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But it IS marketing fluff, because you literally have to trust them on their word. They provide no means to verify what they are claiming and even if you could

But it IS marketing fluff, because you literally have to trust them on their word. They provide no means to verify what they are claiming and even if you could verify they could still silently update the client apps the next day (since they _exclusively_ control all platforms, all clients and all servers) and you would be none the wiser. Technically Google also "promises" practically the same (E2EE in Chats, only sharing map data if you enable it, local photo recognition, local voice assistant on the new Pixel whatever, etc.). But since you have to trust them on this, all of it is not really much better than just having a reasonable "privacy policy" which we all know is meaningless.

BoorishBears 5y ago
The local voice assistant model is on a fraction of Android devices. E2EE for Messages literally rolled out last month, relies on spotty RCS support and doesn't work with group messages. Apple Location tracking designed so that even when shared between your devices via Apple's servers it's not visible to Apple. I have literally never seen Google claim Google Photos is using on device classification, I'd love a source for that since nothing about how it works implies that. Maybe you mean it does some very specific type of classification as a pre-processing step? > But since you have to trust them on this, all of it is not really much better than just having a reasonable "privacy policy" which we all know is meaningless. You're free to be wrong? You need to trust someone on a claim vs someone not making the claim at all... those are not the same thing. Apple hasn't shown a reason to lie, and here's no equivalent financial incentive to Google unless you think Apple is pulling the equivalent of a fake moon landing and somehow running a 147 billion dollar data selling operation no one knows about...
- AshamedCaptain 5y ago
  I am not going to enter a discussion on who rolled whatever first, whose userbase has the most up to date OS, or the like. iOS is not going to win any privacy argument here anyway for the simple reason that at least I can de-googlefy Android. The point is that they make extremely similar promises that you can't verify. > You need to trust someone on a claim vs someone not making the claim at all... those are not the same thing. What is the difference between someone saying that your data is not visible to them (oh but you can't verify it!) versus someone saying that they will not touch or store your data after processing it on their privacy policy? When they control the entire platform, the fact that they claim to be doing something technical to prevent them from accessing the data is absolutely pointless. Even if it were true, they could be able to change it in an instant after a silent update (by themselves, by the government, or even by a third party attack!), and no one would be the wiser. > Apple hasn't shown a reason to lie, and here's no equivalent financial incentive to Google unless you think Apple Not sure I understand. In any case, most companies have already lied multiple times, and _all_ companies share at least one big reason to lie: Come tomorrow, some three letter agency could send them the letter and outright force them to capture your data, and since the only thing that prevents them from capturing your data is empty promises, they could do it in an instant. And would do it. And in fact do it regularly (TFA could in fact be an example of Apple trying to get rid of that). Btw, > I have literally never seen Google claim Google Photos is using on device classification, I have never put a SIM nor network credentials on my only Google Android device that has practically never abandoned my residence and yet it is tagging photos of objects. That's my source. I have not put a SIM either on my iOS devices and they do not tag pictures :)
  - BoorishBears 5y ago
    I stopped reading at "what's the difference between a massive cover up of subverting the most basic tenants of how your systems are designed and never claiming those tenants in the first place". That's exactly what I just explained, and I don't enjoy these kinds of circular back and forth. If you feel like an OS where the biggest comfort is you can tear out it's core works best for you, go ahead. But I will point out starting your comment with "I'm not going to get into the most important aspects of how secure a modern platform" is not a ringing endorsement. - I work on embedded Android for a living, so it's not like I'm afraid if what I don't know or something, iOS is a demonstrably privacy-oriented platform. A mentality of privacy first even if it's just for the sake of marketing differentiation will always come ahead of a mentality of "data collection so we can sell ads", you're not going to change that for me with baseless insistence.
    - AshamedCaptain 5y ago
      > I stopped reading at "what's the difference between a massive cover up of subverting the most basic tenants of how your systems are designed and never claiming those tenants in the first place". I do not see who is "subverting the most basic tenants of how your systems are designed", and if this is trying to say that the other companies are never claiming those tenants in the first place, then that is objectively false. Google, Microsoft, Apple, etc. have claimed being "privacy first" more times than I count, and, my point is, they are all making similarly dubious promises regarding policy (like, closed-source encryption, no data sent unless you ask for it, etc.). > If you feel like an OS where the biggest comfort is you can tear out it's core works best for you, go ahead. This is misleading. Thing is, it is not "tearing out its core" precisely because Google services are actually _not_ at the core of Android, yet. You still cannot do that with iOS (because they do not allow tampering to begin with, least you figure out a way to avoid leaving a fingerprint in their servers). > "I'm not going to get into the most important aspects of how secure a modern platform" is not a ringing endorsement. First, none of the topics mentioned are the "most important aspects of how [to?] secure a modern platform". Second, I distinguish privacy from security. i.e. it doesn't matter if it was the most secure platform in the world if I have to trust all the data to a distrustful entity to begin with. In fact, I actually prefer privacy over security. E.g. for messaging, I value using servers _I_ control/trust much higher than E2EE encryption, which is definite secondary worry. Metadata is a dangerous thing to leak. > A mentality of privacy first even if it's just for the sake of marketing differentiation will always come ahead of a mentality of "data collection so we can sell ads", This is basically trying to answer "to whom I put my blind trust?", so it's subjective. But in my experience it is usually the most "privacy marketing" companies that are usually the worst regarding privacy. See most VPN resellers. Most privacy marketing is just bullshit.

BoorishBears 5y ago

The local voice assistant model is on a fraction of Android devices. E2EE for Messages literally rolled out last month, relies on spotty RCS support and doesn't work with group messages. Apple Location tracking designed so that even when shared between your devices via Apple's servers it's not visible to Apple. I have literally never seen Google claim Google Photos is using on device classification, I'd love a source for that since nothing about how it works implies that. Maybe you mean it does some very specific type of classification as a pre-processing step? > But since you have to trust them on this, all of it is not really much better than just having a reasonable "privacy policy" which we all know is meaningless. You're free to be wrong? You need to trust someone on a claim vs someone not making the claim at all... those are not the same thing. Apple hasn't shown a reason to lie, and here's no equivalent financial incentive to Google unless you think Apple is pulling the equivalent of a fake moon landing and somehow running a 147 billion dollar data selling operation no one knows about...

AshamedCaptain 5y ago
I am not going to enter a discussion on who rolled whatever first, whose userbase has the most up to date OS, or the like. iOS is not going to win any privacy argument here anyway for the simple reason that at least I can de-googlefy Android. The point is that they make extremely similar promises that you can't verify. > You need to trust someone on a claim vs someone not making the claim at all... those are not the same thing. What is the difference between someone saying that your data is not visible to them (oh but you can't verify it!) versus someone saying that they will not touch or store your data after processing it on their privacy policy? When they control the entire platform, the fact that they claim to be doing something technical to prevent them from accessing the data is absolutely pointless. Even if it were true, they could be able to change it in an instant after a silent update (by themselves, by the government, or even by a third party attack!), and no one would be the wiser. > Apple hasn't shown a reason to lie, and here's no equivalent financial incentive to Google unless you think Apple Not sure I understand. In any case, most companies have already lied multiple times, and _all_ companies share at least one big reason to lie: Come tomorrow, some three letter agency could send them the letter and outright force them to capture your data, and since the only thing that prevents them from capturing your data is empty promises, they could do it in an instant. And would do it. And in fact do it regularly (TFA could in fact be an example of Apple trying to get rid of that). Btw, > I have literally never seen Google claim Google Photos is using on device classification, I have never put a SIM nor network credentials on my only Google Android device that has practically never abandoned my residence and yet it is tagging photos of objects. That's my source. I have not put a SIM either on my iOS devices and they do not tag pictures :)
- BoorishBears 5y ago
  I stopped reading at "what's the difference between a massive cover up of subverting the most basic tenants of how your systems are designed and never claiming those tenants in the first place". That's exactly what I just explained, and I don't enjoy these kinds of circular back and forth. If you feel like an OS where the biggest comfort is you can tear out it's core works best for you, go ahead. But I will point out starting your comment with "I'm not going to get into the most important aspects of how secure a modern platform" is not a ringing endorsement. - I work on embedded Android for a living, so it's not like I'm afraid if what I don't know or something, iOS is a demonstrably privacy-oriented platform. A mentality of privacy first even if it's just for the sake of marketing differentiation will always come ahead of a mentality of "data collection so we can sell ads", you're not going to change that for me with baseless insistence.
  - AshamedCaptain 5y ago
    > I stopped reading at "what's the difference between a massive cover up of subverting the most basic tenants of how your systems are designed and never claiming those tenants in the first place". I do not see who is "subverting the most basic tenants of how your systems are designed", and if this is trying to say that the other companies are never claiming those tenants in the first place, then that is objectively false. Google, Microsoft, Apple, etc. have claimed being "privacy first" more times than I count, and, my point is, they are all making similarly dubious promises regarding policy (like, closed-source encryption, no data sent unless you ask for it, etc.). > If you feel like an OS where the biggest comfort is you can tear out it's core works best for you, go ahead. This is misleading. Thing is, it is not "tearing out its core" precisely because Google services are actually _not_ at the core of Android, yet. You still cannot do that with iOS (because they do not allow tampering to begin with, least you figure out a way to avoid leaving a fingerprint in their servers). > "I'm not going to get into the most important aspects of how secure a modern platform" is not a ringing endorsement. First, none of the topics mentioned are the "most important aspects of how [to?] secure a modern platform". Second, I distinguish privacy from security. i.e. it doesn't matter if it was the most secure platform in the world if I have to trust all the data to a distrustful entity to begin with. In fact, I actually prefer privacy over security. E.g. for messaging, I value using servers _I_ control/trust much higher than E2EE encryption, which is definite secondary worry. Metadata is a dangerous thing to leak. > A mentality of privacy first even if it's just for the sake of marketing differentiation will always come ahead of a mentality of "data collection so we can sell ads", This is basically trying to answer "to whom I put my blind trust?", so it's subjective. But in my experience it is usually the most "privacy marketing" companies that are usually the worst regarding privacy. See most VPN resellers. Most privacy marketing is just bullshit.