Category: UNCATEGORIZED

Pinterest today announced it has settled the gender discrimination lawsuit brought forth by former COO Francoise Brougher. In August, Brougher sued Pinterest, alleging gender discrimination, retaliation and wrongful termination.

As part of the settlement, Pinterest will pay $20 million to Brougher and her attorneys, and both Pinterest and Brougher will commit $2.5 million toward “Advancing women and underrepresented communities” in the tech industry, the company wrote in a filing.

“Pinterest recognizes the importance of fostering a workplace environment that is diverse, equitable and inclusive and will continue its actions to improve its culture,” Pinterest and Brougher said in a joint statement detailing the settlement. “Francoise welcomes the meaningful steps Pinterest has taken to improve its workplace environment and is encouraged that Pinterest is committed to building a culture that allows all employees to feel included and supported.”

Shortly after Brougher went public with her claims, Pinterest employees staged a walkout in response to her accusations as well as in response to the claims of two former Black Pinterest employees. Prior to Brougher’s claims, Aerica Shimizu Banks and Ifeoma Ozoma accused Pinterest of racial discrimination.

In addition to the walkout, a petition circulated throughout the company demanding systemic change. The change they sought entailed full transparency about promotion levels and retention, total compensation package transparency and for the people within two layers of reporting to the CEO to be at least 25% women and 8% underrepresented employees.

Since then, Pinterest has notably made some changes at the board level. A couple of days after the walkout, Pinterest announced Andrea Wishom as the company’s first-ever Black board member. In October, Pinterest added its second Black board member, Salaam Coleman Smith.

Pinterest says it has also enhanced its hiring and interview processes to try to improve diversity at senior levels, updated its inclusion training and launched an internal wiki detailing how Pinterest makes compensation decisions.

Welcome to TechCrunch’s 2020 Holiday Gift Guide! Need help with gift ideas? We’re here to help! We’ll be rolling out gift guides from now through the end of December. You can find our other guides right here.

It’s a difficult time to be a photographer. Getting creative feels impossible when every day is the same and the most exotic locale you visit is the living room. Travel is out this year, vacations are pushed back and everybody is cooped up inside trying not to lose it.

Everything is hard in like 12 different ways right now, but encouraging your friends and fam to immerse themselves in new hobbies and plan future adventures is a great distraction. For photographers at a loss for what to shoot this year, it’s the perfect time to mix things up, switch up your gear entirely and try to see the world with fresh eyes.

This article contains links to affiliate partners where available. When you buy through these links, TechCrunch may earn an affiliate commission.

Fujifilm Instax Square SQ6 Instant Film Camera

Image credit: Fujifilm

It might not seem like it, but it’s actually the perfect time to get into instant photography. As a photographer myself, I haven’t picked up my main camera in months. Nothing feels inspiring. But I started carrying a cheap instant camera on walks around my neighborhood, rain permitting, and it’s been a meditative way to appreciate the beauty of small things that otherwise just blend into my routine. This Fujifilm Instax shoots larger, square photos and they look great popping up in an Instagram feed too if you’re in it for the ‘gram.

Another good option: The Fujifilm Instax Mini 11 Camera creates smaller, rectangular photos and it’s playful design makes it perfect for anyone.

Price: Fujifilm Instax, $80 from Adorama | Fujifilm Instax Mini, $70 from Target

GoPro Hero8 Black

In a year when we can’t do a lot of the things we’d normally enjoy, many of the safest, most enjoyable things are outdoors. If your giftee is an adrenaline junkie (climbing, snowboarding, surfing etc.) the latest GoPro is a no brainer for in-the-moment action stills or video that you could never capture otherwise. But like an instant camera, a GoPro can also be a really fun way to switch things up for non-adventure photography. I brought one along on my honeymoon and ended up shooting stills with it half the time even when I wasn’t in the water — having a teeny indestructible pocket camera just feels really fun and different.

Price: $280 from REI

SanDisk 64GB Extreme PRO SDXC

Image Credits: SanDisk

If you’ve met a photographer who has enough memory cards, I’d like to know their secret. These SD cards are fast, reliable and widely compatible. Much like socks, SD cards have a way of vanishing and you never have enough of them even though it feels like you buy them all the time. Good stocking material! 

Price: $20 and up from Amazon, depending on capacity

Sony RX100 VII

Know someone who a) wants a super compact travel camera b) wants to get into photography but doesn’t care about interchangeable lenses c) needs a small camera for anything, really? Sony’s been killing it in compact photography for years now and the RX100 series is a testament to everything it does right. The RX100 VII is an incredible camera in a really small package, capable of taking everything from beginner night sky photos and professional-looking portraits to casual photos and everything in between. Since it’s got full manual settings, new photographers can go as deep as they’d like and anyone who wants to keep it simple can stay in full auto and snap away. 

Pro tip: Since Sony is in the 6th generation of the RX100, you can find old versions for screaming good deals and you won’t even know what you’re missing. Just stick with the RX100 III on up for the included viewfinder.

Price: $1,298 from B&H

B&H Gift Card

Know a photographer who always needs stuff, but you’re not totally sure what that stuff is? Or someone who wants to start shooting but likes the process of researching and picking things out themselves? A gift card to New York-based photography supercenter B&H is a solid choice. They’ve got a robust online shop where you can buy anything and everything.

Bushnell Core DS 30MP Low-Glow Trail Camera

Image Credits: Bushnell / Getty Images

This is a weird year and we’ve all learned weird new stuff about ourselves. In my case, I have learned the weird new fact that coyotes are frequently roaming around my fairly urban backyard eating people’s pets (sad but also interesting!). With entertainment options slim and monotony all but guaranteed, a lot of people are paying more attention to backyard and neighborhood wildlife lately. Even if you live in a major city, there are tons of wild creatures around. Go full Nat Geo with a trail cam and finally find out what happens when animals stop being polite and start getting real.

Also cool: We haven’t tried this one out, but the Canon PowerShot Zoom ($299) looks like a handy present for anyone who’s started bird or wildlife watching lately and is interested in nabbing quick super zoomed-in shots.

Price: $199 from Bushnell

Sony a7 III Mirrorless Digital Camera

Image Credits: Sony

A lot of photographers, myself included, have switched over from DSLRs to full-frame mirrorless cameras in recent years, and for good reason. Mirrorless cameras are smaller and lighter, but that used to mean compromising on image quality in the name of portability. Those days are long over. New mirrorless cameras have image quality on par with their larger, more traditional counterparts and their light weight and smaller size makes them easier to cart around for stuff like travel, street, or outdoor photography. You really can’t go very wrong with most of the full-frame mirrorless options out there, but Sony’s a7 III is perfect for anyone getting serious about photography. The brand new Sony a7C is another mirrorless full-frame also worth a look if you want an even more compact option on the cutting edge of what small cameras can do.

Price: $1,698 from Amazon

Fujifilm’s X100V

Image Credits: Fujifilm

Is your loved one one of those pretentious film photography people who talks about how digital ruined the art and nothing feels as good as a film camera? Well for one they’re kind of right. But you might be able to delight them nonetheless with the latest from Fujifilm’s’s extremely well-loved X100 series. It’s about as close as you can get to the je ne sais quoi of shooting with film, offering lots of little touches (classic design! an ISO dial!) that capture some of the magic of film photography. This is another option where you can save significant $$$ by finding a new last-generation version on the cheap. 

Price: $1,399 from Adorama

Nikon D3500 & Canon EOS Rebel T7 

Image Credits: Nikon

Compact mirrorless cameras are having an extended moment right now, but sometimes a regular DSLR is a better choice. For anyone learning the basics of photography for the first time, a “cropped sensor” DSLR (vs. a pro-level full frame DSLR) is really a better starting place in some ways. These camera bodies and their lenses are larger, but they’re generally more tactile in a way that will help new photographers build up a good foundation of knowledge. These bodies usually come with a “kit lens” (18-55mm) that’s not terribly impressive, but if you also pick up a cheap 50mm f/1.8 your budding photog will have plenty to play around with. Whether you go Nikon or Canon, it really doesn’t matter — just pick a horse and ride it. Did we mention these are great, affordable choices for a teen who’s just getting into photography? They are!

Price: Nikon D3500, $499 from Amazon | Canon EOS Rebel T7, $449 from Canon

Peak Design Field Pouch& Tech Pouch

Peak Design is best known for their camera bags and those are cool too and very worth a look. Bag preferences can be a pretty personal thing but even the most well-geared photographer can appreciate one of these handy little pouches for stashing SD cards (so they don’t vanish!!) and all the random little odds and ends you need to cart around in a camera bag. You can’t go wrong with any of Peak Design’s organization stuff — it’s all thoughtful and handsomely designed. 

Price: Field Pouch, $40 from Peak Design | Tech Pouch, $60 from Peak Design 

Now more than ever, IT teams play a vital role in keeping their businesses running smoothly and securely. With all of the assets and data that are now broadly distributed, a CEO depends on their IT team to ensure employees remain connected and productive and that sensitive data remains protected.

CEOs often visualize and measure things in terms of dollars and cents, and in the face of continuing uncertainty, IT — along with most other parts of the business — is facing intense scrutiny and tightening of budgets. So, it is more important than ever to be able to demonstrate that they’ve made sound technology investments and have the agility needed to operate successfully in the face of continued uncertainty.

Here are five questions that IT teams should be ready to answer when their CEO comes calling:

What have we spent our money on?

Or, more specifically, exactly how many assets do we have? And, do we know where they are? While these seem like basic questions, they can be shockingly difficult to answer … much more difficult than people realize. The last several months in the wake of the COVID-19 outbreak have been the proof point.

With the mass exodus of machines leaving the building and disconnecting from the corporate network, many IT leaders found themselves guessing just how many devices had been released into the wild and gone home with employees.

One CIO we spoke to estimated they had “somewhere between 30,000 and 50,000 devices” that went home with employees, meaning there could have been up to 20,000 that were completely unaccounted for. The complexity was further compounded as old devices were pulled out of desk drawers and storage closets to get something into the hands of employees who were not equipped to work remotely. Companies had endpoints connecting to corporate network and systems that they hadn’t seen for years — meaning they were out-of-date from a security perspective as well.

This level of uncertainty is obviously unsustainable and introduces a tremendous amount of security risk. Every endpoint that goes unaccounted for not only means wasted spend but also increased vulnerability, greater potential for breach or compliance violation, and more. In order to mitigate these risks, there needs to be a permanent connection to every device that can tell you exactly how many assets you have deployed at any given time — whether they are in the building or out in the wild.

Are our devices and data protected?

Device and data security go hand in hand; without the ability to see every device that is deployed across an organization, it becomes next to impossible to know what data is living on those devices. When employees know they are leaving the building and going to be off network, they tend to engage in “data hoarding.”

Roblox announced today that it’s buying a digital avatar startup called Loom.ai. Purchasing a company that has focused singularly on creating more realistic human avatars is an interesting play for a gaming platform that has made such an impact by building experiences that tend to cast realism to the wayside.

We covered the company’s $1.35 million seed round back in 2016. The company brought in additional seed funding since then, scoring $5.9 million in total capital raised. The startup’s investors include Y Combinator, Samsung Ventures, Anorak Capital and Zach Coelius.

Terms of the deal weren’t disclosed.

The startup was one in a long list of avatar companies to launch during the mid 2010’s that capitalized on computer vision advancements and aimed to build out a cross-game/cross-platform network of users that relied on their tech to create in-app avatars. This field of companies aimed to capitalize on opportunities in 3D that expanded beyond what companies like Snapchat had identified following its Bitmoji acquisition.

Image via Loom.ai

Over the years, Loom.ai shifted its effort from photorealism to creating more Memoji-like representations that allowed users to upload a 2D photo and automatically create a realistic 3D avatar. In recent years, Loom.ai focused heavily on enterprise opportunities. The company’s products also included a suite of integrations to build out personalized avatar stickers that could be used on messaging platforms like Slack or WhatsApp as well as live avatars that could be used during video calls.

Though Roblox has some of the more simplistic avatars on the market, this acquisition may suggest that the company is open to building out a system that places more of a premium on realism and more life-like facial animations. In a press release announcing the deal, Roblox shared that this acquisition “will accelerate the development of next-generation avatars.”

After nearly a decade selling gaming and console peripherals to gamers looking to spice up their systems, Atlanta-based KontrolFreek has been acquired by the international peripherals retailer, SteelSeries.

Terms of the acquisition were undisclosed, but KontrolFreek has shipped over 2 million units of its flagship product, which is available in over 9,000 retailers in 60 countries and can be found in over 16 online marketplaces.

That’s not bad for a company that was founded 11 years ago with a $50,000 check from BLH Venture Partners, the Atlanta-based investment firm co-founded by Billy L. Harbert and Ashish Mistry. Mistry, a co-founder of Virtex Networks and later an early team member at Air Defense.

Neither Harbert nor Mistry were much for gaming, but they did see the opportunity in selling peripherals to the folks who were, Mistry said in a direct message.

“Huge markets have large niches,” Mistry wrote.

By acquiring KontrolFreek, SteelSeries is further consolidating its position in the console gaming market by folding one of the leading sellers of high-performance controller accessories into its portfolio of products. Earlier this year, SteelSeries nabbed A-volute, which provides three dimensional sound systems for games.

SteelSeries also gets a vibrant user generated media property in KontrolFreek’s FreekNation community, which boasts 4 million community members.

“With the next-generation consoles at the forefront of the gaming industry’s mind, there’s never been a better time to maximize our ability to provide the best gaming experiences and products to console gamers,” said Ehtisham Rabbani, CEO of SteelSeries. “With KontrolFreek’s expertise and global popularity, we know they’ll open new opportunities to entertain, delight, and assist new gamers across the world.”

More than 3.6 billion people use social media, and its runaway success has left the industry at a crossroads. There are now heated debates in Washington and Brussels over the future of antitrust regulation for this market, whether platform operators should filter certain content (and if so, which types), and how to open the market to new innovators.

To find my way through this thicket of interesting questions, I spoke with Sinan Aral, a professor of management at the MIT Sloan School of Management who also co-leads MIT’s Initiative on the Digital Economy. He has spent years analyzing the social media market, directly participating in its development as chief scientist of SocialAmp and Humin and as a founding partner of Manifest Capital.

This fall, he published his latest book, “The Hype Machine,” which explores what’s next for social media giants. In our discussion, we talked about the landscape of the market today, what responsibilities companies and users have to each other and what come next as the industry evolves.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

TechCrunch: Why don’t we start with how the book came together and how you got interested in this topic of digital media and how it affects our decision-making?

Sinan Aral: I started researching social media four years before Mark Zuckerberg founded Facebook. I have worked with all of the major social media platforms for the last 20 years: Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, WeChat, Yahoo and the rest. I’ve published a number of very large-scale studies, and I’m also an entrepreneur. So, I’ve got a vantage point as a practitioner, but also as a long-time academic leader in this area.

The reason why I wrote “The Hype Machine” is because essentially, we’ve seen this coming to a head for many years now. We really have a full-blown social media crisis on our hands, as is obvious if you turn on the TV on any given day.

My book takes off from where “The Social Dilemma” documentary and Shoshana Zuboff’s “The Age of Surveillance Capitalism” leave off, which is to ask, what can we concretely do to solve the social media crisis that we find ourselves in? The book argues that in order to do that, we have to stop armchair theorizing about how social media works, and we have to stop debating whether or not social media is good or evil. The answer is yes.

The book goes through the fundamentals of how social media works. So, there’s a chapter on neuroscience and social media, and economics and social media, and that eventually informs the solutions in the book, which cover everything from antitrust and competition to federal privacy legislation. How do we secure our elections and our democracy? What do we do about Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act? How do we balance free speech and hate speech? How do we deal with misinformation and fake news?

I think for a lot of us in tech, we’re a bit stuck. On one hand, these technologies have produced jarring amounts of wealth in the tech industry, but they have also caused a large number of harms. What do we do next?

Let me start by saying that the general framework of the solution is about what I call the four levers: money, code, norms and laws.

Money is the business models, which create the incentives for how the advertisers on the platforms and the users behave. Code is how we design the platforms and the algorithms underlying the platforms, which I go into in great detail. Norms are how we adopt, appropriate and use the technology. And obviously, laws are regulation.

In terms of solutions, I think the entry ticket for solving the social media crisis is creating competition in the social media economy. Platforms that lack competition don’t have any incentive to change away from the attention economy and their engagement-driven business models, nor do they have any real incentive to clean up their negative externalities in our information ecosystem, whether it’s hate speech or misinformation or manipulation.

Now, when I say competition, the first thing on everyone’s mind is always, “Oh, you mean break up Facebook.” But the point I make in the book — and I take a very clear stance on this — is that breaking up Facebook in this economy doesn’t solve the problem. This economy runs on network effects. The value of these platforms is a function of the number of users on the platform. Economies that run on network effects tend toward concentration and monopoly.

So, if you break up Facebook, it’s just going to tip the next Facebook-like company into market dominance. What we really need is structural reform of the social media economy, and that involves social network portability, data portability and interoperability legislation.

Let me push back on this a bit though. Terms like “data portability” always sound nice as a solution, but have we ever effectively used this tool to open a market?

This isn’t the first time that we’ve done this. During the AOL-Time Warner merger, we forced AOL’s AIM product to become interoperable with Yahoo Messenger and MSN Messenger. And it went from a 65% market share to a 59% market share one year later, down to like 50%, then it ceded the entire market to new entrants three years later.

Another good analogy is number portability in the cell phone market. It used to be that you couldn’t take your cell phone number with you when you switched from one cell phone provider to another, and then we legislated that they had to let you take your number with you. That was akin to a social network at the time, because all of your friends knew to call you at that number.

Research has shown that number portability created about $880 million of consumer surplus every quarter for years and years after it was instituted in Europe, and it created a lot of competition. We should have something very similar in social networks, around social network portability and data portability, so that we could create competition.

Now, if you break up Facebook after these kinds of structural reforms to the market, that’s a different question, but breaking up Facebook without structural reforms to the market economy is like putting a Band-Aid on a tumor. It’s not going to solve the underlying lack of competition that the social media economy has.

“The Hype Machine” details how we might do that and suggests that there could be a stack of commodity messaging formats that would be required to be interoperable. Then, you could have unique messaging formats for every platform on top of that. But things like texts, short-form videos, stories that either persist or disappear, that kind of stuff should have a level of interoperability that’s legislated. The entry ticket to solving the social media crisis is creating competition.

Indiegogo plans to help more Japanese entrepreneurs run successful crowdfunding campaigns through a new expansion of its Global Fast Track Program.

Indiegogo first launched the program several years ago in China. The idea behind Global Fast Track is to provide an extra level of support to entrepreneurs in specific markets, guiding them through the process of creating campaigns for global consumers, particularly those in the U.S. and Europe.

In fact, Lu Li, the general manager for Indiegogo’s global strategy, told me that the program has already supported more than 670 entrepreneurs launching campaigns, with 40 of those campaigns raising $1 million or more. To support this, Indiegogo has a team in China “doing sales and marketing and really focusing on bringing on the most high-quality campaigns,” Li said.

And although there have already been successful campaigns launched from Japan, it sounds like Indiegogo will be expanding its presence in a similar way in Japan. In this case, it’s also partnering with the Japanese External Trade Organization (JETRO).

“We are very excited to announce JETRO’s partnership with Indiegogo,” said Noriya Tarutani, executive director of JETRO San Francisco, in a statement. “Thanks to more than 40% annual growth of crowdfunding in Japan in recent years, we have been receiving a lot of inquiries from Japanese startups about how they can leverage crowdfunding as a way to bring their amazing products to the global market. We are confident that our collaboration will be mutually beneficial to Indiegogo as they enter Japan, as well as Japanese startups expanding overseas.”

In addition, Indiegogo says it will start supporting campaigns using Japanese yen, and it will also showcase campaigns from the country through a “Made in Japan” collection.

Indiegogo CEO Andy Yang said that this is the right time to expand into Japan because of a “vibrant startup ecosystem” that has emerged in recent years to challenge the dominance of traditional giants.

Yang added that the company has become cashflow positive, and that it’s continued to see growth during the pandemic.

“There was a crowdfunding peak or heyday in 2016, and then the industry overall went through an awkward period where entrepreneurs were still learning and backers are still trying to understand what to expect,” he said. “That’s a continually evolving process … but we’re seeing lot of great tailwinds, specifically from entrepreneurs with a lot of appetite to find new sales channels.”

Q&A, a startup developing tech for the music industry co-founded by industry insiders Troy Carter (Lady Gaga’s first manager) and Suzy Ryoo (Carter’s longtime collaborator), has launched a new suite of software products through a division called Venice Innovation Labs.

The new tools are designed to help record labels beta test songs, manage artists, and distribute music easily and efficiently, the company said in a statement.

The first releases from the new division are StreamRate, which provides sentiment analysis of new songs before they’re released; and Venice For Labels, which tracks splits and payments among different artists, manages and monitors music distribution, and helps labels keep track of their rosters.

The company is also providing a human touch through a strategic marketing and advisory “Premium Services” team led by Ray Kurzeka in North America and Matt Ott in the UK.

“Technology is rapidly changing the way music is consumed, yet our industry’s infrastructure remains underserved. We’ve been quietly building beautiful and intuitive tools that labels will love, as well as services that move the needle. Our vision is to create an authentic community to empower brilliant artists and the labels that support them daily,” said Suzy Ryoo, President of Q&A. 

The Nest Hub Max is getting Zoom . Google outlined the arrival of the popular teleconferencing platform in a blog post today, noting that it has started to roll out for users in the U.S., U.K., Canada and Australia.

The much-requested feature is arriving as an “early preview,” essentially meaning that users will have to opt-in to receive the firmware prior to wide release — though the company insists that it’s not a software beta, offering essentially the same experience as the wide release version.

To use it, Nest Hub Max owners need a free or paid Zoom account. Users need to link their account to the device and add the invite to Google Calendar to host a meeting. The feature will also take advantage (where applicable) of a new feature for Google and Nest Wifi that prioritizes teleconferencing for wireless bandwidth.

Zoom is one of many video conferencing services already available on Facebook’s Portal line. Amazon announced in August that the software would be arriving on its Echo Show devices before the end of the year, but has yet to give a firm date. As for the standard Nest Hub, that Google display doesn’t have a camera for privacy reasons.

At Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference in June, the company announced it would soon require developers to disclose their app’s privacy practices to customers via new, glanceable summaries that appear on their apps’ product pages on the App Store. Today, these new app privacy labels are going live across all of Apple’s App Stores, including iOS, iPadOS, macOS, watchOS and tvOS.

On the developers’ side, Apple began requiring developers to submit their privacy practices with the submission of new apps and app updates. However, it hadn’t begun to publish this information on the App Stores until today.

The new labels aim to give Apple customers an easier way to understand what sort of information an app collects across three categories: data used to track you, data linked to you and data not linked to you. Tracking, Apple explains, refers to the act of linking either user or device data collected from an app with user or device data collected from other apps, websites or even offline properties (like data aggregated from retail receipts) that’s used for targeted advertising or advertisement measurement. It can also include sharing user or device data with data brokers.

This aspect alone will expose the industry of third-party adtech and analytics SDKs (software development kits) — basically code from external vendors that developers add to their apps to boost their revenues.

Meanwhile, “data linked to you” is the personal information tied to your identity, through your user account on the app, your device or other details.

Image Credits: Apple

Broken down, there are a number of data types apps may collect on their users, including things like personal contact information (e.g. address, email, phone, etc.); health and fitness information (eg. from the Clinical Health Records API, HealthKit API, MovementDisorderAPIs or health-related human subject research); financial information (e.g. payment and credit info); location (either precise or coarse); contacts; user content (e.g. emails, audio, texts, gameplay, customer support, etc.); browsing and search histories; purchases; identifiers like user or device IDs; usage and diagnostic info; and more.

Developers are expected to understand not only what data their app may collect, but also how it’s ultimately used.

For example, if an app shares user data with a third-party partner, the developer will need to know what data that partner uses and for what purposes — like displaying targeted ads in the app, sharing location data or email lists with a data broker, using data for retargeting users in other apps or measuring ad efficiencies. And while the developer will need to disclose when they’re collecting data from Apple frameworks or services, they aren’t responsible for disclosing data collected by Apple itself.

There are a few exceptions to the new disclosure requirements, including data collected in optional feedback forms or customer service requests. But, in general, almost any data an app collects has to be disclosed. Even Apple’s own apps that aren’t offered on the App Store will have their privacy labels published on the web.

Apps will also be required to include a link to their publicly accessible privacy policy and can optionally now include a link to a page explaining their privacy choices in more detail. For example, they could link to a page where users can manage their data for the app or request deletion.

The privacy information itself is presented on a screen in the app’s product listing page in easy-to-read tabs that explain what data is collected across the different categories, starting with “data used to track you.”

Apple says it will not remove apps from the App Store if they don’t include this privacy information, but it’s no longer allowing apps to update until their privacy information is listed. That means, eventually, all apps that haven’t been abandoned will include these details.

Apple’s decision to implement privacy labels is a big win for consumer privacy and could establish a new baseline for how app stores disclose data.

However, they also arrive at a time when Apple is pushing its own adtech agenda under the banner of being a privacy-forward company. The company is forcing the adtech industry to shift from the identifier IDFA to its own SKAdNetwork — a shakeup that’s been controversial enough for Apple to delay the transition from 2020 to 2021. The decision to delay may have been, as Apple stated, to give marketers panicked about the sizable revenue hit, time to adapt. But Apple is, of course, keenly aware that regulators were weighing whether the App Store was behaving in anticompetitive ways toward third-parties.

Facebook, for example, had warned businesses they would see a 50% drop in Audience Network revenue on iOS as a result of the changes that would remove personalization from mobile app ad install campaigns.

Apple, in the meantime, took some of the regulatory heat off itself by reducing its App Store commissions to 15% for developers making less than $1 million.

As all these consumer privacy changes are underway, Apple itself continues to use its customer data to personalize ads in its own apps, including the App Store and Apple News. These settings, which are enabled by default, can be toggled off in the iPhone’s Settings. App publishers, on the other hand, will soon have to ask permission from users to track them. And Apple now runs plenty of other services it could expand ads to in the future, if it chose.

It will be interesting to see how consumers react to these new privacy labels as they go live. Apps that collect too much data may find their downloads are impacted, as wary users pass them over. Or, consumers may end up ignoring the labels — much as they do the other policies and terms they “agree” to when installing new software.

Details about Apple’s privacy practices were also published today on a new website, Apple.com/privacy, which includes not only the changes to the App Store, but lists all other areas where Apple protects consumer privacy.