Facebook started testing a new in-app screen on Monday that will appear before the acceptance prompt required in iOS 14 applications by Apple’s AppTrackingTransparency (ATT) policy.
The test will be implemented globally on Instagram and the main Facebook application.
The additional prompt is intended to provide more information about Facebook’s privacy controls and how it uses the data to personalize advertising before users have the option to allow or deny app tracking.
Facebook says this is necessary because, although Apple allows developers to customize part of the language in the ATT pop-up, there is not much room to convince someone to choose tracking.
Facebook will experiment with showing Apple’s prompt and different versions of its own test screen, although it has not yet finished exactly when, during the integration process, or user flow, it will display prompts to users.
In an example of its test screen, Facebook encourages users to share their applications and website activities as a way to “support companies that depend on ads to reach customers”.
Facebook has been in a major anti-Apple public relations blitz since late last year, which presents itself as the savior of small businesses. In a liaison with reporters in mid-December, Dan Levy, Facebook’s vice president of ads and business products, accused Apple of making changes to the digital ecosystem that will hurt small businesses already struggling to stay afloat during the pandemic. .
Some Facebook employees claim that this message is hypocritical and dissonant for a company that earned $ 84.2 billion in advertising revenue in 2020 alone.
For example, according to Buzzfeed, in response to an internal post by Levy about the Facebook campaign, a Facebook engineer wrote: “It looks like we’re trying to justify doing a bad thing by hiding behind people with a nice message” .
Despite its vehement objections to Apple’s IDFA changes, Facebook is subject to them, just like any developer.
Although Facebook initially said it would stop collecting IDFA on iOS 14 devices, it later went back. Facebook said that if Apple does not agree to show the prompt, it will not allow Facebook to make its applications available on the App Store.
Developers must obtain permission via the AppTrackingTransparency prompt for any data collected in an application being used for tracking.
While App Store guidelines prohibit developers from using language at the ATT prompt that encourages people to allow tracking, Apple said there is no problem for developers to provide additional information to educate users before showing the opt-in pop-up. -in from ATT “since you are transparent to users about the use of the data in your explanation. “