Apple's changes to notifications on phones and the addition of Mail Privacy Protection could hurt publishers, including solo newsletter publishers on Substack
A jam-packed, if muted, WWDC 2021 — I sat on it for a day. Kimberly Huang / Litmus : Email Client Market Share in May 2021: The Recovery of Mobile and More David Nield / Wired : How to Tell Which Emails Quietly Track You Tweets: Ryan Jones / @rjonesy : iOS 15: First launch of Mail app. https://twitter.com/... @alexcwilliams : Privacy protection in Mail is a setting that's pre-selected. Don't really see anyone turning that off. https://twitter.com/... @pushthepush : “Once you get away from straight reverse-chronological order, you've created SEO for push notifications.” Good summary by @jbenton of the new push notification features Apple announced at #WWDC21. https://www.niemanlab.org/... Liv McMahon / @liv_mcmahon : A v thorough run down here from @NiemanLab of what Apple's latest features announcements could mean for news publishers - particularly those with their own news app and newsletter https://www.niemanlab.org/... Dame.eth / @jacksondame : here's a video from Apple explaining in-detail how their upcoming “Mail Privacy Protection” feature works tl;dr - email open rates & tracking data will continue their descent into irrelevancy https://twitter.com/... @niemanlab : Apple has tried to improve notification triage before. But it's now going significantly further — and in a way that is risky for news outlets that rely on those push notifications for traffic. https://www.niemanlab.org/... Nathan Barry / @nathanbarry : Apple is removing creators' primary tool for maintaining a clean list. This puts creators at an unfair disadvantage to get their work in front of their biggest fans. Inbox providers ask senders to keep their list clean, but then take away the metrics needed to actually do that Damien McElroy / @ddamned : Will my iPhone's algorithms decide that a breaking news story from Bloomberg is “urgent,” “important,” or “time-sensitive”? How about something more feature-y pushed by The Atlantic, or a game score notification from ESPN? https://www.niemanlab.org/... @risj_oxford : Apple's new announcements could have big implications for journalism, writes @jbenton, including developments around notifications, link sharing, and the impact of privacy protection measures on gauging newsletter open rates https://www.niemanlab.org/... @pressgazette : Apple may have blown a hole in the growing email newsletter industry by making it easier for users to block tracking which lets publishers know if messages are being read or opened in its latest OS update https://www.niemanlab.org/... Joshua Benton / @jbenton : New from me —> I break down the biggest news for publishers out of Apple's #WWDC21 updates to iOS and macOS. They're pretty substantial and important! Like, Apple just unilaterally murdered your email newsletter's open rate. MURDERED IT https://www.niemanlab.org/... Joshua Benton / @jbenton : Including some thoughts on the “Who Killed My Open Rate?” homicide case from @MattieTK and @nathanbarry https://www.niemanlab.org/... Matt Navarra / @mattnavarra : A packed set of Apple announcements could have big impacts on news publishers And a big problem for newsletter publishers 😳 https://www.niemanlab.org/... Martin Sfp Bryant / @martinsfp : Feels like we need some new kind of newsletter analytics that aren't lumped in with adtech. https://twitter.com/... Stephen Nellis / @stephennellis : Apple's new “private relay” feature aims to ensure that no one - not even Apple - can tell who you are and what web page you're visiting while using Safari. But it won't be coming to China and several other countries. W/ @peard33 - https://www.reuters.com/... See also Mediagazer
Context & Ripple Effects
At WWDC 2021, Apple shipped two quiet blows to publishing economics inside iOS 15's feature rollout: Mail Privacy Protection pre-selects on by default, masking the open-tracking pixels that newsletters live on, while notification summaries and triage move alerts off strict reverse-chronological delivery — as one observer put it, creating 'SEO for push notifications.' It lands a year after Apple made its Identifier for Advertisers opt-in in iOS 14, the IDFA privacy switch that already gutted mobile ad tracking.
The arc is familiar: Apple launched its own News app with a rich-media format in 2015, then drew warnings that News+ would disrupt publishers' reader relationships — yet by 2024 outlets like The Daily Beast and Time were pulling seven-figure annual sums from it. Each iOS privacy layer pushes publishers one step deeper into Apple-controlled distribution.
First-order effects
- Newsletter publishers, including solo Substack writers, lose reliable open rates overnight since Mail Privacy Protection is pre-enabled and few users will toggle it off — degrading both editorial A/B testing and the engagement numbers used to price sponsorships.
- News publishers lose referral traffic predictability as iOS 15's notification triage re-ranks alerts away from chronological delivery, making push a ranked surface they must now optimize for rather than a guaranteed channel.
Second-order effects
- Adtech and email vendors are forced to rebuild audience measurement without pixels: per related coverage, both ad-supported and subscription newsletters have pixel-free ways to understand audiences — surveys, click signals — shifting spend toward whoever owns first-party response data.
- Apple's own surfaces become relatively more attractive as independent channels degrade, reinforcing publisher dependence on News/News+ revenue — the same dependence critics flagged when News+ launched.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, platform-level privacy defaults keep converting publisher-owned measurement into platform-mediated distribution, consolidating power with the OS owner and pushing smaller creators toward subscription models where direct payment replaces tracked reach.
The trend: Platform privacy defaults are systematically dismantling third-party audience measurement across mobile ads, email, and push, forcing publishers toward first-party data and platform-dependent channels.