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If Apple’s product is its users, who are its customers? > All of the privacy changes are not to protect the privacy of their users… This is reductionist, and

If Apple’s product is its users, who are its customers? > All of the privacy changes are not to protect the privacy of their users… This is reductionist, and multiple things can be true at the same time. There’s no doubt that Apple has realized privacy is a competitive advantage, and as a customer, it’s one of the reasons I give them money. Even if you could lay bare the deepest desires and true motives of everyone involved, the result of those motives is a product that is more private and more secure than most alternatives. To boil this down to “this is only about lock-in” completely sidesteps a myriad of other factors in play. Editing to add: I'm not saying Apple is blameless here or that their advertising goals and other business deals shouldn't be scrutinized. I'm not even saying that I buy their privacy marketing, but there is an objective difference between their current model and the companies that exist purely on the basis of selling customer data. I find it really problematic to equate them with the behavior of the Metas and Alphabets of the industry.

brigadier132 2y ago
> If Apple’s product is its users, who are its customers? Anyone trying to sell something to an Apple user. And you are right that I'm being reductionist, Apple clearly makes significant profit from the devices themselves, but that revenue is not growing. The revenue that is growing is "services", "app store", and "advertising" revenue. Apple's $20 billion a year deal with Google to be the default search engine accounts for at least 10% of its entire market capitalization. That's just revenue from one company and that's just to be the default search engine.
- haswell 2y ago
  When people describe services where “the user is the product”, they’re generally referring to the fact that the primary business model of the company selling those services is to impinge on individual privacy by collecting extremely detailed information about those users and then selling that information to interested parties. It is that intimate detail that makes each user so valuable. Google is buying search traffic from Apple, not user dossiers. To conflate the two is a category error. Even when you consider Apple’s advertising business, it cannot be argued in good faith that they are behaving in the same way most large advertising-driven companies are operating. Selling ads is not by itself enough to make the claim that “users are the product”, and to whatever extent they are, the ad business is secondary and coexists with their core business of selling hardware and services. This remains a meaningful distinction for people who want to buy products not fully predicated on selling their private details. The reductionist take removes all context and makes it impossible to have a substantive discussion about these finer points, and reductionism in general is against site guidelines.
  - brigadier132 2y ago
    > When people describe services where “the user is the product”, they’re generally referring to the fact that the primary business model of the company selling those services is to impinge on individual privacy by collecting extremely detailed information about those users and then selling that information to interested parties. It is that intimate detail that makes each user so valuable This is your personal definition that suits your argument. I'm not going to get into a debate about semantics.
    - haswell 2y ago
      This phrase has been around since at least 2010 and has been popularized over the years by many big names in tech and media circles ranging from Tim O'Reilly and Bruce Schneier to Jake Tapper among many many others. In most cases, that coverage was just highlighting discussions already happening across various social spaces. And the concept behind this sentiment can be traced to earlier TV advertising days. Not my personal definition. [0][1][2][3][4][5] (there are dozens, if not hundreds more). I've never heard anyone use it to describe Apple's approach to ads or search agreements until this comment thread. I'm not excited about debating semantics, but there's a lot of conceptual weight attached to the phrase that can't be ignored here. - [0]: https://techland.time.com/2010/10/15/facebook-youre-not-the-customer-youre-the-product/ https://techland.time.com/2010/10/15/facebook-youre-not-the-... - [1]: https://x.com/timoreilly/status/22823381903 https://x.com/timoreilly/status/22823381903 - [2]: https://x.com/jaketapper/status/976473447374221313 https://x.com/jaketapper/status/976473447374221313 - [3]: https://bryanalexander.org/digital-literacy/you-are-the-product-one-interesting-source-for-the-meme/ https://bryanalexander.org/digital-literacy/you-are-the-prod... - [4]: https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/09/ello-says-youre-not-a-product-but-you-are/380809/ https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/09/ello-... - [5]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LvZYwaQlJsg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LvZYwaQlJsg (1973)
- tines 2y ago
  > Apple's $20 billion a year deal with Google to be the default search engine accounts for at least 10% of its entire market capitalization. Huh? Apple's market capitalization is $3.44 trillion as of today, and the unit of market cap is not dollars per year, so you're conflating categories here. If you mean yearly revenue, $20 billion is 5% of Apple's 2023 revenue. Compare that to Meta, where ad revenue is like, 98% of their ~$135 billion revenue in 2023. These are different categories of companies, no matter how you slice it. You're fighting the wrong enemy here.

brigadier132 2y ago

> If Apple’s product is its users, who are its customers? Anyone trying to sell something to an Apple user. And you are right that I'm being reductionist, Apple clearly makes significant profit from the devices themselves, but that revenue is not growing. The revenue that is growing is "services", "app store", and "advertising" revenue. Apple's $20 billion a year deal with Google to be the default search engine accounts for at least 10% of its entire market capitalization. That's just revenue from one company and that's just to be the default search engine.

haswell 2y ago
When people describe services where “the user is the product”, they’re generally referring to the fact that the primary business model of the company selling those services is to impinge on individual privacy by collecting extremely detailed information about those users and then selling that information to interested parties. It is that intimate detail that makes each user so valuable. Google is buying search traffic from Apple, not user dossiers. To conflate the two is a category error. Even when you consider Apple’s advertising business, it cannot be argued in good faith that they are behaving in the same way most large advertising-driven companies are operating. Selling ads is not by itself enough to make the claim that “users are the product”, and to whatever extent they are, the ad business is secondary and coexists with their core business of selling hardware and services. This remains a meaningful distinction for people who want to buy products not fully predicated on selling their private details. The reductionist take removes all context and makes it impossible to have a substantive discussion about these finer points, and reductionism in general is against site guidelines.
- brigadier132 2y ago
  > When people describe services where “the user is the product”, they’re generally referring to the fact that the primary business model of the company selling those services is to impinge on individual privacy by collecting extremely detailed information about those users and then selling that information to interested parties. It is that intimate detail that makes each user so valuable This is your personal definition that suits your argument. I'm not going to get into a debate about semantics.
  - haswell 2y ago
    This phrase has been around since at least 2010 and has been popularized over the years by many big names in tech and media circles ranging from Tim O'Reilly and Bruce Schneier to Jake Tapper among many many others. In most cases, that coverage was just highlighting discussions already happening across various social spaces. And the concept behind this sentiment can be traced to earlier TV advertising days. Not my personal definition. [0][1][2][3][4][5] (there are dozens, if not hundreds more). I've never heard anyone use it to describe Apple's approach to ads or search agreements until this comment thread. I'm not excited about debating semantics, but there's a lot of conceptual weight attached to the phrase that can't be ignored here. - [0]: https://techland.time.com/2010/10/15/facebook-youre-not-the-customer-youre-the-product/ https://techland.time.com/2010/10/15/facebook-youre-not-the-... - [1]: https://x.com/timoreilly/status/22823381903 https://x.com/timoreilly/status/22823381903 - [2]: https://x.com/jaketapper/status/976473447374221313 https://x.com/jaketapper/status/976473447374221313 - [3]: https://bryanalexander.org/digital-literacy/you-are-the-product-one-interesting-source-for-the-meme/ https://bryanalexander.org/digital-literacy/you-are-the-prod... - [4]: https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/09/ello-says-youre-not-a-product-but-you-are/380809/ https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/09/ello-... - [5]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LvZYwaQlJsg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LvZYwaQlJsg (1973)
tines 2y ago
> Apple's $20 billion a year deal with Google to be the default search engine accounts for at least 10% of its entire market capitalization. Huh? Apple's market capitalization is $3.44 trillion as of today, and the unit of market cap is not dollars per year, so you're conflating categories here. If you mean yearly revenue, $20 billion is 5% of Apple's 2023 revenue. Compare that to Meta, where ad revenue is like, 98% of their ~$135 billion revenue in 2023. These are different categories of companies, no matter how you slice it. You're fighting the wrong enemy here.