from Hacker News

Apple's privacy push cost Meta $10B

by robteix on 2/4/22, 10:03 AM with 548 comments

  • by samwillis on 2/4/22, 10:49 AM

    As a rough datapoint, I run a consumer targeted e-commerce site. We ran a campaign before Christmas were we were selling a new product that was only marketed on Facebook, we are certain that (almost) all customers found it though that Facebook campaign. Facebook was only able to attribute about 50% of the sales to the ads, it should have been close to 100%. This then meant that Facebooks estimated CPA was effectively double what it actually was.

    Important to note about 60% of our customers are on an iOS device, which is a little higher than the global average but matches the market segment we are in in the UK.

    The situation improved after about 4 weeks, I believe Facebook now uses some "AI" to help with attribution on iOS, but it's somewhat difficult to be sure as by then we had other campaigns running.

    So, this will definitely be effecting marketers decision making process of where to allocate spend. It certainly made us more courteous about spending on Facebook.

  • by erikpukinskis on 2/4/22, 3:16 PM

    I remember when Facebook Platform came out. The super early version where you could embed your app on Facebook and engage with the social graph.

    I thought dang, this is smart. They’ll basically own the next level up the stack from the browser: they’ll own the “social chrome” of every application on the web.

    Although it devolved into spam, Facebook was a hot spot of weird social games for a while there. And every web dev was learning how to build Facebook apps. We wondered if we’d even really need a domain for much more than a landing page, if 99% of our engagement was going to come through Facebooks.

    And then they killed it because they wanted to own the entire experience inside Facebook. It became not a walled garden, but a walled flower pot.

    It always seemed short sighted to me. Yes, they lost control allowing third party apps in their frame. But didn’t they want to be a Microsoft and not a WordPerfect?

    Looking back, I wonder if it was a missed opportunity. They have to go try to be the metaverse because social never became a platform.

  • by d12bb on 2/4/22, 11:57 AM

    Nice how Zuck said $10bn in the analysts call with nothing to back it up, but the whole press jumps on it. Apple is not Facebook's problem, all they did was giving users a choice, which should have happened ages ago. So Facebook just says Apple kills our business without ever thinking that maybe users don't like the way they do business. If they did, they wouldn't opt out…

  • by alanlammiman on 2/4/22, 4:12 PM

    The problem isn't just Apple's action on IDFA. It's that Facebook seems to be so poorly managed on some fronts that its reactions, rather than mitigating problems, has caused further harm. For example - in a rushed effort to get their privacy issues in order, they are deactivating the live facebook integrations of customers based on cursory/mistaken/possibly machine-based readings of their privacy policies.

    They did that to us yesterday: https://shared-crater-f3a.notion.site/Facebook-is-Breaking-A...

    We spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on facebook app ads per month. We can deal with IDFA giving way to more aggregated attribution (we don't want to track individuals - we just want to measure if the ads we paid for led to sales). But facebook breaking our app in production because they can't be bothered doing their job properly is very serious. It can't be solved by reducing ad spend, only by removing their SDK from our app.

    If this is also happening to many other developers right now, that, more than the Q4 results or the IDFA issue itself, could be causing the drop in the share price.

    In fact, if you look at the Q4 results, the earnings miss was more because of growth in G&A (which grew by 3 percentage-points of revenue if I'm not mistaken) than because of a top-line slowdown. And if you read the comments as to what made G&A grow, it's 'legal costs'.

  • by isodev on 2/4/22, 11:18 AM

    All Apple did was give users the choice. Users choosing to deny Facebook the permission to share their data? That's entirely on Facebook.

  • by hollowdene on 2/4/22, 11:23 AM

    There's a whole ecosystem of businesses that rely on Facebook that are going to start hurting a lot over the next few years.

    I used to work at a publisher where 80% of their website traffic came from Facebook. They haven't seen audience growth in years and their audience is skewing older and older, which is bad for their advertising business

    Businesses like that are going to get steadily squeezed both by Facebook's declining audience share and Facebook's own efforts to change what people see.

  • by tromp on 2/4/22, 10:55 AM

    > But last year, citing privacy concerns, Apple turned off IDFA by default and forced apps to ask people if they want to be tracked. It seems most do not: a study in December by AppsFlyer, an ad-tech company, suggested that 54% of Apple users who saw the prompt opted out.

    Hard to believe that nearly half of all people is ok with being tracked...

  • by paxys on 2/4/22, 6:34 PM

    Snap is still somehow up 50% today. Google is similarly doing great. The problem is more on Facebook's end than Apple's. TikTok did way more damage than Apple ever could.

  • by skizm on 2/4/22, 3:16 PM

    Facebook's revenue up 35% year over year: -26% (P/E ~16)

    Amazon's revenue up 15% year over year: +12% (P/E 60+)

    I don't get the stock market. Facebook can simply turn on billions in revenue whenever they want still with WhatsApp, which has north of 2 billion MAU, and has not been monetized at all yet. Facebook is a reverse meme stock.

  • by mojuba on 2/4/22, 10:27 AM

    I'm going to ask the same question here:

    If I run a Facebook ad campaign for my app and given that Apple already provides the SKAdNetwork attribution mechanism, does enabling IDFA benefit my app, or it benefits only Facebook? Marketing people are trying to convince me IDFA is important for ad efficiency and thus should be enabled (with the spooky ATT popup in the beginning), but something is telling me it's not. I might be wrong and would really like to know.

  • by mojuba on 2/4/22, 10:18 AM

  • by sjs382 on 2/4/22, 2:16 PM

    Alternatively, "How Apple Closed the Privacy Hole that Facebook Was Exploiting to the Tune of $10bn"

  • by scim-knox-twox on 2/4/22, 11:10 AM

    > For years, Apple helped by offering an “identifier for advertisers” (IDFA), giving advertisers a way to track people’s behaviour on its devices. (...) But last year, citing privacy concerns, Apple turned off IDFA by default and forced apps to ask people if they want to be tracked.

    And everyone praised Apple for it. But if Apple really care about privacy, they'd never allowed for IDFA in the first place…

    > Google will soon offer most users of Android, its mobile operating system, the ability to opt out of ad tracking.

    I'll believe it when they pass some independent audits from EU countries xD

  • by zahma on 2/4/22, 11:49 AM

    Apple knows where the future of technology is going, and Meta is getting in the way. Meta, appropriately renamed to reflect the trend toward augmented and virtual reality, would eventually become a threat to Apple’s walled garden business model. Apple gives lip service to privacy so long as it attracts users to their platform. However the moment we’re in is when the their invasion of privacy is meant to benefit their vision for keeping a customer totally content from home, to work, to play; they have a service for everything, and the data with which they have determined hidden markets, pain points, and markets of desire is coming at a cost for Facebook/Meta.

    In the future, whether that’s 5, 10, or 20 years, the biggest companies will produce their own platforms of walled garden experiences. Meta isn’t there yet and has suffered a setback, but the reports that Meta is trying to poach Apple devs is telling about where this is all headed. The “metaverse” is nascent and mockable, but my kid will probably grow up in it just like I grew up on AIM, chat rooms, and texting.

  • by intrasight on 2/4/22, 1:27 PM

    FB is one of the most developer hostile platforms that I've worked with. For example, their API tokens expire in 60 days, so users of automated reporting tools are constantly having to re-grant. Why? No good reason. And the documentation is garbage. FB can't blame Apple or anyone else for those failings. They should fix the things that are under their own control.

  • by 1024core on 2/4/22, 5:28 PM

  • by yalogin on 2/4/22, 3:38 PM

    I haven't followed the whole apple privacy push and how it impacted advertising. However, isn't everyone always logged into Facebook? If so they already know who is using it and any interaction will tell them exactly who used it. How does the Apple's platform level change effect them? Am I missing something?

  • by EGreg on 2/4/22, 3:31 PM

    I think their Metaverse push was actually a great way for rats to escape a sinking ship ... by finding a new ship!

    Facebook just could never really capture the whole "facilitating real world interactions" thing, and for most people it became simply a way to maintain an online avatar / identity, argue about politics, comment on cat memes, and otherwise waste time in cyberspace. That's what they're good at, and maybe with the metaverse they can at least make people more productive with that.

    Now there are BENEFITS to MetaVerse. Less usage of fossil fuels. Facebook also facilitated conversations between people around the world, that would otherwise not meet. But its centralized nature and limited flexibility held back the whole space.

    But when it comes to making plans in real life, forming relationships, deal flow etc. you need open source software like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pZ1O_gmPneI

  • by annoyingnoob on 2/4/22, 7:27 PM

    If you were to physically track someone and catalog everything they do in meatspace, we'd call that stalking. Why is that behavior acceptable when done by software? It should not be okay, its still stalking - no matter your intentions or end goals.

  • by btdmaster on 2/4/22, 4:29 PM

    This "privacy push" is only a change with respect to IDFA -- something specifically built by Apple to compete with Google's advertising ID. Opting out system-wide was already possible, but unsurprisingly its existence is not something that's well-known since Apple has established themselves as Goddess of Privacy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Identifier_for_Advertisers.

    To me, this is closer to "Apple spying technology becomes opt-in and no one uses it anymore".

  • by asiachick on 2/4/22, 9:54 PM

    I find it sad that Google's response to privacy is FLoC / Topics API instead of just embracing privacy like Apple. I know Google is an ad company. Still, they mostly control both Android and Chrome which means if they followed Apple's example on privacy they wouldn't be losing much of competitive advantage because if both Android and Chrome were privacy oriented that means there'd be no OS where some competitor could track. In other words, it still seems like they'd be #1 if they switched to content based ads and context (search) but zero tracking.

  • by darthrupert on 2/6/22, 8:07 AM

    If you think that manipulating people is evil, then ads are evil and hence Meta and Alphabet are evil.

    If you think that some manipulation is evil, then it's about how they manipulate and on which issues. Perhaps manipulating people to buy something is ok but manipulating them to harm the society (something which Meta is clearly guilty of) is not. Then these companies could turn good if they just turned down a lot of their profit. Which of course won't happen because as companies their prime directive is to make money.

    If you think that all manipulation is ok then your opinion should be dismissed.

  • by citizenpaul on 2/5/22, 1:44 AM

    Its 100% because FB/meta is a growth stock and they lost users. This made all the finance projections break and institutions had th liquidate based on their new projections. That is how finance works at scale.

  • by honkycat on 2/4/22, 9:26 PM

    There was a great tweet today: https://mobile.twitter.com/kevinroose/status/148927407968513...

    Kevin Roose: Can't imagine why this platform is shrinking

    Facebook top ten: The top-performing link posts by U.S. Facebook pages in the last 24 hours are from:

    1. Breitbart 2. Ben Shapiro 3. Dan Bongino 4. NPR 5. Ben Shapiro 6. Ben Shapiro 7. Ben Shapiro 8. Steven Crowder 9. Ben Shapiro 10. Franklin Graham

    I won't touch the platform anymore. It's so out of touch.

  • by stjohnswarts on 2/4/22, 6:30 PM

    Looks like I jumped on the iPhone bandwagon just in time to cost facebook some money! (got my iphone ~1.5 yrs ago). What I don't get is why iphone needs to scan your phone at all. I mean they literally have a treasure trove of information of most of their users, why do they need to sell that? Why don't they just act use the megatons of info they already have on you from scanning your page and your messages to other users? They should be rolling in ad revenue without needing to spy on data on phones.

  • by sixhobbits on 2/4/22, 12:34 PM

    Maybe off topic but super ironic that I had managed to read the first sentence

    "POP-UP NOTIFICATIONS are often annoying."

    and then got punched in the face by a huge cookie popup from Economist

  • by andrei_says_ on 2/4/22, 10:45 PM

    Can we say that this puts a value on the non-consensual privacy violations that facebook’s business model depends on?

  • by dmitriid on 2/4/22, 8:58 PM

    > Apple's privacy push cost Meta $10B

    It's a false narrative that Facebook is pushing out: "It' snot us that are bad, it's this big bad Apple who are hurting our poor business".

  • by sebow on 2/4/22, 7:28 PM

    Correction: Apple's war on FB/Meta/Zucc cost Meta $10B.

    Let's not disingenuously pretend they did it out their own good hearts and for people's privacy: they did not. Also more people overly attribute this loss of Meta to Apple measure's than general Meta trends.Meta's rebranding, dystopian vision about the future and it's anti-society effects though their business model which promotes less trust in the population is what brings up this number, not entirely Apple, not entirely Android.Then again outlets and people who do these kind of oversimplifications might aswell do it for sensationalism, since we need the same people to be explained the truth when something changes.

  • by vincentmarle on 2/4/22, 1:20 PM

    As the Dutch say: a cat that is backed into a corner, makes unpredictable jumps. And Zuckerberg is one really smart cat, with a lot of money at his disposal. So I wouldn’t rule him out yet.

  • by eric4smith on 2/4/22, 12:18 PM

    Lies.

    Don’t you all see it? Facebook has been declining over the past year and this is a convenient way to blame someone - anyone.

    Let’s face it, what are your friends all using now? That’s right - video - YouTube and TikTok.

    Facebook had no answer for video and thus lost a lot of eyeballs.

    Instagram is a poor clone of TikTok and most people just repost their popular TikTok videos on Instagram reels anyway - hardly any original videos show up there.

    As the world transitions to short form video even YouTube is going to feel the pinch.

    Don’t you notice every one of your favorite content creators starting “clip” channels which are blowing up with YouTube shorts and reposts to TikTok?

    Facebook is beginning its long inevitable decline. Who knows if it will accelerate or just be a slow death?

    And Zuck is very smart. The moment I saw the rebrand to Meta I knew that he saw this day coming perhaps years ago. He knows the next frontier is the meta verse and so he’s trying to make Facebook be the epicenter of it.

    Who knows if it will work. But this has nothing if anything to do with Apple. And everything to do with the long term trends of history… or if you will, psychohistory.

  • by gigatexal on 2/4/22, 9:35 PM

    How can they make that number 10x bigger hrmm

  • by lvl100 on 2/4/22, 11:44 AM

    What I don’t understand is why is this hitting them now? Those privacy features were turned on for awhile.

  • by calebm on 2/4/22, 8:52 PM

    This is quantitative proof that Facebook is extracting value directly from people's private data.

  • by martini333 on 2/4/22, 5:00 PM

    Why is every journalist blaming Apple's Privacy. Like, use your brains, get a life.

  • by bigyellow on 2/4/22, 4:02 PM

    What's Meta? You mean Facecrook, the spying and surveillance network?

  • by ece on 2/5/22, 6:05 AM

    Twitter killed Vine.

  • by 00000000005 on 2/4/22, 11:06 AM

    Facebook failed to pay the big money to Apple that they should have been paying for years.

    If Zuck had been handing Apple $5,000,000,000 per year as google does, then Apple would never have kneecapped Facebook.

    Larry and Sergei know how the protection racket works. You pay your dues to the local mob, you get to do business in their street corners.

    What do google pay Apple $5b for? Ummm… to be in the search of Safari. Yeah right. They all know google simply pays Apple because they don’t want no trouble, so they say “Safari”, write a huge cheque, and google gets to keep doing business in Apple devices.

    Tim is The Godfather. He who owns the platform owns the city. Everyone must respect and pay their dues, if they want to do business in this city.

    Apple has sent Facebook to sleep with the fishes because zuck didn’t show no respect and didn’t pay no dues.

  • by firechickenbird on 2/4/22, 10:57 AM

    -$10bn is not enough. They are still able to read my brain somehow

  • by matheusmoreira on 2/4/22, 10:19 AM

    Apple probably has the power to kill the advertising industry. Wish it would use its gatekeeper position to do good for once.