Harming Competition and Consumers Under The Guise of Protecting Privacy: Review of Empirical Evidence

Apple proposed the new “App Tracking Transparency” (“ATT”) policy in November 2020 and required all apps to have this feature enabled on April 26, 2021, which was the beta release of iOS 14.5. The policy prohibits apps from engaging in any activity that Apple defines as “tracking” unless the apps prompt users for “permission to track [them] across apps and websites owned by other companies” and users explicitly opt in to “tracking.” In a prior essay, we identified that this p