In April, Apple gave consumers the option to turn off ad tracking on iPhones, and this month Google began revealing plans to replace traditional cookie tracking with what it says will be a less intrusive measure. Experts say, however, these changes don’t actually safeguard data privacy. Rather, companies are taking a new approach that consolidates data power among fewer gatekeepers, a change some say may be for the worse. The new method, known as “first-party” tracking, prevents accruing a tracking history from app to app, but lets specific sites gather info with consumer permission.

“Companies are still gathering information on what people are doing on their specific site or app, with users’ consent,” The New York Times reports, explaining that “it is having the unintended effect of reinforcing the power of some of tech’s biggest titans.”

The shift indicates that gathering consumers’ online data for targeted advertising is here to stay, although it does have implications as to who controls the data and makes money from what has become a staple of Internet earning.

“They’ve entrenched their own power,” media strategist Eric Seufert said in NYT about Apple and Google.

Companies like Facebook and Google used to trail people as they surfed online. “If someone scrolled through Instagram and then browsed an online shoe store, marketers could use that information to target footwear ads to that person and reap a sale,” NYT writes.

This invasive approach, known as “third-party” tracking, is now being blocked by Apple and Google. But companies like Google and Amazon are still collecting data “on its own users’ search queries, location data and contact information,” writes NYT, admitting it does the same with its users.

“The rise of this tracking has implications for digital advertising, which has depended on user data to know where to aim promotions,” NYT says, adding that “it tilts the playing field toward large digital ecosystems such as Google, Snap, TikTok, Amazon and Pinterest, which have millions of their own users and have amassed information on them. Smaller brands have to turn to those platforms if they want to advertise to find new customers.”

The result is that many small businesses are “spending less on digital ads that rely on third-party data, such as Facebook and Instagram ads, and are reallocating marketing budgets to platforms with lots of first-party information, like Google and Amazon,” writes NYT, quoting Vanderbilt University computer science professor Douglas Schmidt as saying “anybody who is in their right mind and wants to reach a large audience still has to go to them.”