Probably people working in the ads industry or facebook or amazon... makes quite a lot of people!

Joke aside, I believe most people don't understand what this iOS popup wants from them: for most average users, it's another annoying popup that their device shows them and they don't really know what it means or what option they should choose (like the location ones, networking ones, bluetooth, ...). It happens a lot with the older generation, but even as a tech person I sometimes just don't know what is the right choice.

So it's so easy for someone to choose the "wrong" option, when it's presented with too few information or at a wrong time, like refusing the location service and then Waze doesn't work, because they just don't know they have to allow it.

I believe these choices should be handled by Apple through the store and not by the users: if the app is doing something shady with ads or location, the app should be disabled before it reaches the user's device; the user shouldn't have to "know" those things, the user has no way to check or validate that the usage is legitimate.

The user most definitively has to know these things. Your argument is a race to the bottom I think.

We will end up with devices where the user has to know nothing, cannot do anything and is lazy and easily led.

Just as moving yourself around on a bike is healthier than planting your ass in your car, so is thinking for yourself and _once_ in your life taking the time to figure out what that whole location sharing thing actually means.

Virtually every major consumer-targeted appliance or online service these days is like you describe.

It's a side effect of eliminating friction when interacting with the product. Having to stop and read manuals or reflect or such is a big no-no and interferes with "engagement".

And it's wildly successful and common to cater to and foster intellectual laziness instead of, say, furthering education or individual mündigkeit.

Also, what rock do you live under? I want to join you.

Or, maybe all these “lazy normies” are just busy with things like friends, family, work and their community...so they don’t really care if X company is able to do better ad targeting.

But sure, you guys have fun living under your rock and being super educated on the nuances of mobile ad targeting technology. The rest of us idiots will waste our time doing intellectually lazy things like spending time with our kids and living in the real world.

You've picked the wrong site/time to invoke civic ideals wrt (digital) technology; that was a thing of the 90s.

Too many conflicting interests have built up..

I get your point as a tech person, but really, have you ever had this issue with your parents and iOS devices these days? I mean even most 30-something people don't know what those choices are about, that Whatsapp is worse than Signal...

Maybe there should be something like a "root" or "developer" setting that can be enabled for advanced users, but for the average person the default for all this must be the best possible option already and they don't need to worry about it.

I mean sure IOS is hassle free and all that, but on IOS you're also a computational serf, computing at the whims of your apple overlords.

I've thought one member of my family to setup their own wireless access point. And they can reliably solve most 'the internet does not work' problems on their own now. This member used to confuse the explorer.exe window with a picture of an explorer.exe window in internet explorer, with predictable results (at the time)...

I'd rather live in the latter world than the former, time will tell if more people agree with me.

> We will end up with devices where the user has to know nothing, cannot do anything and is lazy and easily led.

Sounds like a good summary for iPhone.

I do quite a lot with my iPhone. So do others I know. One of the most important things I do is Facetime with grandparents and aunts and uncles.

> I believe these choices should be handled by Apple through the store and not by the users: if the app is doing something shady with ads or location, the app should be disabled before it reaches the user's device; the user shouldn't have to "know" those things, the user has no way to check…

They do screen out nefarious tracking to the extent that they can detect it.

This choice is about consensual tracking.

I think users ultimately do have to know something about these things.

I mean, if you accidentally choose the wrong option you can just go fix it in settings. I do this all the time when downloading new apps, my default is declining everything and then something usually breaks (like location on Waze) and then I go fix it.

Incredibly mild inconvenience for the benefit of having the default option be not tracking me unless I specifically allow it.

You and I can find probably the option, but I have had enough experience with people who have something broken and don't have a clue why or what to do. We are used to go through menus, system Settings, commandline options, ... but that's really only us, tech people on hn.

If you present two buttons, one being "Give me $10" and the other being "Debit me $10", you'll probably get 3% pressing the debit button. Especially on a mobile device.

I saw an app prefix the prompt to allow tracking with a similar-looking pop-up that said something like "please press allow on this next step ...". That pop-up only had one button, saying "Allow", then the actual pop-up asking to allow tracking came up after that.

This comment on TFA might provide some insight:

> I’ve chosen be the 4% of population. I prefer to say to every app “ask not to track” and see what apps are currently trying to track users.

Smart, but a bit misguided. In iOS Settings>Privacy>Tracking the text below the toggle for “Allow Apps to Request to Track” says:

> Allow apps to ask to track your activity across other companies’ apps and websites. Apps that don’t ask may still try to track your activity.

I toggled mine on to see which apps would ask to track. My phone says something different than what you've quoted there:

> "Allow apps to ask to track your activity across other companies' apps and websites"

I enable it on purpose. I like having more relevant ads, why would I want them to show me crappy untargeted ads instead?

What happened to the days when you could be asked about your interests and you would get ads based on that, rather than voyeuristically watching your every move to predict what your next fix will be?

My attitude here is that they are welcome to target me based on the data I submitted to facebook directly and my interactions with facebook's website. Are the things I Like and the people I interact with really insufficient to create a profile for me? What I do on websites that are not facebook is none of facebook's concern, which is why I have been taking care to block those 'like' buttons that snoop on you all over the net.

3% accidentally hit the wrong thing but didn't bother to fix it. The other 1% is developers who need to be able to test ad tracking in their apps.

Some folks I've talked to about ad tracking things (unrelated to ATT, specifically) prefer to see targeted ads. Most people (in the US) will knee-jerk refuse, which the data indicates (so far as it's accurate data). However, enough people don't mind.

I am one of them - I did it intentionally to see which apps ask to be tracked.

So far it's been Instagram and Sony's Headphones App. I do not have facebook.

Facebook is threatening them with a pop stating oping out will require them to make the app subscription based.