Distraction Control lets users erase website elements they don't want to see
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A consortium of publishers and advertising companies in France has written to Tim Cook to ask him to scrap Distraction Control, undeterred by how he snubbed them last time ignored.
It was May 2024 when members of French organizations including the Alliance Digitale and the press organization Alliance de la Presse d'Information Generale read AppleInsider and went wide-eyed. AppleInsider had exclusively unveiled Apple’s Web Eraser, which was later renamed Distraction Control upon release.
At the time, Web Eraser was expected to allow Safari users to remove any part of a website from view, and naturally, the number one target was ads. So the consortium wrote to Tim Cook, asking Apple to drop it.
Neither Cook nor anyone else at Apple appears to have responded. However, when it was eventually released, Apple did state that Distraction Control would not remove ads permanently.
Now, according to Business Insider, the same French group has written again. The new letter doesn’t appear to be a complete copy and paste from May 2024, but it’s close enough.
The letter, believed to be in French, says Distraction Control poses an “existential threat to the online advertising model that underpins much of the internet economy.” The group wants Apple to suspend Distraction Control entirely.
What might make Apple pay more attention this time around is that the group says they are “actively considering all available legal resources.” Notably, that includes sending a copy of the letter to the European Commission, which doesn’t seem to be too fond of Apple at the moment.
Apple has yet to comment on the letter.
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