Why some like Apple’s new privacy labels, despite their flaws Vox.com 2/24/2021 Open Sourced logo
Apple’s privacy “nutrition labels” have been in the App Store for just over two months now. Privacy advocates were generally pleased to see these easy-to-read versions of app privacy policies; educating users about the secretive inner workings of their apps is almost always a positive development.
The labels are just one of Apple’s new policies to give users more privacy at the possible expense of the app economy, which largely relies on collecting and selling furtively acquired user data. In early spring, Apple will release iOS 14.5, which will force apps to get user permission to track users across different apps for ad targeting, a move that Facebook has vocally opposed and its exceedingly long labels may be a good hint as to why. But that update only applies to tracking users across apps; the labels give users more information about the data being tracked as they