So it's been about a week since iOS 14.5 landed (April 26, if you're keeping score) and my phone has turned into a nonstop parade of little gray popups asking if some app can "track you across apps and websites owned by other companies." I've tapped "Ask App Not to Track" so many times now that my thumb basically does it on autopilot before I've even read who's asking.
A few of them are almost funny. There's at least one game on my phone (won't name it, it's a match-three thing my mother-in-law got me hooked on over the holidays) that shows its own little screen first, explaining in soft, friendly language why tracking is Actually Good For You and helps them "keep the app free," before Apple's real system prompt even shows up. It's a pre-ask before the ask. I said no to both, obviously, but I respect the hustle a little.
The numbers coming out this week are what actually got me writing this post though. Early tracking data going around suggests something like 1 in 20 people, maybe fewer, are actually hitting "allow" when the prompt shows up in the US. That is a brutal number if your entire ad business is built on knowing which Instagram post made you buy a mattress. Facebook spent months last winter running full-page newspaper ads about how this was going to hurt "small businesses," which, sure, but also: it's going to hurt Facebook, and everybody knew that was the actual point.
Here's my honestly kind of petty personal opinion on this: I don't think most people were choosing to be tracked before either. They just didn't know it was happening, or didn't know there was a button. Apple didn't create anti-tracking sentiment with this update, it just finally put a switch where people could see it. Give a person an obvious, one-tap way to say no to something they were quietly uneasy about the whole time, and yeah, they're going to say no. That's not some grand privacy awakening, it's just what happens when you stop hiding the form.
I'll admit the popups themselves are already getting old, and it's only been a week. Some apps ask immediately on first launch, before you've even decided if you like the app. Others wait a few days, which honestly feels like the smarter move, because by then you've got some goodwill built up and you're less trigger-happy with the no. A friend of mine who does mobile ad work for a living texted me Thursday basically in mourning about his Q2 numbers. I didn't have a ton of sympathy, not gonna lie.
Meanwhile, completely unrelated, but I have to mention it because it's been eating my brain all week: Dogecoin. A coin that started as a literal joke about a Shiba Inu meme is sitting somewhere north of forty cents right now and climbing, mostly because Elon Musk agreed to host Saturday Night Live in a few days and every crypto forum on earth has decided this is the moment. I bought $20 of it in 2019 as a joke and forgot about it, and checked my wallet Thursday night purely out of morbid curiosity. I'm not going to say what it's worth now because I'll sound insufferable either way, but let's just say the "joke currency" bit stopped being funny to me around the third time I refreshed the price.
Anyway. Back to tracking. If you've got an iPhone and haven't updated yet, do it, if only to watch which apps get weirdly desperate about asking for permission versus which ones just quietly accept the no and move on. You learn something about a company's whole personality from how they handle rejection, app or otherwise. The honest ones ask once and let it go. The needy ones keep re-prompting every few sessions hoping you'll slip up.
I opted out of everything, by the way. Every single app. I'm sure some ad network somewhere has a spreadsheet with my name on it anyway, built from a hundred other leaks and data brokers that have nothing to do with this popup at all, but at least this particular door is closed. Small comfort, I'll take it.