4 ms·
Apple would be a hero for threatening _its own_ significant revenue streams with a pro-privacy decision, not someone else's.
by menacingly 6y ago
Apple would be a hero for threatening _its own_ significant revenue streams with a pro-privacy decision, not someone else's.
- cde-v 6y agoNo companies are "heroes".
- BoorishBears 6y ago... what? A doctor giving someone a new lease on life with an arm transplant isn't a hero unless they're threatening _their own_ arm by volunteering it. - In what world do things work like that?
- reedjosh 6y agoI would say that's a false equivalency. In the Apple case, it's possibly gaining via marketing and driving people to paid apps that Apple gains revenue from. Please don't misread me though--I'm glad Apple is doing this, I just don't think they're heroes for it.
- BoorishBears 6y agoI like how you say it's false equivalency but then kind of fail to actually show that... maybe because it's not? In the real world there are few "heroic" deeds that don't benefit the entity doing them. The doctor doing the transplant gets professional acclaim that is not worthless, would you say the doctor did it to market themselves? Turns out doing good things can be profitable, it's not an either or. This tired cynicism any time a company does something good and people admire them for it (ie consider the action heroic) is not novel or useful. Companies at the size of Apple and co are never going to be pure forces of good with no bad deeds, but they are still capable of being heroes in a specific context. Right now Apple is being a hero of their customer's right to privacy
- User23 6y agoHero has become something of a joke word these days. It's used to describe acts as mundane as getting out of bed in the morning and going to a salaried job. It's too bad, because it's nice to have a word to describe people of near godlike achievement. Chuck Yeager would be an example of what I consider a bona-fide modern hero. Alexander would be an example from antiquity.
- BoorishBears 6y agoWhat people consider heroic is a personal choice. I had no issue with someone saying what Apple did isn't heroic, what I was against was the specific reason. After all, to me Chuck Yeager is less of a hero than someone who helps out at a soup kitchen every weekend. One was doing their job (and a questionable person honestly) and the other is taking their own time to help others.
- User23 6y agoThank you for illustrating my point.
- buzzerbetrayed 6y agoApple positioned themselves to not need to violate privacy in order to bring in revenue. They should indeed be praised for this.
- zepto 6y agoThey have done. Apple could have also built a business around tracking their users and selling targeted ads etc. They have forgone all the revenues associated with such practices because in the long term, they think society won’t accept them.
- Infinitesimus 6y agoFor reference, they tried: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/IAd https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/IAd
- zepto 6y agoNo they didn’t. Ads don’t automatically imply data collection without consent. They didn’t have data for targeting, which is possibly why they didn’t pursue it.
- tokamak-teapot 6y agoOne reason that people buy and use Apple devices is because they want to use Facebook. If this ended in a situation where Facebook was no longer on Apple devices, or somehow crippled on them, Apple could significantly damage their own revenue.