Facebook on Monday began testing a new in-app screen that will appear before the opt-in prompt required in iOS 14 apps by Apple’s upcoming AppTrackingTransparency (ATT) policy.
The test will be distributed worldwide in both Instagram and the core Facebook app.
The additional directive is intended to provide more information about Facebook’s privacy controls and how it uses data to personalize ads before giving users the option to allow or deny app tracking.
Facebook says this is necessary because while Apple may allow the language developers to customize in the ATT pop-up, there is not much room to convince anyone to track it down.
Facebook will be experimenting with showing Apple’s fast and different version of its own test screen, though it has not yet been finalized when it will display the directions to users during the on-board process or user flow.
In one example of its test screen, Facebook encourages users to share their app and website activity as a way to ‘support ad-based businesses to reach customers’.
Facebook has been engaging in a massive anti-Apple PR flash since late last year that sees itself as the savior of small business. Dan Levy, Facebook’s director general of advertising and business products, accused Apple in a call with reporters in mid – December that it was making changes to the digital ecosystem that would hurt small businesses already struggling to stay afloat during the pandemic.
Some Facebook employees claim that these messages are hypocritical and dissonant for a company that earned $ 84.2 billion in advertising revenue by 2020 alone.
According to Buzzfeed, for example, a Facebook engineer wrote in response to an internal message from Levy about Facebook’s campaign: ‘It feels like we’re trying to justify a bad thing by hiding behind people with a sympathetic message. ‘
Despite its objections to Apple’s IDFA changes, Facebook is subject to it, just like any developer.
Although Facebook initially said that the IDFA would no longer collect on iOS 14 devices, it later returned. Facebook has said that Apple will not allow Facebook to make its applications available in the App Store if it does not agree to it.
Developers must get permission through the AppTrackingTransparency prompt for all data collected in an app used to track.
Although the App Store guidelines prohibit developers from using language in the ATT prompt that encourages people to allow tracking, Apple said it’s good for developers to provide additional information to educate users before they pop up. ATT opt-up “as long as you are transparent to users about your use of the data in your explanation.”