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Marketing campaigns often convince people to think things, however subconsciously, i.e. Lincoln is associated with Luxury or X cereal is a wholesome breakfast.

Marketing campaigns often convince people to think things, however subconsciously, i.e. Lincoln is associated with Luxury or X cereal is a wholesome breakfast. What I hadn't seen until this was a marketing campaign that actually proselytized so many into proclaiming the message for free. On HackerNews, Reddit and in public places you're likely to find someone vouching for Apple's privacy practices sometimes with the same verbiage that's on the billboards! Maybe that's a testament to Steve Jobs's lasting marketing impact. I personally see the incentive structure which makes Apple more privacy-friendly than say Google. But I'm deeply suspicious of such a convenient message that the largest corporation in the world puts its resources behind. Also, being more privacy-friendly than Google and being privacy friendly are two different things.

factorialboy 4y ago
Few months ago when launching apps on Mac Os became sluggish because their telemetry service had high latency -- that was the moment I lost faith in all of Apple's privacy claims. PS: Still use a MBP, iPhone and an Apple Watch. :(
- e40 4y ago
  That "telemetry" (which is misleading in the current context) was about checking for malware. I'm talking the specific case of launching apps on macOS.
  - sitzkrieg 4y ago
    that is still very much the same thing
  - Zagill 4y ago
    Part of the issue IIRC is that application names were exposed in the request, not encrypted in any way. So there are legitimate privacy/security concerns in publicly announcing every application that you open on your computer.
- user3939382 4y ago
  If you just put macOS on a proxy you can see the it basically never stops phoning home. Privacy my ass.
  - jjtheblunt 4y ago
    On a laptop not on WiFi what happens?
- gumby 4y ago
  That telemetry could easily -- more easily in fact -- have been done in a privacy protecting way: have your machine ship with a signature database and then have it randomly and frequently download deltas. Then check the signature database locally. It would be faster too. Especially on the mac we're not talking about an enormous database. Rather disappointed that Apple didn't take this route. They do do something similar with their virus database (XProtect).
- Spooky23 4y ago
  They didn’t say what happens on MacOS stays on MacOS. That type of capability is core to most general purpose OS’s today. Any significant company is running EDR, etc that’s even more intrusive
addicted 4y ago
A huge part of Apple’s positive incentive structure was the fact that they didn’t do ads. But now that they are getting into the ad space that incentive structure benefit pretty much crumbles away.
- giobox 4y ago
  I have huge concerns about this, I think it's really hard for any publicly traded company who gets into ad-tech not to end up making some questionable choices. The incentive structure in the ad business is such that no matter how strong a core org you think you have, it likely corrupts over time. While Apple's track record on privacy is commendable, Tim loves (and needs to keep shareholders happy) a good Services growth story. It's also clear at this point, the most profitable ads in the industry are the ones that most take advantage of personal data - this isn't a secret. The difference in profitability can be stark too, which is why I worry so much about the incentive structure.
- moreira 4y ago
  You might be surprised to know that Apple has been doing ads for over a decade. [0] They‘ve had ads for a long time, and still do - App Store search ads[1] and Apple News ads, to my knowledge. [0]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/IAd https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/IAd [1]: https://searchads.apple.com/ https://searchads.apple.com/
  - nvrspyx 4y ago
    Let's not forget that App Store search ads replaced iAds, which was an in-app ad network. I assume that it was shut down because of too much competition in the space, but perhaps we'll see it come full circle as Apple diminishes the "effectiveness" of third-parties.
  - lancesells 4y ago
    And there was the Steve Jobs era ad network that has big, interactive type flash ads that Apple had to approve as being "good". I don't remember much except working on a video component of a Geico ad that was mobile only in ~2009.
clairity 4y ago
> "Also, being more privacy-friendly than Google and being privacy friendly are two different things." in theory, that's ok, if we have healthy, functioning markets that are free from undue influence of any individual participant. the "invisible hand" of the market would drive it iteratively toward more privacy (assuming this is valued by more than minor segment, greater than ~15% of the market). the market would (and should) be an ongoing conversation between suppliers and consumers to reach all the profitable corners of supply and demand, rather than a couple behemoths with megaphones telling us how great they are, rather than showing it through their products and practices. p.s. - has anyone else noticed adguard doing port-scans on your gateway from their dns service IPs? i haven't dug into it yet, so i don't know whether it's spoofed or whatnot.
- whimsicalism 4y ago
  > functioning markets that are free from undue influence of any individual participant. the "invisible hand" of the market would drive it iteratively toward more privacy (assuming this is valued by more than minor segment, greater than ~15% of the market) The market is for advertisers, and advertisers - whether they are small or large businesses - value tracking and measurability of their advertising investments.
  - clairity 4y ago
    advertisers value a way of determining ROI, which doesn't necessarily require pervasive tracking (see: nielsen ratings of yore). in any case, my point was about the consumer electronics market, which is apple's core industry, and which, in a healthy and well-functioning market, also has a key stake in this conversation (driving it toward non-distorted, optimally efficient outcomes).
    - whimsicalism 4y ago
      > doesn't necessarily require pervasive tracking I disagree. Incrementality studies (which measure ROI) as advertisers want them are basically impossible with ATT. You need to be able to pass an ID between apps.
dilap 4y ago
It was quite a thing to see Apple's huge "What Happens on iPhone, Stays on iPhone" billboards up around town, at the exact same time they were announcing the rollout of a new content-side illegal-material scan-and-notify system. (I think they've since delayed the rollout of that system indefinitely, after public outcry.)
- Spooky23 4y ago
  Yup, and now your materials are in clear text on their service getting scanned routinely I’m sure. That particular issue was the privacy advocacy people run amok.
- misnome 4y ago
  To be fair - wasn't that scanning on-device, and only uploading metadata on things that you yourself were already uploading to their cloud?
  - GekkePrutser 4y ago
    It was restricted to that for the time being yes. But still a big step in the wrong direction. I don't want my own phone spying on me. It's a bridge too far. Scanning on a cloud service is a very big difference. Does it matter in practice? No. But it makes me feel very different about it. That's important too.
    - smoldesu 4y ago
      Same way I feel about it. When the data is on your servers, I fully expect it to be analyzed and checked to ensure it's compliant with the host's standards. That's part of our agreement, as customer and service. When you move that software onto the device I use, now I have to be conscious of everything I interact with. It's a horrible sinking feeling that isn't easily mitigated by platitudes like "we promise not to abuse it!"
      - Spooky23 4y ago
        That’s exactly what they proposed to do.
cormacrelf 4y ago
> On HackerNews, Reddit and in public places you're loath to find someone vouching for Apple's privacy practices FYI loath means "unwilling", so it doesn't make sense here. "Loath to X" is like "I would loathe doing X". The word you're looking for is "likely".
- lbotos 4y ago
  Not op, but I wondered if this was a Britishism. My partner recently introduced to me to "lousy with" meaning "abundance"...
  - mgerdts 4y ago
    My mom who is not British and has spent almost no time outside of the Great Plains uses this term. I think the “lous” come from louse, the singular form of lice. A great abundance of not a great thing.
    - lbotos 4y ago
      TIL! But my partner has heard it used in the UK like "I'm lousy with options" as in, I'm overflowing with choice. That was a fun convo as I was like ... What??
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - diputsmonro 4y ago
    "Lousy" also has a definition of being infested with lice (the singular form of which is louse); according to the Etymology Dictionary this may be the original meaning (https://www.etymonline.com/word/lousy https://www.etymonline.com/word/lousy) From there, it seems to have developed as an American slang to describe "infestations" of other kinds.
- jackconsidine 4y ago
  Had my negatives flipped- thanks for pointing out!
ksec 4y ago
I remember Tim Cook said they are not in the Ads Business. Unfortunately I am too busy, Apple's PR has worked hard to delete those tracks of what Tim Cook said, or Google's search engine is longer showing what I am looking for. And I remember that "Apple is not in the Ad Business" before 2018 was the most cited defence and reason on HN. That was before the war on tracking, the submarine articles on ads, and the attack on Facebook. Because you know what? Privacy is a Fundamental Human Right. And because iPhone is the only smartphone that values your privacy, banning iPhone sales in your country is also against Human Right. >But I'm deeply suspicious of such a convenient message. I was probably the only few who was deeply deeply suspicious of the "Dont be Evil" Google in the early 00s, in an era of "Dont be Evil", when everyone in Tech thought they were Saint. The self righteousness of Google, I thought nothing could be worse than Google's hypocrisy. I mean how can something be worse than "Dont be Evil"? Well here we are. The era of "Fundamental Human Right". A company that worked with CCP, invested $275B to build and improve the whole CE supply chain in China. Helping those companies to compete in area where CCP has a strategic interest, Continue to invest and help those companies to set up operation in India or Vietnam in the name of "Diversification from China" as PR headlines.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- pyuser583 4y ago
  Wow … it’s insane how “Apple is not in the ad business” has been scrubbed from the internet. I’ve seen this happen before. But not with a big corporation.
  - nsxwolf 4y ago
    The modern internet gives me a strange sense of amnesia. I swear everything is heavily censored and redacted now, but how can I prove it when my primary view into this world is the search engines themselves? It feels a bit like the simulation hypothesis.
    - pyuser583 4y ago
gigel82 4y ago
Not only that, in my experience, the support is fanatical in nature. I often get downvoted and flagged for daring to state the obvious, which is that Apple is positioning itself to become one of the largest companies in the Ad space. It's probably more than just great marketing / PR (at least - of the usual kind).
tootie 4y ago
I like to say that Apple is a marketing company that makes decent tech products. They absolutely played this market like a fiddle. They sat back and watched Google and FB absorb tons of bad press and I'm sure they were feeding it behind the scenes. It always felt to me like a ploy. As much as ads and the SEO game had their problems, they were there to support the open web. Apple kept tapping the breaks on improving their web browsers and driving users to apps because that was their walled garden. Owning an iPhone now is essentially a status symbol, owning an Android means you're poor. The privacy rules designed to kill ads was only ever designed to hurt Google, not to protect users. As a counter example of marketing gone wrong, Amazon has very steadfastly never sold their customer data to anyone. No one ever thought for a second that they did this because they were interested in privacy.
- lupire 4y ago
  Google also has never sold customer data. Amazon has been in level trouble several times for stealing customer (product seller) data.
- Spooky23 4y ago
  “Selling data” means nothing. Amazon trades in data services all of the time. Facebook is serving up retargeted Amazon ads in near real time. Apple usually designs their experiences around things they control end to end.
ouid 4y ago
apple uploads and modifies all photos you take on your device with the explicit stated intent of referring you for prosecution. That doesn't sound very private to me.
yazzku 4y ago
'Deeply suspicious' is an understatement. These corporations don't have your back, and if something benefits the user, it's only as a side effect. Sadly, many still buy into the messaging, which must be hard to avoid when Apple's marketing has always been around making you feel like the kool kid in the block. Anybody who has ever believed Apple's pro-privacy scam is living in a fairy tale.
- lupire 4y ago
  No one has anyone's back, except if your mother loves you, so what's the point of that complaint? Alliances of mutual benefit are still good.
  - yazzku 4y ago
    Except that this isn't an alliance, and the point of the complaint is that they market themselves as pro-privacy when they are anything but.
lupire 4y ago
It's called doing well by doing good, and earning a god reputation. If you do good, people will talk about it, and you get to talk about it.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]

factorialboy 4y ago

Few months ago when launching apps on Mac Os became sluggish because their telemetry service had high latency -- that was the moment I lost faith in all of Apple's privacy claims. PS: Still use a MBP, iPhone and an Apple Watch. :(

e40 4y ago
That "telemetry" (which is misleading in the current context) was about checking for malware. I'm talking the specific case of launching apps on macOS.
- sitzkrieg 4y ago
  that is still very much the same thing
- Zagill 4y ago
  Part of the issue IIRC is that application names were exposed in the request, not encrypted in any way. So there are legitimate privacy/security concerns in publicly announcing every application that you open on your computer.
user3939382 4y ago
If you just put macOS on a proxy you can see the it basically never stops phoning home. Privacy my ass.
- jjtheblunt 4y ago
  On a laptop not on WiFi what happens?
gumby 4y ago
That telemetry could easily -- more easily in fact -- have been done in a privacy protecting way: have your machine ship with a signature database and then have it randomly and frequently download deltas. Then check the signature database locally. It would be faster too. Especially on the mac we're not talking about an enormous database. Rather disappointed that Apple didn't take this route. They do do something similar with their virus database (XProtect).
Spooky23 4y ago
They didn’t say what happens on MacOS stays on MacOS. That type of capability is core to most general purpose OS’s today. Any significant company is running EDR, etc that’s even more intrusive

addicted 4y ago

A huge part of Apple’s positive incentive structure was the fact that they didn’t do ads. But now that they are getting into the ad space that incentive structure benefit pretty much crumbles away.

giobox 4y ago
I have huge concerns about this, I think it's really hard for any publicly traded company who gets into ad-tech not to end up making some questionable choices. The incentive structure in the ad business is such that no matter how strong a core org you think you have, it likely corrupts over time. While Apple's track record on privacy is commendable, Tim loves (and needs to keep shareholders happy) a good Services growth story. It's also clear at this point, the most profitable ads in the industry are the ones that most take advantage of personal data - this isn't a secret. The difference in profitability can be stark too, which is why I worry so much about the incentive structure.
moreira 4y ago
You might be surprised to know that Apple has been doing ads for over a decade. [0] They‘ve had ads for a long time, and still do - App Store search ads[1] and Apple News ads, to my knowledge. [0]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/IAd https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/IAd [1]: https://searchads.apple.com/ https://searchads.apple.com/
- nvrspyx 4y ago
  Let's not forget that App Store search ads replaced iAds, which was an in-app ad network. I assume that it was shut down because of too much competition in the space, but perhaps we'll see it come full circle as Apple diminishes the "effectiveness" of third-parties.
- lancesells 4y ago
  And there was the Steve Jobs era ad network that has big, interactive type flash ads that Apple had to approve as being "good". I don't remember much except working on a video component of a Geico ad that was mobile only in ~2009.

clairity 4y ago

> "Also, being more privacy-friendly than Google and being privacy friendly are two different things." in theory, that's ok, if we have healthy, functioning markets that are free from undue influence of any individual participant. the "invisible hand" of the market would drive it iteratively toward more privacy (assuming this is valued by more than minor segment, greater than ~15% of the market). the market would (and should) be an ongoing conversation between suppliers and consumers to reach all the profitable corners of supply and demand, rather than a couple behemoths with megaphones telling us how great they are, rather than showing it through their products and practices. p.s. - has anyone else noticed adguard doing port-scans on your gateway from their dns service IPs? i haven't dug into it yet, so i don't know whether it's spoofed or whatnot.

whimsicalism 4y ago
> functioning markets that are free from undue influence of any individual participant. the "invisible hand" of the market would drive it iteratively toward more privacy (assuming this is valued by more than minor segment, greater than ~15% of the market) The market is for advertisers, and advertisers - whether they are small or large businesses - value tracking and measurability of their advertising investments.
- clairity 4y ago
  advertisers value a way of determining ROI, which doesn't necessarily require pervasive tracking (see: nielsen ratings of yore). in any case, my point was about the consumer electronics market, which is apple's core industry, and which, in a healthy and well-functioning market, also has a key stake in this conversation (driving it toward non-distorted, optimally efficient outcomes).
  - whimsicalism 4y ago
    > doesn't necessarily require pervasive tracking I disagree. Incrementality studies (which measure ROI) as advertisers want them are basically impossible with ATT. You need to be able to pass an ID between apps.

dilap 4y ago

It was quite a thing to see Apple's huge "What Happens on iPhone, Stays on iPhone" billboards up around town, at the exact same time they were announcing the rollout of a new content-side illegal-material scan-and-notify system. (I think they've since delayed the rollout of that system indefinitely, after public outcry.)

Spooky23 4y ago
Yup, and now your materials are in clear text on their service getting scanned routinely I’m sure. That particular issue was the privacy advocacy people run amok.
misnome 4y ago
To be fair - wasn't that scanning on-device, and only uploading metadata on things that you yourself were already uploading to their cloud?
- GekkePrutser 4y ago
  It was restricted to that for the time being yes. But still a big step in the wrong direction. I don't want my own phone spying on me. It's a bridge too far. Scanning on a cloud service is a very big difference. Does it matter in practice? No. But it makes me feel very different about it. That's important too.
  - smoldesu 4y ago
    Same way I feel about it. When the data is on your servers, I fully expect it to be analyzed and checked to ensure it's compliant with the host's standards. That's part of our agreement, as customer and service. When you move that software onto the device I use, now I have to be conscious of everything I interact with. It's a horrible sinking feeling that isn't easily mitigated by platitudes like "we promise not to abuse it!"
    - Spooky23 4y ago
      That’s exactly what they proposed to do.

cormacrelf 4y ago

> On HackerNews, Reddit and in public places you're loath to find someone vouching for Apple's privacy practices FYI loath means "unwilling", so it doesn't make sense here. "Loath to X" is like "I would loathe doing X". The word you're looking for is "likely".

lbotos 4y ago
Not op, but I wondered if this was a Britishism. My partner recently introduced to me to "lousy with" meaning "abundance"...
- mgerdts 4y ago
  My mom who is not British and has spent almost no time outside of the Great Plains uses this term. I think the “lous” come from louse, the singular form of lice. A great abundance of not a great thing.
  - lbotos 4y ago
    TIL! But my partner has heard it used in the UK like "I'm lousy with options" as in, I'm overflowing with choice. That was a fun convo as I was like ... What??
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- diputsmonro 4y ago
  "Lousy" also has a definition of being infested with lice (the singular form of which is louse); according to the Etymology Dictionary this may be the original meaning (https://www.etymonline.com/word/lousy https://www.etymonline.com/word/lousy) From there, it seems to have developed as an American slang to describe "infestations" of other kinds.
jackconsidine 4y ago
Had my negatives flipped- thanks for pointing out!

ksec 4y ago

I remember Tim Cook said they are not in the Ads Business. Unfortunately I am too busy, Apple's PR has worked hard to delete those tracks of what Tim Cook said, or Google's search engine is longer showing what I am looking for. And I remember that "Apple is not in the Ad Business" before 2018 was the most cited defence and reason on HN. That was before the war on tracking, the submarine articles on ads, and the attack on Facebook. Because you know what? Privacy is a Fundamental Human Right. And because iPhone is the only smartphone that values your privacy, banning iPhone sales in your country is also against Human Right. >But I'm deeply suspicious of such a convenient message. I was probably the only few who was deeply deeply suspicious of the "Dont be Evil" Google in the early 00s, in an era of "Dont be Evil", when everyone in Tech thought they were Saint. The self righteousness of Google, I thought nothing could be worse than Google's hypocrisy. I mean how can something be worse than "Dont be Evil"? Well here we are. The era of "Fundamental Human Right". A company that worked with CCP, invested $275B to build and improve the whole CE supply chain in China. Helping those companies to compete in area where CCP has a strategic interest, Continue to invest and help those companies to set up operation in India or Vietnam in the name of "Diversification from China" as PR headlines.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
pyuser583 4y ago
Wow … it’s insane how “Apple is not in the ad business” has been scrubbed from the internet. I’ve seen this happen before. But not with a big corporation.
- nsxwolf 4y ago
  The modern internet gives me a strange sense of amnesia. I swear everything is heavily censored and redacted now, but how can I prove it when my primary view into this world is the search engines themselves? It feels a bit like the simulation hypothesis.
  - pyuser583 4y ago

gigel82 4y ago

Not only that, in my experience, the support is fanatical in nature. I often get downvoted and flagged for daring to state the obvious, which is that Apple is positioning itself to become one of the largest companies in the Ad space. It's probably more than just great marketing / PR (at least - of the usual kind).

tootie 4y ago

I like to say that Apple is a marketing company that makes decent tech products. They absolutely played this market like a fiddle. They sat back and watched Google and FB absorb tons of bad press and I'm sure they were feeding it behind the scenes. It always felt to me like a ploy. As much as ads and the SEO game had their problems, they were there to support the open web. Apple kept tapping the breaks on improving their web browsers and driving users to apps because that was their walled garden. Owning an iPhone now is essentially a status symbol, owning an Android means you're poor. The privacy rules designed to kill ads was only ever designed to hurt Google, not to protect users. As a counter example of marketing gone wrong, Amazon has very steadfastly never sold their customer data to anyone. No one ever thought for a second that they did this because they were interested in privacy.

lupire 4y ago
Google also has never sold customer data. Amazon has been in level trouble several times for stealing customer (product seller) data.
Spooky23 4y ago
“Selling data” means nothing. Amazon trades in data services all of the time. Facebook is serving up retargeted Amazon ads in near real time. Apple usually designs their experiences around things they control end to end.

ouid 4y ago

apple uploads and modifies all photos you take on your device with the explicit stated intent of referring you for prosecution. That doesn't sound very private to me.

yazzku 4y ago

'Deeply suspicious' is an understatement. These corporations don't have your back, and if something benefits the user, it's only as a side effect. Sadly, many still buy into the messaging, which must be hard to avoid when Apple's marketing has always been around making you feel like the kool kid in the block. Anybody who has ever believed Apple's pro-privacy scam is living in a fairy tale.

lupire 4y ago
No one has anyone's back, except if your mother loves you, so what's the point of that complaint? Alliances of mutual benefit are still good.
- yazzku 4y ago
  Except that this isn't an alliance, and the point of the complaint is that they market themselves as pro-privacy when they are anything but.

lupire 4y ago

It's called doing well by doing good, and earning a god reputation. If you do good, people will talk about it, and you get to talk about it.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]