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Again you’re talking about decisions that C suite will decidedly care about and be their purview to make. First the App Store stuff wasn’t a privacy or security

Again you’re talking about decisions that C suite will decidedly care about and be their purview to make. First the App Store stuff wasn’t a privacy or security thing - this is Apple deciding how to navigate the EU regulatory environment. A CEO exists precisely to make these kinds of decisions. I’ll point you to Apple developing the privacy-preserving CSAM scanning feature which got approved at lower levels and then got pulled back when it actually started hurting their brand. They respond to this stuff and I don’t think perfection is a reasonable bar. > And the iOS 26 removal of Pegasus/Predator detection artifacts right as ICE activates Paragon spyware contracts? Maybe a coincidental bug, maybe what happens when keeping Trump happy is worth tens of billions. And if iOS 26.1 or 27 restores previous behavior or does that change the narrative you’ve built in your head and you’ll just say “of course - they just got caught”? If you can’t falsify your narrative there’s no point having a constructive argument - I can’t factually argue you out of a position you didn’t argue yourself factually into.

benzible 1y ago
You just moved the goalposts from "I have literally 0 times in my career observed a change like this come from the top" to "well of course the C-suite makes those decisions - that's their purview." Which is it? And calling what happened in the Epic case "navigating the EU regulatory environment" is quite the Orwellian turn of phrase when what actually occurred was violating a court order, lying to the judge about it, and earning a criminal referral. Elsewhere you justified Apple drafting breach notifications for XCodeGhost and not sending them because "it can impact their brand" and you're "not sure I'm seeing the long term negative ramifications" - so leadership decisions that prioritize brand protection over user notification are fine when they don't blow up later? Your CSAM example perfectly illustrates my point, not yours - Apple pulled back "when it started hurting their brand," meaning they respond to financial and reputational pressure, not pure privacy principles. And you're asking if I'd change my view if iOS 26.1 restores the logging? Sure - that would be evidence it was unintentional [or that pushback raised the costs - see Disney / Kimmel]. But right now I'm looking at documented patterns: $37B in tariff relief, gold gifts to Trump, court findings of deception, and suspicious timing on forensic artifacts. You're arguing from "I knew people there who cared" a decade ago. Which of us is reasoning from evidence that can be falsified?
- vlovich123 1y ago
  What I said was that I’ve seen 0 times C suite make technical change decisions. It’s completely natural for them to make directional strategic and tactical decisions for the company. I don’t see that as shifting goalposts so much as muddying the waters about what I said. I’m not claiming Apple is flawless as a company - no individual is and no group of individual is either. > You're arguing from "I knew people there who cared" a decade ago. Which of us is reasoning from evidence that can be falsified? A good chunk of the people I know are still there and constantly being promoted to more and more senior positions. > Your CSAM example perfectly illustrates my point, not yours - Apple pulled back "when it started hurting their brand," meaning they respond to financial and reputational pressure, not pure privacy principles I think you’re confusing the situation - both things can be true. It can both be simultaneously true that Apple thought they developed a privacy preserving CSAM solution AND that there was enough public blowback that they decided it wasn’t worth it to continue. > But right now I'm looking at documented patterns: $37B in tariff relief, gold gifts to Trump, court findings of deception, and suspicious timing on forensic artifacts None of which really means anything in terms of the privacy stance of the company. You’ve conflated the political moment (and perhaps legit malfeasance in dealing with the EU - I haven’t followed that situation closely) with their policy on privacy. I’m happy to update my priors when presented with evidence to the contrary but I just haven’t seen any. I don’t see how bending the knee to a fascist government that has significant influence over a good chunk of their revenue and regulatory control of their HQ is evidence of them sacrificing their stance on privacy. I see it as being a concerning step but to me that’s more of an issue of the rapidly deteriorating political situation in the US and within that context Apple’s actions matter negligibly.
  - benzible 1y ago
    I've enjoyed this exchange, but I think we've hit a point where our worldviews lead us to different conclusions about probabilities. You're drawing a distinction between "technical change decisions" and strategic ones, but that's exactly the illusion I'm talking about. Policy and market cap considerations always trump technical ones - they just rarely conflict directly, so you build up what seems like overwhelming evidence that management doesn't interfere with engineering. Until they do, and then it gets rationalized as something else, or the old "for the greater good". You see your direct personal experience at Apple as giving you insight into how the company operates. I think that experience can actually cloud judgment - when you've invested years in an institution and know people there, and have some of your own identity tied up in that institution and how it's perceived, you're naturally inclined to interpret ambiguous situations charitably. That's not a criticism, it's just human nature. As for "bending the knee to a fascist government" not being evidence of sacrificing privacy stance - you're describing the mechanism by which principles get compromised while claiming it doesn't count. When you acknowledge that Apple's actions are driven by "significant influence over a good chunk of their revenue and regulatory control" from a government that's deploying zero-click spyware through ICE, the removal of forensic artifacts for detecting that spyware stops being "just a technical decision" that happened to occur at a really convenient moment. I don't actually know what happened here in this specific instance - whether the iOS 26 change was deliberate, accidental, or something in between. I'm basing my priors on general corporate behavior and the observation that Apple isn't special, just that circumstances have allowed them to take positions that aligned with what you and I both see as right. I don't doubt the people at the top genuinely believed in those positions when they were cost-free or profitable. But we're past that now. At some point we'll likely know more - this stuff tends to come out eventually through investigative reporting, court filings, or the Trump administration bragging about it. Until then, I guess we have different base assumptions about how much institutional conviction survives when it costs tens of billions.

benzible 1y ago

You just moved the goalposts from "I have literally 0 times in my career observed a change like this come from the top" to "well of course the C-suite makes those decisions - that's their purview." Which is it? And calling what happened in the Epic case "navigating the EU regulatory environment" is quite the Orwellian turn of phrase when what actually occurred was violating a court order, lying to the judge about it, and earning a criminal referral. Elsewhere you justified Apple drafting breach notifications for XCodeGhost and not sending them because "it can impact their brand" and you're "not sure I'm seeing the long term negative ramifications" - so leadership decisions that prioritize brand protection over user notification are fine when they don't blow up later? Your CSAM example perfectly illustrates my point, not yours - Apple pulled back "when it started hurting their brand," meaning they respond to financial and reputational pressure, not pure privacy principles. And you're asking if I'd change my view if iOS 26.1 restores the logging? Sure - that would be evidence it was unintentional [or that pushback raised the costs - see Disney / Kimmel]. But right now I'm looking at documented patterns: $37B in tariff relief, gold gifts to Trump, court findings of deception, and suspicious timing on forensic artifacts. You're arguing from "I knew people there who cared" a decade ago. Which of us is reasoning from evidence that can be falsified?

vlovich123 1y ago
What I said was that I’ve seen 0 times C suite make technical change decisions. It’s completely natural for them to make directional strategic and tactical decisions for the company. I don’t see that as shifting goalposts so much as muddying the waters about what I said. I’m not claiming Apple is flawless as a company - no individual is and no group of individual is either. > You're arguing from "I knew people there who cared" a decade ago. Which of us is reasoning from evidence that can be falsified? A good chunk of the people I know are still there and constantly being promoted to more and more senior positions. > Your CSAM example perfectly illustrates my point, not yours - Apple pulled back "when it started hurting their brand," meaning they respond to financial and reputational pressure, not pure privacy principles I think you’re confusing the situation - both things can be true. It can both be simultaneously true that Apple thought they developed a privacy preserving CSAM solution AND that there was enough public blowback that they decided it wasn’t worth it to continue. > But right now I'm looking at documented patterns: $37B in tariff relief, gold gifts to Trump, court findings of deception, and suspicious timing on forensic artifacts None of which really means anything in terms of the privacy stance of the company. You’ve conflated the political moment (and perhaps legit malfeasance in dealing with the EU - I haven’t followed that situation closely) with their policy on privacy. I’m happy to update my priors when presented with evidence to the contrary but I just haven’t seen any. I don’t see how bending the knee to a fascist government that has significant influence over a good chunk of their revenue and regulatory control of their HQ is evidence of them sacrificing their stance on privacy. I see it as being a concerning step but to me that’s more of an issue of the rapidly deteriorating political situation in the US and within that context Apple’s actions matter negligibly.
- benzible 1y ago
  I've enjoyed this exchange, but I think we've hit a point where our worldviews lead us to different conclusions about probabilities. You're drawing a distinction between "technical change decisions" and strategic ones, but that's exactly the illusion I'm talking about. Policy and market cap considerations always trump technical ones - they just rarely conflict directly, so you build up what seems like overwhelming evidence that management doesn't interfere with engineering. Until they do, and then it gets rationalized as something else, or the old "for the greater good". You see your direct personal experience at Apple as giving you insight into how the company operates. I think that experience can actually cloud judgment - when you've invested years in an institution and know people there, and have some of your own identity tied up in that institution and how it's perceived, you're naturally inclined to interpret ambiguous situations charitably. That's not a criticism, it's just human nature. As for "bending the knee to a fascist government" not being evidence of sacrificing privacy stance - you're describing the mechanism by which principles get compromised while claiming it doesn't count. When you acknowledge that Apple's actions are driven by "significant influence over a good chunk of their revenue and regulatory control" from a government that's deploying zero-click spyware through ICE, the removal of forensic artifacts for detecting that spyware stops being "just a technical decision" that happened to occur at a really convenient moment. I don't actually know what happened here in this specific instance - whether the iOS 26 change was deliberate, accidental, or something in between. I'm basing my priors on general corporate behavior and the observation that Apple isn't special, just that circumstances have allowed them to take positions that aligned with what you and I both see as right. I don't doubt the people at the top genuinely believed in those positions when they were cost-free or profitable. But we're past that now. At some point we'll likely know more - this stuff tends to come out eventually through investigative reporting, court filings, or the Trump administration bragging about it. Until then, I guess we have different base assumptions about how much institutional conviction survives when it costs tens of billions.