GoKawiilGerman media agencies and publishers are urging the country’s antitrust watchdog to reject Apple’s proposed changes to App Tracking Transparency (ATT) and impose a fine on the company. Here are the details.
A bit of background
When it comes to the App Tracking Transparency feature, which lets users choose whether their data is shared with third parties through cross-app tracking, Apple is fighting multiple antitrust battles, most of them in Europe.
In general, the accusations are the same: App Tracking Transparency is anticompetitive.
The way publishers see it, Apple shouldn’t stand between publications and advertising data. They also take issue with the fact that Apple’s own apps aren’t subject to the same restrictions imposed by ATT.
Apple, naturally, rejects this characterization, claiming the following:
“Apple (…) holds itself to a higher standard than it requires of any third-party developer by providing users with an affirmative choice as to whether they would like personalized ads at all. And Apple has designed services and features such as Siri, Maps, FaceTime, and iMessage such that the company cannot link data across those services even if it wished to do so.”
One of the countries investigating whether ATT is anticompetitive is Germany. Last year, in an attempt to appease the country’s antitrust watchdog, the company proposed several changes to the framework’s rules.
From Reuters’ original coverage of Apple’s changes proposals:
Apple had agreed to introduce neutral consent prompts for both its own services and third-party apps, and to largely align the wording, content and visual design of these messages, said Andreas Mundt, head of Germany’s Bundeskartellamt. The company also proposed simplifying the consent process so developers can obtain user permission for advertising-related data processing in a way that complies with data protection law.
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