14 ms·

Apple has no love for privacy nor ever had. They are in a market position where their main competitors - Google primarily, Microsoft and Amazon - are highly dep

by yholio 6y ago

Apple has no love for privacy nor ever had. They are in a market position where their main competitors - Google primarily, Microsoft and Amazon - are highly dependent on revenue streams extracted by monetizing personal information. Apple is in a position to cut that stream without affecting its bottom line, so it does it and claims privacy as a core value. I won't look a gift horse in the mouth, but I have no doubt that the tables could switch at any time.

confiq 6y ago
ironically, most of these companies are out of China because they don't want to comply with Chinese laws. Not apple https://applecensorship.com/ https://applecensorship.com/
- simonh 6y ago
  "Brain test game was deleted from the Chinese App Store". These are just changes to the app catalog, what reason do we have to believe that a bunch of brain training apps being dropped or withdrawn is evidence of censorship? Has any of this been verified with the App publishers?
- yorwba 6y ago
  > ironically, most of these companies are out of China Of the three companies named: - Google's user-facing services (search, email, app store, docs, ...) are blocked, but Google Ads (which are censored) and Android (which comes without any content that would require censorship) are still sold. - Microsoft: I'm not aware of any of their products being unavailable. Windows is the dominant desktop operating system in China, and I'd be surprised if the app store wasn't censored. Bing search results are definitely censored (they tell you so at the bottom of the page). - Amazon isn't selling much that could run afoul of censorship, except possibly books (remember when Amazon used to be an online bookstore?) but in China their market is mostly targeted at the niche of high-end imported goods. (Note the country-of-origin indicators on https://www.amazon.cn/ https://www.amazon.cn/ )
  - yalok 6y ago
    Worse than this, and to the point of this post - you can’t offer comms service in China unless it has a way to be snooped by government. So some comm services like Skype have to offer a separate app, just for China, which affects all messages sent and received by users of this version of the app, even if it comes from a regular app. I was telling my friends who moved from China and kept their iPhones, to just buy a new one... just in case...
  - tssva 6y ago
    Google doesn't certify devices in the Chinese market which run Android. Android is open source. Devices made for the domestic Chinese market run versions of Android created by the manufacturers and lack Google apps and services.
    - yorwba 6y ago
      The majority of Android phones manufactured in China are not intended for the domestic market but are exported, and do come with Google apps and services, which Google licenses to the manufacturers.
  - confiq 6y ago
    no idea why I thought facebook is on that list too... There is AWS in China, but you need to sign "special agreement"
StavrosK 6y ago
Isn't "it's in our financial interests right now" about as much "love" as you'll get for anything by a corporation? Saying "Apple has no love for privacy, they're only doing it because it sells" sounds moot to me, every company only does things because they sell.
- heinrichhartman 6y ago
  By choosing which markets you operate in and which products you develop you have a fair bit of influence which things are in your "financial interest". E.g. creating a company with a business model which benefits from taxing CO2 emissions (Tesla) is morally great. Whereas having a business model which benefits from cheap oil (VW) is less so. Product decisions (electric vs. fuel engines) have a large effect on your long-term financial interests.
  - catmanjan 6y ago
    If Apple knew it could make more money in say for example, arms dealing, wouldn't it be obliged to pivot to serve the shareholders? I guess it's somewhat democratic as shareholders could vote against it for moral reasons
    - greedo 6y ago
      No. Not all corporate actions have to be aligned to maximal profit extraction.
    - fennecfoxen 6y ago
      It’s never just about “more money”. It’s about time-discounted, risk-adjusted “more money”. Doing morally repugnant things increases risk substantially. This is not the risk profile the owners signed up for. This change may even depress the stock price directly as disgusted owners sell (this harms the ability of current shareholders to earn a return, as the loss is now but the future revenues are discounted). The market is as moral as its shareholders, which is far less than perfection but a lot better than zero.
    - 6y ago
TheRealDunkirk 6y ago
Having been a programmer through the 90's, and watched Microsoft (and Oracle, et. al.) through their most malfeasant years, I'm very cautious about giving companies the benefit of the doubt. However, the fact that Apple is leaving hundreds of billions of dollars on the table by NOT monetizing their aggregated user data does seem to indicate that their will is strong here, and that "they" mean what "they" say about privacy. The kind of money they AREN'T making from this move would try any mortal's soul.
- WA 6y ago
  Or it wouldn’t really be that much more. How do you come up with hundreds of billions of dollars? Who are the buyers?
  - dkonofalski 6y ago
    Advertisers. It's always advertisers.
  - jjtheblunt 6y ago
    I believe it's based on Google's income derived from advertising, on financial statements.
marcosdumay 6y ago
> Apple is in a position to cut that stream without affecting its bottom line, so it does it and claims privacy as a core value. Well, the GP has a quite damming list showing that it doesn't. It's only empty marketing.
conradev 6y ago
When Apple launched iOS 6, it was the first operating system to include per-app privacy controls around access to things like microphone, camera, photos, etc. Controls we consider fundamental today. It did not mention it a single time in any of its PR or marketing at all. The first reference you find to it will be from Apple blogs who were surprised to stumble upon it in the iOS 6 beta. It took Android two more years to launch a similar feature. Yes, Apple is doubling down on its competitive advantage here. But to claim it does not and never cared for privacy is just ignoring the facts and the history. It moved the industry forward.
- conradev 6y ago
  If you’re curious about more of the history (now, almost a decade ago), this was the scandal that likely motivated the above: https://www.theverge.com/2012/2/7/2782947/path-ios-app-user-information-collected-privacy https://www.theverge.com/2012/2/7/2782947/path-ios-app-user-... Congresspeople sent letters to app developers as a result (not even Apple, ha). iOS 6 was then seeded to the public four months after that article. But! It actually goes earlier than this. Apple started phasing out access to device identifiers used to track users across apps in iOS 5: https://techcrunch.com/2011/08/19/apple-ios-5-phasing-out-udid/ https://techcrunch.com/2011/08/19/apple-ios-5-phasing-out-ud... (again, none of this was marketed to anyone)
  - samisaviv 6y ago
    If it was seeded 4 months after the article, it had absolutely nothing to do with the article.
    - conradev 6y ago
      Yes, that makes sense, development timelines for these features are often far longer than we imagine.
- tonyb 6y ago
  The first except for Blackberry. Before IOS or Android even existed Blackberry had granular per app permissions. I don't disagree with your argument though, of the modern mobile OSs Apple moved to towards the per-app model before everyone else. I just find it interesting when Apple or Android gets coverage/credit for a feature that has long existed but was forgotten or ignored.
api 6y ago
Apple is leaving a massive amount of money on the table by not monetizing user data or using it to serve ads. They are by far the most privacy focused of the large tech companies, though they're obviously not perfect. The only way to do better than Apple is a full FOSS stack, and that comes with different challenges and is more of a hassle to maintain.

by yholio 6y ago

confiq 6y ago

ironically, most of these companies are out of China because they don't want to comply with Chinese laws. Not apple https://applecensorship.com/ https://applecensorship.com/

simonh 6y ago
"Brain test game was deleted from the Chinese App Store". These are just changes to the app catalog, what reason do we have to believe that a bunch of brain training apps being dropped or withdrawn is evidence of censorship? Has any of this been verified with the App publishers?
yorwba 6y ago
> ironically, most of these companies are out of China Of the three companies named: - Google's user-facing services (search, email, app store, docs, ...) are blocked, but Google Ads (which are censored) and Android (which comes without any content that would require censorship) are still sold. - Microsoft: I'm not aware of any of their products being unavailable. Windows is the dominant desktop operating system in China, and I'd be surprised if the app store wasn't censored. Bing search results are definitely censored (they tell you so at the bottom of the page). - Amazon isn't selling much that could run afoul of censorship, except possibly books (remember when Amazon used to be an online bookstore?) but in China their market is mostly targeted at the niche of high-end imported goods. (Note the country-of-origin indicators on https://www.amazon.cn/ https://www.amazon.cn/ )
- yalok 6y ago
  Worse than this, and to the point of this post - you can’t offer comms service in China unless it has a way to be snooped by government. So some comm services like Skype have to offer a separate app, just for China, which affects all messages sent and received by users of this version of the app, even if it comes from a regular app. I was telling my friends who moved from China and kept their iPhones, to just buy a new one... just in case...
- tssva 6y ago
  Google doesn't certify devices in the Chinese market which run Android. Android is open source. Devices made for the domestic Chinese market run versions of Android created by the manufacturers and lack Google apps and services.
  - yorwba 6y ago
    The majority of Android phones manufactured in China are not intended for the domestic market but are exported, and do come with Google apps and services, which Google licenses to the manufacturers.
- confiq 6y ago
  no idea why I thought facebook is on that list too... There is AWS in China, but you need to sign "special agreement"

StavrosK 6y ago

Isn't "it's in our financial interests right now" about as much "love" as you'll get for anything by a corporation? Saying "Apple has no love for privacy, they're only doing it because it sells" sounds moot to me, every company only does things because they sell.

heinrichhartman 6y ago
By choosing which markets you operate in and which products you develop you have a fair bit of influence which things are in your "financial interest". E.g. creating a company with a business model which benefits from taxing CO2 emissions (Tesla) is morally great. Whereas having a business model which benefits from cheap oil (VW) is less so. Product decisions (electric vs. fuel engines) have a large effect on your long-term financial interests.
- catmanjan 6y ago
  If Apple knew it could make more money in say for example, arms dealing, wouldn't it be obliged to pivot to serve the shareholders? I guess it's somewhat democratic as shareholders could vote against it for moral reasons
  - greedo 6y ago
    No. Not all corporate actions have to be aligned to maximal profit extraction.
  - fennecfoxen 6y ago
    It’s never just about “more money”. It’s about time-discounted, risk-adjusted “more money”. Doing morally repugnant things increases risk substantially. This is not the risk profile the owners signed up for. This change may even depress the stock price directly as disgusted owners sell (this harms the ability of current shareholders to earn a return, as the loss is now but the future revenues are discounted). The market is as moral as its shareholders, which is far less than perfection but a lot better than zero.
  - 6y ago

TheRealDunkirk 6y ago

Having been a programmer through the 90's, and watched Microsoft (and Oracle, et. al.) through their most malfeasant years, I'm very cautious about giving companies the benefit of the doubt. However, the fact that Apple is leaving hundreds of billions of dollars on the table by NOT monetizing their aggregated user data does seem to indicate that their will is strong here, and that "they" mean what "they" say about privacy. The kind of money they AREN'T making from this move would try any mortal's soul.

WA 6y ago
Or it wouldn’t really be that much more. How do you come up with hundreds of billions of dollars? Who are the buyers?
- dkonofalski 6y ago
  Advertisers. It's always advertisers.
- jjtheblunt 6y ago
  I believe it's based on Google's income derived from advertising, on financial statements.

marcosdumay 6y ago

> Apple is in a position to cut that stream without affecting its bottom line, so it does it and claims privacy as a core value. Well, the GP has a quite damming list showing that it doesn't. It's only empty marketing.

conradev 6y ago

When Apple launched iOS 6, it was the first operating system to include per-app privacy controls around access to things like microphone, camera, photos, etc. Controls we consider fundamental today. It did not mention it a single time in any of its PR or marketing at all. The first reference you find to it will be from Apple blogs who were surprised to stumble upon it in the iOS 6 beta. It took Android two more years to launch a similar feature. Yes, Apple is doubling down on its competitive advantage here. But to claim it does not and never cared for privacy is just ignoring the facts and the history. It moved the industry forward.

conradev 6y ago
If you’re curious about more of the history (now, almost a decade ago), this was the scandal that likely motivated the above: https://www.theverge.com/2012/2/7/2782947/path-ios-app-user-information-collected-privacy https://www.theverge.com/2012/2/7/2782947/path-ios-app-user-... Congresspeople sent letters to app developers as a result (not even Apple, ha). iOS 6 was then seeded to the public four months after that article. But! It actually goes earlier than this. Apple started phasing out access to device identifiers used to track users across apps in iOS 5: https://techcrunch.com/2011/08/19/apple-ios-5-phasing-out-udid/ https://techcrunch.com/2011/08/19/apple-ios-5-phasing-out-ud... (again, none of this was marketed to anyone)
- samisaviv 6y ago
  If it was seeded 4 months after the article, it had absolutely nothing to do with the article.
  - conradev 6y ago
    Yes, that makes sense, development timelines for these features are often far longer than we imagine.
tonyb 6y ago
The first except for Blackberry. Before IOS or Android even existed Blackberry had granular per app permissions. I don't disagree with your argument though, of the modern mobile OSs Apple moved to towards the per-app model before everyone else. I just find it interesting when Apple or Android gets coverage/credit for a feature that has long existed but was forgotten or ignored.

api 6y ago

Apple is leaving a massive amount of money on the table by not monetizing user data or using it to serve ads. They are by far the most privacy focused of the large tech companies, though they're obviously not perfect. The only way to do better than Apple is a full FOSS stack, and that comes with different challenges and is more of a hassle to maintain.