German 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.
At the time, German regulators launched a consultation with industry publications to determine whether the proposals addressed their concerns.
As it turns out, the answer was a hard no.
German publishers fight back
As Reuters reported today:
Apple’s proposed changes to its app tracking rules do not resolve antitrust issues in the mobile advertising market, associations representing German publishers and advertisers said on Tuesday as they urged the country’s antitrust authority to slap a fine on the U.S. tech giant.
(…)
“The proposed commitments would not change the negative effects of the App Tracking Transparency Framework,” Bernd Nauen, chief executive of the German Advertising Federation, said in a joint letter signed by the trade bodies.
“Apple would remain the data gatekeeper and would continue to decide who gets access to advertising-relevant data and how companies can communicate with their end customers,” he said.
If the German watchdog finds Apple in violation, the company could be fined up to 10% of its annual turnover. The decision could also hurt Apple’s case in other countries where ATT remains under scrutiny.
9to5Mac reached out to Apple for comment, and we’ll update this post if we hear back.
Update, 11:01 p.m. ET: In a statement to 9to5Mac, Apple said:
“At Apple, we believe privacy is a fundamental human right, and we introduced App Tracking Transparency to give users a simple way to control whether apps have permission to track their activity across other companies’ apps and websites. The tracking industry has consistently fought our efforts to keep users in control of their data, and this is just their latest attempt to gain unfettered access to personal information. We will continue to defend this important privacy tool for our users.”
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