7 ms·
I hope fanboys don't start defending Apple / Google for their privacy measures etc. (esp. Apple) Both platforms are notorious (Apple more so due to its closed
by randomperson_24 5y ago
I hope fanboys don't start defending Apple / Google for their privacy measures etc. (esp. Apple)
Both platforms are notorious (Apple more so due to its closed nature imo) and defending any is just weird.
- travoc 5y agoAre we allowed to have an opinion about which company is better for our privacy?
- croes 5y agoIf both are bad, does it matter which is less bad?
- ceejayoz 5y agoYes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window
- joconde 5y agoYes definitely. There are a lot of nuances in privacy. As an example, take the approach to ML and assistants, where Google collects most of everything to train models on their servers, while Apple tries to anonymize things a bit (e.g. their “differential privacy” techniques).
- ikurei 5y agoWell, yes, of course it does. I'm willing to limit what apps I use and carefully consider what I install. I'm not yet willing to abandon my smartphone. Choosing the lesser of N evils is a pretty common and often rational choice, in life and in engineering. May be not in this case, and it's good to be unsatisfied, but disregarding the debate just because neither option is great makes no sense.
- croes 5y agoChoosing the lesser of N evils only makes sense if one is acceptable. If neither is, a choice is useless. Both sides have an unacceptable amount of tracking and your choice doesn't really have any consequences.
- derefr 5y agoNaively, because it only takes two suppliers in a market, for consumers to start playing them against each-other by switching to whichever one plays more to consumer preferences at any given moment, incentivizing the suppliers to compete to satisfy that consumer preference. Like a classical "race to the bottom" that lowers prices, but with some other factor that consumers care about instead of cost. (Of course, this assumes people bother to switch. In reality, this isn't even true in oligopolist party politics, let alone in oligopolist markets. In practice, there need to be a lot more, smaller options before switching costs are forced down enough to encourage people to switch. In phone markets, this looks like how people switch somewhat easily between different Android device manufacturers for their next phone. If we could get phone Operating Systems working like that, we'd really have something!)
- smoldesu 5y agoYou're welcome to say whatever you want, but if you genuinely believe that the NSA gives preferential treatment to anyone from FAANG you're living a fever dream.
- shawnz 5y agoOn the other hand, who else besides FAANG has the resources to resist the NSA, at least in small ways?
- ForHackernews 5y agoThe Chinese and the Russians. Who wants to buy a Yandex phone?
- YarickR2 5y agoWhat's wrong with Yandex phone ?
- Mikeb85 5y agoIt's not about resources, it's about reach and jurisdiction. If anything, FAANGs have the most incentive to cooperate with the NSA because they're located in the US and have the most to lose. The companies that can best resist the NSA are located outside of the US and EU.
- imwillofficial 5y agoApple has had high profile fights with USgov on their privacy stances. Google has not.
- Mikeb85 5y agoAnd yet they're cooperating with the government all the same. Literally just marketing... With Google, you at least know what to expect. How many promises has Apple broken now?
- bogwog 5y agoSaying that iPhones are secure and private is wishful thinking that benefits nobody but Apple shareholders. There are no doubt some dead journalists and activists that would still be alive today if iPhones truly were secure and/or private.
- amelius 5y agoExtraordinary assertions require extraordinary proof.
- Razengan 5y agoHow about this one objective example of Apple > Google in terms of privacy: iCloud Mail aliases versus Gmail aliases: Google exposes your main address at all times: HeyGuysLookWhoItIs+TotallyNotMe@gmail.com iCloud lets you have completely different aliases all forwarded to the same main account which no one else ever has to see. AND you can see which apps have been given which aliases from one convenient list. But of course facts like this will get buried to maintain the tired “everything sucks the same” narrative here.
- imwillofficial 5y agoName one
- smoldesu 5y agoJamal Kashoggi
- imwillofficial 5y agoHe would not be alive today no matter what phone he used.
- smoldesu 5y agoHard to say, his phone was the one that ratted him out.
- ActorNightly 5y agoThe difference is, with a good number of Android phones, you can just flash a custom rom without any tracking built in.
- kaba0 5y agoLet’s leave it at “there are android phones”. Unfortunately it is not at all supported for the majority of phones, and for the ones where it is possible, it will result in eg. the purging of camera firmware.
- emsy 5y agoWhy not if one is better than they other? There is fanboyism, which is unproductive and then there’s sober comparison of objective measures of privacy. And I want to know which is better. So as long as someone presents facts that help me make a decision I don’t want to censor them.
- mfer 5y agoYou have to look at what versions of the operating systems they’re looking at and compare that to today. Things change.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- Razengan 5y ago“Everything sucks the same, why bother” is the cry of those incapable of nuance, or more commonly, on the losing side. There are objective reasons where Apple is better at privacy. For example, one of the things that benefits me the most personally: iCloud Mail aliases versus Gmail aliases: Google exposes your main address at all times: HeyGuysLookWhoItIs+TotallyNotMe@gmail.com What even is the fucking point? iCloud lets you have completely different aliases all forwarded to the same main account which no one else ever has to see.
- AnonHP 5y agoAndroid that’s seen as Android in the mass market is also closed. The AOSP layer may be open source, but all the Google layers that make Android usable (for most people), such as Play Services, the Play Store, and Google apps, are all closed. Not any different from Apple in that respect.