5 ms·

Guess what? Most people who end up buying this product won't care about any of these. (P.S. Apple is much worse than you think. Look up Apple's first party tra

by rty32 2y ago

Guess what? Most people who end up buying this product won't care about any of these. (P.S. Apple is much worse than you think. Look up Apple's first party tracking.)

deutschepost 2y ago
There is always a comment saying Apple is much worse than people think compared to Facebook or Google. But there are never any Sources. Google and Facebook track you wherever you go on the internet. You can't get away from it. Apple only shows ads in their App Store. And you can turn off Apples tracking in their Settings. How is that "Much worse than you think"?
- manojlds 2y ago
  Nitpick, but the comment said Apple is worse compared to what people think of Apple.
  - ffsm8 2y ago
    I don't think that's a nitpick, that kinda voids their point entirely. Apple is a lot worse then most of their users believe - but even at their worst, they're leagues more privacy focused and less invasive then Google, Facebook and Microsoft are. But they're still getting worse every year, and the time when they were actually torchbearers for privacy have slowly faded over the years as MBAs have strengthened their hold on the company and Steve Jobs influence waned.
    - buran77 2y ago
      It's still of value to have companies that have different incentives even if they will still try to prey on you, if only because you get to spread your digital footprint among competing companies rather than allies. Going back to Apple, their stance on privacy is more geared towards their internal consumption (abuse?) than towards privacy violation-as-a-service for sale. That's not great but I'll take anything I can get. I know what I'm sharing with Apple is up for grabs by them to use "against" me. And I know the same is true for Google of Facebook, so no real difference here. The problem is the next level, where what I share with someone else is up for grabs by Google or Facebook, or the other way around. This huge web of data collection and sharing is the big problem, not the posts that I'm volunteering to give to FB or the emails I choose to host with Google. In other words, when you talk to me alone you choose to give me the information, you're aware I will use it in some way to shape my actions. If you tell me your phone broke, I'll offer to sell you my spare, and you won't turn red that I used the info. But if a stranger shows up at your door a minute later to sell you a phone we're suddenly having a different conversation. Same if you go to a pharmacy on the other side of town to buy some medication and the moment you make the payment I send you a text offering my regrets for your illness. "A lot worse" can mean very different things if you talk in relative or absolute terms, or if you think some practices are just as bad as others.
      - illiac786 2y ago
        I have a simple (simplistic maybe) way of ranking the tech giants for privacy: how much of their revenue is ads. Facebook is the worst (98% I believe), followed by google (~90% last time I checked). Apple is in the “least worst” category by this metric for now, but they are slipping.
    - deutschepost 2y ago
      Don't get me wrong. Apple definitely has problems. But the thread was specifically about facebook and ad tracking networks. And to conflate different arguments that have nothing to do with tracking into just "Apple Bad" lacks a lot of nuance. The problem with ad companies is not that they show ads. But that they are trying to paint a perfect picture of you to sell you stuff. And they are painting that picture by spying on you and your peers. I hope that you can see the difference between spying on your users and selling that data to advertisers and using telemetry in some product. If you ever worked in software you will know that having telemetry can lead to massive improvements in the product. That said, that data has to be confined to the applicable use case and has to be anonymized. If you really think there is no difference between ad tracking and telemetry you are right. Apple is a lot worse than people think, but better than Google/Facebook. But if we are talking just about ads, than Apple is definitely not worse than people think. Because they hardly even have an ad network and when they ask you if you want to be tracked you can just select "No".
      - ffsm8 2y ago
        Apples main advertisements are the app store placements. You're vastly underestimating the significance of that, as this is personalized too. It's also been shown that you cannot actually opt out of everything, only some things. At the end of the day, I still consider my Apple devices to be less intrusive then the android and Windows devices I use, but you seem to have an outdated view of Apple's business practices - at least from my perspective
    - baggachipz 2y ago
      It reeks of the same "both sides"-ing going on in US politics right now. I have an iPhone, and I refuse to install any Google or Meta apps. Am I being tracked? Of course. Is it still an order of magnitude less tracking than the former companies? I'd wager it is.
- fsflover 2y ago
  > There is always a comment saying Apple is much worse than people think compared to Facebook or Google. But there are never any Sources I'm not sure about much worse. It may depend on your own threat model. But here you go: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25074959 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25074959 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41184153 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41184153 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40006508 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40006508 https://sneak.berlin/20231005/apple-operating-system-surveillance/ https://sneak.berlin/20231005/apple-operating-system-surveil... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34299433 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34299433 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26639261 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26639261 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26644216 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26644216
  - paulcole 2y ago
    One of those links is a self-described conspiracy theory and another flat out says Google is worse. Personally, I don’t think Apple is bad at all relative to Google/Meta and I’m probably technically “wrong” but those links don’t do much to prove it.
    - fsflover 2y ago
      Perhaps you should be more specific about the links, then I could reply to you. > and another flat out says Google is worse This one I can guess. Google is worse indeed, except they do not advertise themselves as "Android is privacy". This is why Apple is worse.
      - paulcole 2y ago
        Did you not read your own links before posting them lol? > Mind you, this is definitionally a conspiracy theory; please don’t let the connotations of that phrase bias you, but please feel free to read this (and everything else on the internet) as critically as you wish. https://sneak.berlin/20231005/apple-operating-system-surveillance/ https://sneak.berlin/20231005/apple-operating-system-surveil... I will admit that this sentence was easy to miss, hidden deeply at the start of the second sentence of the piece. These links are just all Apple Does A Thing HN Dislikes and I just don’t think any of those things is particularly bad.
- boppo1 2y ago
  >Google and Facebook track you wherever you go on the internet I wonder if everyone's porn habits will one day leak
taneq 2y ago
Does Apple buy my transaction records from Mastercard to cross reference against my chat and email logs? (Serious question, I hope not though.)
- nox101 2y ago
  they don't need to buy the transactions. they have apple pay that integrates your cards into their system. then they push apple pay everywhere both offline and on. eventually they will own all the data
  - threeseed 2y ago
    Apple says that they don't tie transaction data to you personally. But that they do use it for marketing purposes alongside the obvious fraud prevention. https://www.apple.com/legal/privacy/data/en/apple-pay/#:~:text=To%20help%20improve%20Apple%20Pay,does%20not%20identify%20you%20personally https://www.apple.com/legal/privacy/data/en/apple-pay/#:~:te....
    - mrguyorama 2y ago
      That's one of those little white lies. Sure, they don't "tie your transaction data to you personally", but they absolutely do. Every purchase you've ever made on the internet has been deanonymized to a globally unique "Device ID". The companies that manage those device ids absolutely have your entire online interaction history, everything. It only takes about 30 bits of entropy to perfectly deanonymize everyone, and I know of many companies that have been doing it for at least a decade or more. And it works very very well.
  - happyopossum 2y ago
    > they have apple pay that integrates your cards into their system A feature which they've loudly and publicly said many many times they can't use for tracking your purchases, as they anonymize the data before it gets to them. Apple has a long history of not using user-generated data for their own use, sometimes to their own detriment.
Angostura 2y ago
As far as I know Apple’s first party tracking allows it to 1. Show ads for apps in AppStore 2. Show ads in the News app. What else are you thinking of?
threeseed 2y ago
Almost every single website and app in the world has some level of first party tracking. There is nothing at all wrong with it since you are a direct user of the product or service.
- manojlds 2y ago
  They do use it to show ads in App Store and News though?
- fsflover 2y ago
  Not FLOSS apps.
  - jodrellblank 2y ago
    https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/privacy-preserving-attribution https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/privacy-preserving-attr... How to turn off the opt-out thing in Firefox 128 which gathers data on your browsing and sends it to third parties.
    - fsflover 2y ago
      Technically, Firefox is not FLOSS, according to FSF.
      - jraph 2y ago
        This statement would need more details. Firefox is in the repositories of most Linux distros' main repositories, most of which only allow free software. With this option enabled, unfortunately. Now, even if technically true for the official distribution (because I don't know, the DRM part, or something like this, although technically, I believe it is not part of this distribution, it is downloaded by open source code on first use), this seems like a weak rebuttal.
        fsflover 2y ago
        https://www.gnu.org/distros/free-distros.en.html https://www.gnu.org/distros/free-distros.en.html

by rty32 2y ago

Guess what? Most people who end up buying this product won't care about any of these. (P.S. Apple is much worse than you think. Look up Apple's first party tracking.)

deutschepost 2y ago

There is always a comment saying Apple is much worse than people think compared to Facebook or Google. But there are never any Sources. Google and Facebook track you wherever you go on the internet. You can't get away from it. Apple only shows ads in their App Store. And you can turn off Apples tracking in their Settings. How is that "Much worse than you think"?

manojlds 2y ago
Nitpick, but the comment said Apple is worse compared to what people think of Apple.
- ffsm8 2y ago
  I don't think that's a nitpick, that kinda voids their point entirely. Apple is a lot worse then most of their users believe - but even at their worst, they're leagues more privacy focused and less invasive then Google, Facebook and Microsoft are. But they're still getting worse every year, and the time when they were actually torchbearers for privacy have slowly faded over the years as MBAs have strengthened their hold on the company and Steve Jobs influence waned.
  - buran77 2y ago
    It's still of value to have companies that have different incentives even if they will still try to prey on you, if only because you get to spread your digital footprint among competing companies rather than allies. Going back to Apple, their stance on privacy is more geared towards their internal consumption (abuse?) than towards privacy violation-as-a-service for sale. That's not great but I'll take anything I can get. I know what I'm sharing with Apple is up for grabs by them to use "against" me. And I know the same is true for Google of Facebook, so no real difference here. The problem is the next level, where what I share with someone else is up for grabs by Google or Facebook, or the other way around. This huge web of data collection and sharing is the big problem, not the posts that I'm volunteering to give to FB or the emails I choose to host with Google. In other words, when you talk to me alone you choose to give me the information, you're aware I will use it in some way to shape my actions. If you tell me your phone broke, I'll offer to sell you my spare, and you won't turn red that I used the info. But if a stranger shows up at your door a minute later to sell you a phone we're suddenly having a different conversation. Same if you go to a pharmacy on the other side of town to buy some medication and the moment you make the payment I send you a text offering my regrets for your illness. "A lot worse" can mean very different things if you talk in relative or absolute terms, or if you think some practices are just as bad as others.
    - illiac786 2y ago
      I have a simple (simplistic maybe) way of ranking the tech giants for privacy: how much of their revenue is ads. Facebook is the worst (98% I believe), followed by google (~90% last time I checked). Apple is in the “least worst” category by this metric for now, but they are slipping.
  - deutschepost 2y ago
    Don't get me wrong. Apple definitely has problems. But the thread was specifically about facebook and ad tracking networks. And to conflate different arguments that have nothing to do with tracking into just "Apple Bad" lacks a lot of nuance. The problem with ad companies is not that they show ads. But that they are trying to paint a perfect picture of you to sell you stuff. And they are painting that picture by spying on you and your peers. I hope that you can see the difference between spying on your users and selling that data to advertisers and using telemetry in some product. If you ever worked in software you will know that having telemetry can lead to massive improvements in the product. That said, that data has to be confined to the applicable use case and has to be anonymized. If you really think there is no difference between ad tracking and telemetry you are right. Apple is a lot worse than people think, but better than Google/Facebook. But if we are talking just about ads, than Apple is definitely not worse than people think. Because they hardly even have an ad network and when they ask you if you want to be tracked you can just select "No".
    - ffsm8 2y ago
      Apples main advertisements are the app store placements. You're vastly underestimating the significance of that, as this is personalized too. It's also been shown that you cannot actually opt out of everything, only some things. At the end of the day, I still consider my Apple devices to be less intrusive then the android and Windows devices I use, but you seem to have an outdated view of Apple's business practices - at least from my perspective
  - baggachipz 2y ago
    It reeks of the same "both sides"-ing going on in US politics right now. I have an iPhone, and I refuse to install any Google or Meta apps. Am I being tracked? Of course. Is it still an order of magnitude less tracking than the former companies? I'd wager it is.
fsflover 2y ago
> There is always a comment saying Apple is much worse than people think compared to Facebook or Google. But there are never any Sources I'm not sure about much worse. It may depend on your own threat model. But here you go: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25074959 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25074959 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41184153 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41184153 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40006508 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40006508 https://sneak.berlin/20231005/apple-operating-system-surveillance/ https://sneak.berlin/20231005/apple-operating-system-surveil... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34299433 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34299433 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26639261 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26639261 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26644216 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26644216
- paulcole 2y ago
  One of those links is a self-described conspiracy theory and another flat out says Google is worse. Personally, I don’t think Apple is bad at all relative to Google/Meta and I’m probably technically “wrong” but those links don’t do much to prove it.
  - fsflover 2y ago
    Perhaps you should be more specific about the links, then I could reply to you. > and another flat out says Google is worse This one I can guess. Google is worse indeed, except they do not advertise themselves as "Android is privacy". This is why Apple is worse.
    - paulcole 2y ago
      Did you not read your own links before posting them lol? > Mind you, this is definitionally a conspiracy theory; please don’t let the connotations of that phrase bias you, but please feel free to read this (and everything else on the internet) as critically as you wish. https://sneak.berlin/20231005/apple-operating-system-surveillance/ https://sneak.berlin/20231005/apple-operating-system-surveil... I will admit that this sentence was easy to miss, hidden deeply at the start of the second sentence of the piece. These links are just all Apple Does A Thing HN Dislikes and I just don’t think any of those things is particularly bad.
boppo1 2y ago
>Google and Facebook track you wherever you go on the internet I wonder if everyone's porn habits will one day leak

taneq 2y ago

Does Apple buy my transaction records from Mastercard to cross reference against my chat and email logs? (Serious question, I hope not though.)

nox101 2y ago
they don't need to buy the transactions. they have apple pay that integrates your cards into their system. then they push apple pay everywhere both offline and on. eventually they will own all the data
- threeseed 2y ago
  Apple says that they don't tie transaction data to you personally. But that they do use it for marketing purposes alongside the obvious fraud prevention. https://www.apple.com/legal/privacy/data/en/apple-pay/#:~:text=To%20help%20improve%20Apple%20Pay,does%20not%20identify%20you%20personally https://www.apple.com/legal/privacy/data/en/apple-pay/#:~:te....
  - mrguyorama 2y ago
    That's one of those little white lies. Sure, they don't "tie your transaction data to you personally", but they absolutely do. Every purchase you've ever made on the internet has been deanonymized to a globally unique "Device ID". The companies that manage those device ids absolutely have your entire online interaction history, everything. It only takes about 30 bits of entropy to perfectly deanonymize everyone, and I know of many companies that have been doing it for at least a decade or more. And it works very very well.
- happyopossum 2y ago
  > they have apple pay that integrates your cards into their system A feature which they've loudly and publicly said many many times they can't use for tracking your purchases, as they anonymize the data before it gets to them. Apple has a long history of not using user-generated data for their own use, sometimes to their own detriment.

Angostura 2y ago

As far as I know Apple’s first party tracking allows it to 1. Show ads for apps in AppStore 2. Show ads in the News app. What else are you thinking of?

threeseed 2y ago

Almost every single website and app in the world has some level of first party tracking. There is nothing at all wrong with it since you are a direct user of the product or service.

manojlds 2y ago
They do use it to show ads in App Store and News though?
fsflover 2y ago
Not FLOSS apps.
- jodrellblank 2y ago
  https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/privacy-preserving-attribution https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/privacy-preserving-attr... How to turn off the opt-out thing in Firefox 128 which gathers data on your browsing and sends it to third parties.
  - fsflover 2y ago
    Technically, Firefox is not FLOSS, according to FSF.
    - jraph 2y ago
      This statement would need more details. Firefox is in the repositories of most Linux distros' main repositories, most of which only allow free software. With this option enabled, unfortunately. Now, even if technically true for the official distribution (because I don't know, the DRM part, or something like this, although technically, I believe it is not part of this distribution, it is downloaded by open source code on first use), this seems like a weak rebuttal.
      - fsflover 2y ago
        https://www.gnu.org/distros/free-distros.en.html https://www.gnu.org/distros/free-distros.en.html