A bombshell has dropped on the fragile truce between Apple and Facebook. The device is called App Tracking Transparency (ATT) which allows the iPhone user to deny his tracking while using an app. We have already dealt with the characteristics of this one new function of the Apple operating system (iOS) for mobile devices and its consequences on the way we do business online.
Apple touted the ATT as a trump card for privacy. But for Facebook is not so happy. In reality it is a torpedo for the engine room of its economic system, i.e. the collection of users' personal data through third-party applications.
There have been some important and also surprising developments.
In a recent post on The Daily podcast, Mike Isaac, the New York Times technology correspondent from Silicon Valley, raised the central question of this dispute: "Do people really care about privacy?" The answer is important for the future of this industry and will redefine the power relations between Big Techs in a market that will remain hypercompetitive and unregulated.
94% choose privacy
As iPhone users have started using the ATT, to the surprise of many, they have learned that there is a very strong "desire for privacy" to use the words of a editorial of the "New York Times" by Greg Besinger. Besigner himself defines this desire as “Shocking!”.
And here is what is shocking for many observers. It is that only 6 percent of US iPhone users have chosen the option that allows companies like Facebook, and its many imitators, to collect data about them and sell it to advertisers. The figure rises to 15% globally. These are iPhone owners, therefore users of a certain type and certainly a minority compared to smartphone owners.
Facebook is known to track users' every minute online movement in order to offer advertisers highly detailed personal information that media centers buy at a higher price to build targeted advertising. The economic game is played here.
One also wonders what users gain from their tracking: nothing, apart from the certainty of being able to continue to use the services that offer the zero euro vs. data model for free.
An unequal exchange? For iPhone users, yes. This is a good sign for those who care about privacy and also the future of our communities.
Shoshana Zuboff spoke
Above all, for the first time there was a clear manifestation of people's thinking, understood as a mass of users of a technological service. This thought is that data has value. Shoshana Zuboff, the Harvard scholar of the new economy, has been preaching this for some time.
Shoshana Zuboff is the author of a very important and very present book in the debate on these topics, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, published in Italy by Luiss. We have already dealt with the author and the book and therefore we refer to that contribution.
A few days ago in the “New York Times” Zuboff, right after the release of the App Tracking Transparency, gave an interview to Lauren Jackson, editor of the postcast “The Daily”. We report extensive excerpts from this conversation below.
What App Tracking Transparency does and doesn't
Lauren Jackson: In your book, you describe personal data as the primary economic source for platforms like Facebook that monetize the ins and outs of our digital lives. How significant is Apple's action in limiting this power?
Shoshana Zuboff: “It's significant. But what I think is that many people reading the headlines maybe don't understand what App Tracking Transparency really does on their iPhone. What it does is limit the tracking implemented by applications such as Facebook through the vehicle of third-party applications. What App Tracking Transparency doesn't do, however, is prevent the direct tracking of an application like Facebook, which is the big whale in this discussion. This is a massive surveillance empire worth hundreds and hundreds of billions of dollars. But we just call it an app. And App Tracking has no influence over the ability of Facebook, or any other application, to continue tracking users, collecting every aspect of their behavior, activity, thoughts and feelings. So, yes, this is a big step forward from the current situation, especially as it limits an app's ability to get its hands on its users' rich data mine. That is, it limits its ability to illegitimately convert our lives into data, which it then declares to be its exclusive property”.
Do you think this is a turning point?
“It's too early to tell. I think this pushes Apple towards a crossroads, that is, towards a new level of intensity in the action aimed at safeguarding its customers”.
The destruction of privacy
Why is it important to discuss whether these big tech companies have the right to mine personal data for profit?
“When we allow these companies to amass such a huge amount of human-generated data, it means we are changing the nature of our society. Because, first of all, we're allowing it to generate these huge knowledge asymmetries. Instead of having entered the golden age of the democratization of knowledge, this age has turned into something very different from what we were aiming for. The last 20 years have seen, especially the last decade, the destruction of privacy. And in fact, what's happened is that we've gotten to a point where the big tech companies know so much about us that they've created any targeting mechanism. We're not just talking about targeted advertisements. We are talking about subliminal stimuli, psychological micro-targeting, real-time rewards and punishments, algorithmic recommendation tools and engineered social control dynamics. We have seen the scourge of misinformation on social media. We have seen this from the huge number of needless Covid deaths from disinformation campaigns and we have seen it in the role that social media played in producing the January 6 sedition. It's important for people to understand that these are all connected dots within a pattern. And the pattern is called knowledge becoming power.
Apple is not the government
Apple today has more than a billion active iPhone users. Are you concerned about the company's growing control over our means of accessing information?
“This worries me deeply. Apple is the richest and most powerful company in modern history, but perhaps also in the entire history of capitalism. And Apple now exercises unilateral, essentially total control over critical communications infrastructure through complete dominance of the operating system of its smartphones and other devices. I think it's important that people understand that Apple is not the government. Apple is a company. It's a corporation. And in a corporation, CEOs come and go, boards of directors change, today it is like this, tomorrow who knows. There are business cycles and there are market crises. Today, Apple can look at privacy with the goal of preserving it. And in a year, we may meet again to discuss how Apple reneged on all privacy values because there was a crisis to deal with, with a new CEO and a different board of directors. Apple can completely change position."
How can Apple renege on its motto that “privacy is a basic human right”?
“A data scientist told me the other day, 'Look, the underlying rule of all software and apps designed today is data collection.' For all intents and purposes, every app is designed to engage in surveillance. Now, Apple still makes the majority of its revenues through sales of iPhones and other devices. However, a growing portion of its revenue comes from services, and a large chunk of services is from application sales. So while he's not a surveillance capitalist, he's a powerful enabler. He is in fact an accomplice to the crimes perpetrated by surveillance capitalism. And, of course, there are situations where Apple and Mr Cook violate the very principles they so eloquently claim to uphold. Apple's policy in China is obviously a stark example of this. Apple's relationship with Google is another. So Apple is deeply compromised. The question on my mind is: now that Mr Cook is in the spotlight, which he has turned on to illuminate himself and his society, will he really dress up as a defender of privacy, or will he continue to be a kind of Harlequin servant of two masters, playing at both tables?”.
What we have to expect from Apple
Just to clarify, do you think Apple is actually interested in preserving privacy, or do you think the company introduces updates like App Tracking Transparency to gain a competitive edge over competitors?
“I don't think we should ever expect a private company to do anything other than for its own benefit. Corporations are, by their nature, selfish. Apple has already made it clear that it is looking for a way to expand its advertising model, which is different from online targeted advertising. It is defining the elements of an alternative advertising paradigm. There is an opportunity for this new paradigm to converge with privacy values and move away from the surreptitious large-scale collection of human-generated data."
What would you like Apple to do?
"This is a historic opportunity for Mr Cook and Apple to say, 'People, we're about to become the hub of an alternative ecosystem.' Indeed this alternative ecosystem is waiting for a guide. Apple is the company that can provide this guide and can immediately form alliances with other large, medium and even small companies to found an ecosystem in which the entire economic model is not based on data collection. Investors are ready for this step, because investors want to hold off the regulation that is about to hit the bottom line of surveillance capitalism. And that means Apple has a golden opportunity to get started, right from its App store. Most application vendors feel they have a responsibility to develop products that are secure. Apple could finally take responsibility for what resides on its App Store and say that there will be room only for applications that respect the principles of privacy protection. It can help developers with alternative monetization models. May work with investors to develop alternative investment models. Apple could work with lawmakers, providing people and know-how so that lawmakers and their staffs have an adequate understanding of the type of actions to be taken.
What about governments?
How do you see the regulatory profiles that are emerging at the moment?
“I judge them very well. What the EU is doing is taking us towards the regulatory model we need which is something we need to achieve in this decade or the third decade of the digital century. Over the last few years, you know, we've just backed away and seen the embarrassing disadvantage of politics in comparison with tech companies. Well, those situations have really changed. In March, we first saw members of Congress questioning the economic model of the data business and the power it brings for companies. And for the first time, we've heard them say that they understand that information itself is a byproduct of that model. And this pattern will finally be put to an end."
Apple products are expensive. There is a privacy premium that only some can afford.
“Android, of course, is by far the dominant system in most countries. There are people who cannot afford the privacy of iPhone users. And the idea of privacy as a luxury is a deeply unbearable idea”.
Pandemic and data
Can you talk about how the pandemic has increased the power of these tech companies to collect data? What is happening now with distance learning is truly frightening.
“The huge irony here is that the outbreak of the pandemic coincided with the time the New Mexico Attorney General filed a class-action lawsuit against Google Classroom, citing its illegal practices of mining data from the classroom activity of children. Now there's this whole industry called school safety technology. And then another area called proctoring systems. An industry made up of those companies that, for profit, stick to Google Classroom. When you dig into what these so-called security systems — paid for by school districts — do, you find that they track everything: social media notifications, email files, chats, posts, messages, documents , in short, everything that has to do with remote school activities. In addition, control systems are implementing facial recognition. They analyze the boys' gaze and eye movements to check for attention. They are producing what they call “suspicion scores”. They're also checking the microphones. They're checking the cameras. They say that the cameras record the surroundings and transmit the results of this surveillance action to the supervisor. And the students and their families have no say in the matter because they can't even access the data. They are faced with a fait accompli and cannot even intervene in the matter of keeping or sharing this data with third parties. Companies can do with it what they want."
During the pandemic, this data collection has touched nearly every aspect of our lives, from remote work to school to socializing. Does it seem to you that this ubiquity is somehow an accepted fact?
“I feel this ubiquity can become a vehicle for spreading resistance to this state of affairs. Accurate opinion polls show that the pandemic has not brought about the end of the “techlash”, that is, of the reaction to the excessive power of the big technological companies. This trend is a confirmation of my hypothesis that the more we are exposed and addicted to surveillance, the more resistance, aversion and rejection of surveillance capitalism develops”.
From: Shoshana Zuboff Explains Why You Should Care About Privacy, by Lauren Jackson, The New York Times, May 21, 2021
