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Apple declined to implement 16 Web APIs in Safari due to privacy concerns

(www.zdnet.com)
428 points coronadisaster | 4 comments | 29 Jun 20 10:16 UTC | HN request time: 0.717s | source
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philistine ◴[29 Jun 20 13:03 UTC] No.23677180[source]▶
I’ve heard so many people complain on HN about Safari’s lack of support for APIs. Before now, we didn’t have a public justification why Apple refused to implement them. Now we know.

The price of a Safari user in the ad market is going down, and it’s exactly what should be happening. I’m very happy with Apple.

https://9to5mac.com/2019/12/09/apple-safari-privacy-feature-...

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1. whoopdedo ◴[29 Jun 20 13:57 UTC] No.23677632[source]▶
There's an unintended consequence in this, though. Which is that if you don't use an ad blocker you'll see the lowest cost, and thus lowest quality of ads. So in addition to keeping a private presence you're required to use an ad blocker. And services which have built their business around being ad-supported will see you as a deadbeat. Which motivates them to be more aggressive in upselling you, or denying service if you don't whitelist their ads.
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2. Wowfunhappy ◴[29 Jun 20 14:00 UTC] No.23677668[source]▶
> Which is that if you don't use an ad blocker you'll see the lowest cost, and thus lowest quality of ads.

Is this a thing? Do people in demographics which are less appealing to advertisers also see more intrusive ads?

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3. philistine ◴[29 Jun 20 16:10 UTC] No.23678891[source]▶
To me, intrusive ads mean ads which intrude on my privacy. So if you use Safari, no, you will not see more intrusive ads, quite the contrary.

Those ads might be terrible chum bucket stuff, but they would not be intruding into your privacy.

4. reaperducer ◴[29 Jun 20 18:05 UTC] No.23680318[source]▶
Which is that if you don't use an ad blocker you'll see the lowest cost, and thus lowest quality of ads

I haven't worked with web ads in a while, but from what I remember when I did, people with little data on file with the advertising networks got more ads, and better ads, because there was no record of them having seen the high-paying ads already.

The longer you surfed, and the longer you were tracked, the lower quality the ads became.

Again, I haven't been in this arena for a while, but that was true at the time, as told to me by the president of one of the larger non-FAANG advertising networks, over coffee.

But it's all a red herring anyway, isn't it? Are there any people out there saying, "I wish there was a way to give Google more information about me so that I can see better quality ads!"