Apple’s New Privacy Features Cause Billions of Losses

Right after Apple has introduced a new privacy feature that blocks tracking by the apps. It resulted in YouTube, Snapchat, and others losing almost $10 billion collectively.

Apple has rolled out a new feature that allows iOS 14.5 users to avoid being spied on for commercial purposes. And here’s how it works.

Every time when an application — be it a video editor or a coupon app — wants to track your habits, likes, GPS position, or online queries, IOS will alert you about that. Then, you will be prompted to shut down the “espionage” and continue using the app without being tracked.

This almost revolutionary feature caused true havoc. Platforms like YouTube, Facebook, and Snapchat began losing a fat portion of revenue that targeted ads would typically generate for them.

Facebook was especially articulate about Apple’s new policy, dedicating a whole new website and also criticizing Cupertino’s company, which resulted in claims that the small businesses will be the first to suffer from this “Draconian” innovation.

At the same time, social rights activists and regular users greet the new feature with enthusiasm. Gennie Gebhart from Electronic Frontier Foundation said that “This is a huge step in the right direction, if only because it’s making Facebook sweat.”

Seemingly, most of the users were happy to halt tracking. The buying activity, prompted by the in-app advertisements, significantly decreased. Among all else, this made Snapchat lose 25% of its stock market value.

At the same time, this poses a new problem. Many popular apps, who provide their features for free in exchange for this kind of data, may “build” more paywalls in the future to compensate for the lost profit.

Do you support Apple in its decision? Should Android also have this feature? Let us know in the comments!