German publishers are pushing regulators to fine Apple for ATT

German media agencies and publishers are calling on the country’s antitrust agency to reject Apple’s proposed changes to App Tracking Transparency (ATT) and impose a fine on the company. Here are the details.

A little background

Apple is fighting back when it comes to the App Tracking Transparency feature, which allows users to choose whether their data is shared with third parties through cross-app tracking. numerous antitrust battlesmostly in Europe.

In general, the charges are the same: Program Tracking Transparency is anti-competitive.

As publishers see it, Apple shouldn’t stand between publications and advertising data. They also argue that Apple’s own software is not subject to the same restrictions imposed by the ATT.

Apple naturally rejects this characterization, claiming that:

“Apple (…) holds itself to a higher standard than any third-party developer by giving users a positive choice about whether they want personalized ads at all. And Apple has designed services and features like Siri, Maps, FaceTime, and iMessage in such a way that the company couldn’t link data between those services even if it wanted to do so.”

One of the countries investigating whether ATT is anti-competitive is Germany. Last year, the company proposed several changes to the framework rules to appease the country’s antitrust watchdog.

From Reutersoriginal coverage Apple’s proposed changes:

Andreas Mundt, head of Germany’s Bundeskartellamt, said Apple has agreed to introduce neutral consent requirements for both its services and third-party apps and to largely adapt the text, content and visual design of those messages.

The company has also proposed streamlining the consent process so that developers can obtain user consent to process ad-related data in a manner consistent with data protection law.

At the time, German regulators began consulting industry publications to determine whether the proposals would address their concerns.

As it turns out, the answer was hardly a no.

German publishers are retreating

as Reuters informed today:

Apple’s proposed changes to app tracking rules do not address antitrust concerns in the mobile advertising market, associations representing German publishers and advertisers said on Tuesday as they urged the country’s antitrust authority to fine the US tech giant.

(…)

“The proposed commitments will not reverse the negative effects of the Program Tracking Transparency Framework,” Bernd Nauen, chief executive of the German Advertising Federation, said in a joint letter signed by the trade bodies.

“Apple will remain the data gatekeeper and will continue to decide who has access to ad-related data and how companies communicate with their end customers,” he said.

If the German supervisory authority finds Apple in violation, the company can be fined up to 10% of its annual turnover. The ruling could also hurt Apple’s business in other countries where ATT remains under control.

9to5Mac has reached out to Apple for comment and will update this post if we hear back.

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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’ve introduced App Tracking Transparency to give users a simple way to control whether apps are allowed to track their activity on 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 ensure that we continue to have unfettered access to personal data for these important users.”

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