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In the meantime Apple is growing it's own advertising business. Apple's privacy claim cannot be trusted (e.g. China).

cloutchaser 5y ago
This is the crucial point I think. Apple claims its on the side of privacy when it suits them. When it doesn't they don't care. In fact as the only big tech company allowed in China, you could argue they have a much worse effect on privacy overall for humanity than any other tech company. It's all bullshit, and marketing. Apple is doing this to grow apple ads. That's it.
- lucian1900 5y ago
  China has very strong privacy laws, though. In fact, Grindr recently stopped operating there because their business model was made very difficult by the new PIPL law.
  - treeman79 5y ago
    Seems like a sick joke as people have zero privacy from the government in China.
    - endisneigh 5y ago
      source?
      - treeman79 5y ago
        https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/04/sports/olympics/pelosi-protests.html https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/04/sports/olympics/pelosi-pr...
      - bloqs 5y ago
        endisneigh 5y ago
        that doesn't mean Chinese people have zero privacy, lol. Would you say USA citizens also have no privacy, as the US government does the same thing? it would be fair to say that Chinese are monitored, yes. not that they have zero privacy. what a ridiculous, unsubstantiated claim.
        treeman79 5y ago
        Not to dismiss what the US does. But China is on a completely different level. Look at what happened to one of their athletes after she complained about being a assaulted at the last Olympics. US is probably a few decades that level. Hopefully longer.
    - simondotau 5y ago
      One could be reductive and say that the Chinese Government has given themselves a monopoly on privacy invasion. Is that strictly worse than privacy invasion as a capitalist business model? I think the answer to that is highly subjective and highly culturally dependent. Obviously the the ideal would be to have neither.
      - treeman79 5y ago
        Private companies are usually not allowed to make you disappear
- kergonath 5y ago
  > In fact as the only big tech company allowed in China, you could argue they have a much worse effect on privacy overall for humanity than any other tech company. I would argue that it would be far worse for humanity if they decided that they did not have to follow local laws. Regardless of what you might think of our laws here, I do not want a foreign company feeling entitled to ignore them and impose their American views. They do it far too often as it is already. If you want Apple to provide better privacy, change your laws and make sure they are followed. In the meantime, until Apple is found to have violated local data protection laws, the whole “but China” argument is a red herring.
- strikelaserclaw 5y ago
  All companies are sociopaths that are only after the dollar. If Apple does something "good", it is basically benefitting them in some way, if it stops doing so they will change. Name me one company which sacrificed profitability for ethics.
threatofrain 5y ago
What is Apple's most visible marketing initiate as of late?
marcellus23 5y ago
What ad business? Don’t they really only show ads in Apple News? How is that comparable to what FB and Google do?
- JustMarco 5y ago
  App Store ads are growing fast.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - oefrha 5y ago
    Which part of that require tracking? You search for Facebook, they show you a TikTok ad as the first result (granted, quite annoying more often than not). Same business model as DuckDuckGo.
- jsnell 5y ago
  Their $5 billion / year ad business in the App Store, News and Stocks. The one where they track you by default in many Apple apps, build a cross-app ad profile based on your behavior, demographic information you are forced to enter to even reate an account, geographic location, and so on. And then they allow ads to be targeted against you using fairly high granularity user segments (minimum 5k users). See https://www.apple.com/legal/privacy/data/en/apple-advertising/ https://www.apple.com/legal/privacy/data/en/apple-advertisin... for the details. Want to opt out of this? It's a OS-level setting in an obscure place, rather than what Apple requires from 3p apps. Now, Apple isn't uniquely bad in the level of tracking they do. They're just the same as all of these companies are. The place where they are unique is the incredibly brazen self-dealing, using their control of iOS to boost their own tracking ad business over the competitors.
  - simondotau 5y ago
    > [Apple] build a cross-app ad profile Citation? I'm not saying your wrong, but I haven't heard anyone make this claim before. > rather than what Apple requires from 3p apps For the sake of argument, even if we assume your prior claim is correct, this is still incorrect. Apple does not require third party apps to notify users or provide an opt-out mechanism from tracking user activity across the apps of a singular developer.
KoftaBob 5y ago
There's a separate setting for its own advertising network that asks the user if they want their activity in apps to be used to target ads they see. Just like for the case of 3rd party apps like FB, it can be turned off.
soundnote 5y ago
I've heard that they toyed with the idea of making iCloud end to end encrypted but government agencies convinced them otherwise.

This is the crucial point I think. Apple claims its on the side of privacy when it suits them. When it doesn't they don't care. In fact as the only big tech company allowed in China, you could argue they have a much worse effect on privacy overall for humanity than any other tech company. It's all bullshit, and marketing. Apple is doing this to grow apple ads. That's it.

lucian1900 5y ago
China has very strong privacy laws, though. In fact, Grindr recently stopped operating there because their business model was made very difficult by the new PIPL law.
- treeman79 5y ago
  Seems like a sick joke as people have zero privacy from the government in China.
  - endisneigh 5y ago
    source?
    - treeman79 5y ago
      https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/04/sports/olympics/pelosi-protests.html https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/04/sports/olympics/pelosi-pr...
    - bloqs 5y ago
      - endisneigh 5y ago
        that doesn't mean Chinese people have zero privacy, lol. Would you say USA citizens also have no privacy, as the US government does the same thing? it would be fair to say that Chinese are monitored, yes. not that they have zero privacy. what a ridiculous, unsubstantiated claim.
        treeman79 5y ago
        Not to dismiss what the US does. But China is on a completely different level. Look at what happened to one of their athletes after she complained about being a assaulted at the last Olympics. US is probably a few decades that level. Hopefully longer.
  - simondotau 5y ago
    One could be reductive and say that the Chinese Government has given themselves a monopoly on privacy invasion. Is that strictly worse than privacy invasion as a capitalist business model? I think the answer to that is highly subjective and highly culturally dependent. Obviously the the ideal would be to have neither.
    - treeman79 5y ago
      Private companies are usually not allowed to make you disappear
kergonath 5y ago
> In fact as the only big tech company allowed in China, you could argue they have a much worse effect on privacy overall for humanity than any other tech company. I would argue that it would be far worse for humanity if they decided that they did not have to follow local laws. Regardless of what you might think of our laws here, I do not want a foreign company feeling entitled to ignore them and impose their American views. They do it far too often as it is already. If you want Apple to provide better privacy, change your laws and make sure they are followed. In the meantime, until Apple is found to have violated local data protection laws, the whole “but China” argument is a red herring.
strikelaserclaw 5y ago
All companies are sociopaths that are only after the dollar. If Apple does something "good", it is basically benefitting them in some way, if it stops doing so they will change. Name me one company which sacrificed profitability for ethics.

threatofrain 5y ago

What is Apple's most visible marketing initiate as of late?

marcellus23 5y ago

What ad business? Don’t they really only show ads in Apple News? How is that comparable to what FB and Google do?

JustMarco 5y ago
App Store ads are growing fast.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- oefrha 5y ago
  Which part of that require tracking? You search for Facebook, they show you a TikTok ad as the first result (granted, quite annoying more often than not). Same business model as DuckDuckGo.
jsnell 5y ago
Their $5 billion / year ad business in the App Store, News and Stocks. The one where they track you by default in many Apple apps, build a cross-app ad profile based on your behavior, demographic information you are forced to enter to even reate an account, geographic location, and so on. And then they allow ads to be targeted against you using fairly high granularity user segments (minimum 5k users). See https://www.apple.com/legal/privacy/data/en/apple-advertising/ https://www.apple.com/legal/privacy/data/en/apple-advertisin... for the details. Want to opt out of this? It's a OS-level setting in an obscure place, rather than what Apple requires from 3p apps. Now, Apple isn't uniquely bad in the level of tracking they do. They're just the same as all of these companies are. The place where they are unique is the incredibly brazen self-dealing, using their control of iOS to boost their own tracking ad business over the competitors.
- simondotau 5y ago
  > [Apple] build a cross-app ad profile Citation? I'm not saying your wrong, but I haven't heard anyone make this claim before. > rather than what Apple requires from 3p apps For the sake of argument, even if we assume your prior claim is correct, this is still incorrect. Apple does not require third party apps to notify users or provide an opt-out mechanism from tracking user activity across the apps of a singular developer.

KoftaBob 5y ago

There's a separate setting for its own advertising network that asks the user if they want their activity in apps to be used to target ads they see. Just like for the case of 3rd party apps like FB, it can be turned off.

soundnote 5y ago

I've heard that they toyed with the idea of making iCloud end to end encrypted but government agencies convinced them otherwise.