you an excellent data point on Google as an example. They don't care about click-fraud, at all, because it makes them money. In fact, it makes them so much money, I don't think realistically they could exist without it. When I was a teenager I ran a network of websites, one of which three of my web developer friends actually ran ads on frequently for their websites. We got attacked by a massive click-fraud botting attack (shady competitor wanted to get us kicked off of AdSense). Anyway, $843 of my earnings that month got flagged as click-fraud. $55 of that was actually ads that were run by my friends. While Google happily ripped that money away from me, my three friends never got anything refunded nor any indication that their ad buys were subject to click fraud.

FANG is a bunch of criminals.

Similar to openai and ai regulation. There’s good business in knocking out your competition by coincidentally picking up the right cause that does so.

Because Apple is not and never had been anti-advertising.

They've been promoting privacy but that's different.

And they run an entire ad platform in iOS. Why would they kill that entire line of business?

And for Apple, it's good to have lots of apps that can monetize themselves through advertising when they can't do it through purchases. Blocking ads would drive away a huge number of useful apps.

Duopoly collusion. Google's search deal with Apple is worth $billions per year.

Google gives Apple cut of Chrome iOS search revenue https://www.theregister.com/2023/02/17/google_apple_chrome_i...

I don’t understand how things like this are legal

$

Google has a similar search deal with Mozilla and Samsung.

If they wanted to prevent apps from showing ads on iOS, they’d change the App Store rules to ban it.

There’d be an exodus of apps. Followed by an exodus of users who couldn’t live without IG/FB/TikTok/Snapchat/Twitter/Reddit/etc.

They would be free to move to android. But we all know they wont. I wish it would happen.

If every popular app left iOS then yes I think you’d see a max exodus to android.

Like the ad situation is any better there. Googles mining you just as hard, maybe even more so.

One uses the actual search term and some vague user data like which country you are from to display ads in the goddamn AppStore and you compare it to a company that was built from solely ad money and are thinking about apple >= google or > ? It’s <<<<.

> Insider Intelligence, a market research firm, estimates that Apple brings in $4 billion a year from ads.

https://www.wired.com/story/apple-is-an-ad-company-now/

That would be pretty anti-competitive of them given they would have to unblock their own ads to make money

Apple is becoming an ad company it's why they made moves against Facebook.

> so if Apple created a system-level ad-blocker where in every video and every text, the OS itself filters out and blocks ads

I don't think this is technically feasible with current technology unless they limited phones to only displaying curated content.

A functioning society should be able to contain Ads and a right to privacy. I don’t think Apple wanted the privacy stance it developed. The stance developed as a reaction to what some companies saw as fair behavior to the unsuspecting.

They sell their own form of ads IIRC. But if the relationship between Google and apple soured, this would be a good FU apple could implement.

Microsoft could do this too but I guess the data is worth more than the customer gratitude.

It's probably legally infeasible, as well as bad for Apple's own advertisement business. They also can't make different rules for the same legal reasons.

How do you think Apple got the 3 trillion??

Spoiler: it's not because privacy or moral that they sell on their marketing. it's because of the lack of those.

Apple allows content blockers in Safari but not in apps because in part this encourages developers to build a native app to ensure ad revenue.

Apple makes money off ads. An organization this large simply cannot say no to a revenue stream that large

Since Apple controls the App Store they would likely be sued into oblivion.

https://www.wired.com/story/apple-is-an-ad-company-now/

https://fourweekmba.com/apple-revenue-breakdown/#:~:text=App...

From what I can tell, that’s $4B in Ad revenue and $394B total revenue. Definitely not anywhere near the ratio that other major tech companies have.