{"text":[[{"start":13,"text":"Tech titans like to snipe at their rivals in private. "},{"start":16.042,"text":"Still, I was surprised by the ferocity with which one attacked a rival: “Facebook’s business model is not sustainable. "},{"start":22.759,"text":"Your users cannot be your product. ”"}],[{"start":25.86,"text":"As if to prove the point, Apple will soon make significant changes to iOS 14, its latest operating system, that will have a big impact on the more than $300bn digital advertising market. "},{"start":37.177,"text":"On average, every app downloaded from Apple’s App Store contains six trackers that can be used by Facebook, and others, to follow users around the web, collect data and target ads. "},{"start":47.032,"text":"This is one of the main mechanisms of surveillance capitalism, as author Shoshana Zuboff calls it, that is about to change. "}],[{"start":54.16,"text":"Apple, which has long championed the minimisation of data gathering, customer control and security, will present users with a routine, pop-up option to choose such tracking services on apps. "},{"start":64.689,"text":"The assumption is that many will not, changing the game for advertisers, developers and companies that have built their services off such tools. "},{"start":72.019,"text":"Facebook has been leading the voluble (and self-serving) opposition to Apple’s move, arguing that small businesses will be badly hit by these new rules. "},{"start":80.149,"text":"It has already been warning Wall Street that it will knock its business. "}],[{"start":84.11,"text":"It would be comforting to think that dynamic competition between the big tech companies is succeeding where laggardly regulation is largely failing. "},{"start":91.389,"text":"This may be only partly true, however. "}],[{"start":94.53,"text":"If consumers care enough, they can encourage a race to the top when it comes to privacy standards by switching between services and stimulating competitive tension. "},{"start":103.297,"text":"But, given the opacity and complexity of the adtech market and restricted consumer choice, it is not yet clear how Apple’s move will play out. "},{"start":111.12700000000001,"text":"It is a bit like shooting a bullet in a crowded gallery of mirrors; no one knows where the glass will fall. "}],[{"start":117.49000000000001,"text":"There are two concerns about Apple’s move: first, that it will not work; second, that it will work too well. "},{"start":123.55700000000002,"text":"As the Financial Times reported this week, Chinese companies appear to have developed a workaround to Apple’s tracking transparency initiative even before it has been launched. "},{"start":132.21200000000002,"text":"The state-backed China Advertising Association, boasting 2,000 members, has a new means of tracking and identifying iPhone users called CAID. "},{"start":140.342,"text":"Some of China’s biggest internet companies, including ByteDance and Tencent, are testing the tool. "}],[{"start":146.58,"text":"The Chinese workaround creates a dilemma for Apple. "},{"start":149.722,"text":"It seems unlikely to cut off all Chinese companies using CAID given the intermingling of commercial and political power. "},{"start":156.114,"text":"Yet it cannot turn a blind eye to such violations without encouraging similar efforts elsewhere. "}],[{"start":161.58,"text":"The second concern for Apple is whether the tightening of its privacy regime will only invite greater scrutiny of its market power by regulators. "},{"start":169.18400000000003,"text":"Between them, Apple and Google run the dominant operating systems for smartphones and the most popular web browsers, Safari and Chrome, as well as controlling their own app stores. "},{"start":178.702,"text":"The French authorities are already considering a complaint by France Digitale, representing more than 1,800 start-ups and investors, that Apple is itself collecting users’ data without their explicit permission. "}],[{"start":190.95000000000002,"text":"“If Apple cripples mobile advertising, then the App Store becomes the primary discovery point for apps again, and Apple decides how people use our iPhones,” Eric Seufert, a tech analyst, told the Stratechery site. "},{"start":202.829,"text":"“Apple is defining privacy as what benefits Apple. ”"}],[{"start":206.84000000000003,"text":"Regulators are also investigating Google, which has said it will disable third-party cookies used to track users’ browsing habits by 2022. "},{"start":214.73200000000003,"text":"This week, Texas and 14 other states added new claims to their antitrust lawsuit against Google, arguing that this latest move was anti-competitive because it raised barriers to entry and strengthened the company’s grip on the advertising market. "}],[{"start":227.91000000000003,"text":"A balance has to be found between enhanced privacy and restricted competition. "},{"start":232.46400000000003,"text":"The charge against the EU’s landmark three-year-old General Data Protection Regulation, for example, is that it is already obsolete and has only made it more difficult for start-up companies to comply with privacy regulations and challenge incumbents. "},{"start":245.21900000000002,"text":"It is commendable that Apple wants to give users more control, but that may have collateral costs for users. "},{"start":250.76200000000003,"text":"It is unsettling how Apple and Google are reinforcing the corporate walled gardens that already partition the internet. "}],[{"start":257.48,"text":"It will be a long and messy struggle to find the right balance. "},{"start":260.959,"text":"But given the stakes involved, it is worth persevering with this fight. "}],[{"start":264.59000000000003,"text":""}]],"url":"https://creatives.ftacademy.cn/album/35764-1616231030.mp3"}