Yohannes Haile

Apple's App Tracking Transparency: Privacy, Advertising, and Speculation

https://notebooklm.google.com/notebook/5560f526-091a-4e69-b3a2-c41308c4a66a/audio

Watch The Social Dilemma

Does disabling App Tracking hurt the quality of personalization of suggested feed or content in an app?

Yes, disabling App Tracking can impact the quality of personalization in an app, but the extent depends on how the app personalizes content and the data it relies on. Here’s how:

1. Limited Cross-App and Web Data
• What happens: Disabling tracking prevents the app from accessing data about your activity on other apps and websites. This limits its ability to build a comprehensive profile of your preferences and behaviors.
• Impact: Suggestions or feeds may be less tailored to your interests since the app cannot incorporate insights from external sources like shopping habits, browsing history, or other apps’ interactions.

2. In-App Personalization Still Possible
• What happens: Apps can still collect data about your activity within their own platform (e.g., content you like, searches, or time spent on specific sections).
• Impact: The app may still provide some degree of personalization, but it’s restricted to the behavior it observes in its ecosystem.

3. Generic Recommendations
• What happens: Without tracking, apps often rely on broader, less specific trends or demographic data for suggestions.
• Impact: You may receive more generalized recommendations or ads that are not as relevant to your preferences.

4. Examples of Effects
• A social media app like Instagram might struggle to suggest posts, reels, or ads tailored to your interests outside the app.
• A shopping app like Amazon may still suggest items based on your in-app searches and purchases but won’t use your browsing data from other platforms to refine recommendations.

Bottom Line

Disabling App Tracking might reduce the depth and relevance of personalized content, but it won’t eliminate personalization entirely. Apps can still provide tailored experiences based on data they collect directly within their ecosystem. If you value privacy over hyper-targeted suggestions, the trade-off might be worth it!

Everyone should know about App Tracking

When you disagree with App Tracking on App A but agree to App Tracking on App B, the handling of your data depends on how each app operates and what permissions you’ve granted:

For App A (Tracking Disagreed):
• No cross-app tracking: App A cannot track your activity across other apps or websites for targeted advertising or data sharing.
• Data still collected within the app: App A can still collect data about your usage within its own app for functionality or analytics, as long as it’s disclosed in the App Privacy section and complies with Apple’s guidelines.
• Limited personalization: You might see generic ads instead of targeted ones.

For App B (Tracking Agreed):
• Cross-app tracking enabled: App B can access your Identifier for Advertisers (IDFA) and track your activity across apps and websites that participate in the same ad network.
• Shared data: App B can share data with third parties for purposes like targeted advertising, analytics, or profiling.

The Overall Effect:
• No data sharing between App A and App B: Since App A doesn’t have tracking permissions, it cannot share or receive data from App B or any other apps.
• Targeted ads only in App B: You may see personalized ads or content in App B, but not in App A.
• Data silos: Your data from App A remains confined to App A (within the limits of Apple’s privacy rules), while App B has more freedom to share and use your data across other platforms.

This approach aligns with Apple’s App Tracking Transparency (ATT) framework, which puts you in control of whether apps can track and share your data across other apps and websites.

If this isn't an assault on user privacy, I don't know what is.

The Tutorial Hell (aka The unproductive productivity)

You’re bouncing from Udemy to Coursera to YouTube to Scrimba and not getting any better when it comes to tangible skills. This primarily comes from inactive/passive learning where you are just copying someone’s code to build stuff and not understanding what you typed.

A code block copied from the internet and pasted on your project is a wasted chance of learning something. Don’t get me wrong here. No one writes original code. We have all been reusing design patterns, APIs, and modules for years and object-oriented programming is mostly about reusing code. But that doesn’t mean you have to copy your instructor’s code and paste it on your VS Code without understanding what they wrote. Stacking up your resume with projects you have worked on with the help of tutorial videos or books won’t translate into a great career.

Could you build a to-do list? By yourself. Refer to StackOverflow when you are stuck on an error. Learn how they have solved the error. Get it out on GitHub. Build a clone of your favorite app. By yourself. Could you get it out on GitHub? That’s how you learn something valuable and retain it at your fingertips.

What you must know is programming is a lot more about problem-solving than it is about remembering the syntaxes of different languages.

The tutorial hell is a thing 😕

Wishing y'all a productive week ahead

https://youtu.be/fe0B1lnS1YU?si=Q9T0uUEitHHzYJIF

Audio Overview:

https://notebooklm.google.com/notebook/45c9b51a-652e-478e-bd2e-bbaadea02780/audio

The Allocation of Talent: Implications for Growth authored by Murphy, Shleifer, and Vishny

https://youtu.be/qjRauITr58M?si=OoCxSFEebrd1df73

I call this the binge setup 📺

We don't call a Mac PC, but your answer was correct 😂

The pc is closed

Today's setup is a little odd

Guess what changed…

Here is a place for all the Visual Learners to get the gist of Data Structures and Algorithms:

@storyOfXcode

https://visualgo.net/en

If you're aspiring to become a Web Developer, you may find The Odin Project a good place to find good courses.

@storyOfXcode

https://www.theodinproject.com/