Apple's claims about respecting privacy aren't fully serious, as the iPhone default doesn't disallow apps from tracking users, instead expecting users to do so
If you haven't seen it yet, watch Apple's Privacy on iPhone | tracked ad. In it a guy named Felix (that's him, above) … Tweets: @hjarche , @dsearls , @itsjeffhiggins , and @jason_kint Tweets: Harold Jarche / @hjarche : “If Apple was fully serious, your iPhone would be set to not allow tracking in the first place. All those trackers would come pre-vaporized. And Apple never would have given every iPhone an IDFA—ID For Advertisers—in the first place.” https://twitter.com/... Doc Searls / @dsearls : Apple vs (or plus) Adtech https://blogs.harvard.edu/... Jeff Higgins / @itsjeffhiggins : OR... Maybe I don't want some apps having information they don't need but I do want ads on streaming services & others I use a lot to be relevant. Obviously there's more involved but the easy answer is it's about user choice. That's why there's toggles for all or your preference. https://twitter.com/... Jason Kint / @jason_kint : Smart as always, agree with much here. I would only add DNT was productive in defining “tracking” - influencing Apple (who contributed until the end). But it didn't have enforcement to back it up. Also influenced CPRA - now the law. And if apps don't follow ATT, FTC can enforce. https://twitter.com/...
Context & Ripple Effects
This critique lands a year after Forbes reported that Apple's Identifier for Advertisers would become opt-in under iOS 14 — billed as a privacy win for users and a big loss for marketers — and months after another report found Apple's own advertising left on by default while other ad networks had to ask permission to track. Harold Jarche's argument, amplified by Doc Searls, is that the 'Privacy on iPhone | tracked' ad oversells what Apple actually ships: iPhones come with trackers pre-enabled via IDFA, expecting users to do the blocking.
First-order effects
- The asymmetry Jarche names is live in iOS today: every third-party advertiser must earn an opt-in through the ATT prompt, while Apple's own ad surface needs no equivalent consent moment — the default does the work for Apple that users must do manually against everyone else.
- Buyers who never open Settings are tracked through apps despite the campaign's implication that Apple has already vaporized those trackers, putting Apple's marketing claims and its shipped defaults in direct tension.
Second-order effects
- As opt-in friction degrades third-party targeting, ad budgets have somewhere to go: Apple's own first-party ad inventory, which competes without the consent burden it imposes on rivals — the same dynamic Forbes flagged when Apple Advertising shipped enabled out of the box.
- Critics like Jason Kint and Jeff Higgins engaging publicly give regulators and litigants a ready-made framing — 'defaults, not promises' — that turns Apple's privacy advertising from an asset into potential evidence against it.
Third-order effects
- The deeper pattern here predates this post — Daring Fireball made the same doctrine-versus-practice case over Siri data controls in 2019 — suggesting Apple's recurring exposure is not any single feature but a business model that monetizes being the privacy exception while writing everyone else's rules.
- If defaults rather than user effort became the standard critics demand, Benedict Evans's later warning about privacy proposals entrenching big platforms sharpens into Apple's specific dilemma: the company most able to flip defaults is also the one whose ad business benefits from leaving them off.
The trend: Mobile privacy is converging on a contest over defaults rather than consent screens, with the platform gatekeeper holding the power to exempt its own ad business from the restrictions it applies to competitors.