Linked List: February 16, 2022

Wednesday, 16 February 2022

Ron Amadeo: ‘Android’s Toothless “Privacy Sandbox” Fails to Answer iOS Tracking Limits’ ★

Ron Amadeo, writing at Ars Technica:

So while Google did not announce anything that will improve privacy today, it did hint at someday making a change. The blog post says, “we plan to support existing ads platform features for at least two years, and we intend to provide substantial notice ahead of any future changes.” Those “future changes” could theoretically improve privacy, but again, there is no commitment to do that. If anything, today’s blog post is a reassuring statement to advertisers that, while Apple blew up the mobile ad industry in 2021, Google is publicly committing to keep the cash flowing until at least 2024. [...]

Since Google is not making any privacy changes mandatory, it is basically asking advertising companies to voluntarily stop collecting data on users. If advertisers wanted to do that, they could make that change today. Advertisers don’t actually need to wait for a technical solution to be finished.

Again, we already know how the surveillance ad industry feels about voluntarily not tracking users.

If this “Android Privacy Sandbox” winds up as toothless as it sounds today, it’s just Google trying to look like they’re pro-privacy, not actually taking action to make Android more private for users.

Update: My takeaway is that Google is presenting this “Android Privacy Sandbox” — including just by giving it a name — as though they have announced a comprehensive plan to give Android users iOS-like (or better!) control over their own privacy from cross-application surveillance ad tech. But in fact all they’ve announced is a plan to create a plan.

Google: ‘Introducing the Privacy Sandbox on Android’ ★

Anthony Chavez, VP of product for Android at Google:

Today, we’re announcing a multi-year initiative to build the Privacy Sandbox on Android, with the goal of introducing new, more private advertising solutions. Specifically, these solutions will limit sharing of user data with third parties and operate without cross-app identifiers, including advertising ID. We’re also exploring technologies that reduce the potential for covert data collection, including safer ways for apps to integrate with advertising SDKs. [...]

We realize that other platforms have taken a different approach to ads privacy, bluntly restricting existing technologies used by developers and advertisers. We believe that — without first providing a privacy-preserving alternative path — such approaches can be ineffective and lead to worse outcomes for user privacy and developer businesses. [...] While we design, build and test these new solutions, we plan to support existing ads platform features for at least two years, and we intend to provide substantial notice ahead of any future changes.

Two years puts them around three years behind iOS, which implemented App Tracking Transparency (ATT) last year. Or maybe that’s just three years until Android jumps ahead of iOS on privacy guards against surveillance advertising, since ATT is the “blunt”, “ineffective” approach Google is attributing to “other platforms”. (I get it that big companies like Google and Apple will often go out of their way not to name each other in disparaging contexts, and that in general this practice comes across as couth and respectful, but in this case it’s almost comically obvious not just that they’re talking about Apple, but that they can only be talking about Apple. There are no other players in this space.)

There’s also an implication here that Apple didn’t give the companies who’d be affected by ATT sufficient notice before instituting the changes. And we all know who the primary “company” is: Facebook. I’d say Apple bent over backwards to give Facebook time, and how Facebook reacted is instructional.