The app industry’s reckoning with privacy, control, and consumer empowerment

For the first 12 years of its existence, the app industry, like many nascent markets, pursued growth by focusing primarily on investor-pleasing metrics such as user acquisition and revenue generation — oftentimes at the expense of the trust and confidence of the very users that fueled its growth.

But the events of 2020 have left the industry shaken and ready for change.