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Keeping your data from Apple is harder than expected

aalto.fi

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Re: Keeping your data from Apple is harder than expected

#22
post #16

What I never understand is how engineers working at Apple think about the product they make. Can they love a device that shares data with their employer and advertisers?

If you care, either you change mind as you might lose your cushy job, or end up losing your cushy job.

If you don't care then it's all good.

Re: Keeping your data from Apple is harder than expected

#23

Is the whole point of all this data collection nonsense really just to serve me irrelevant ads I never click? What are they doing with all this worthless information? I downloaded a shitty freemium mobile game once and now 80% of my Instagram ads have been ads for shitty mobile games for more than a year. Is this really the best the 500k+ a year ad magicians at Meta came up with? Is this what gives Meta its trillion…

I feel the same. I think they realise it, but for the lack of better ideas, this is what shareholders want. It's like "we have to collect data, because everyone does it, and use it for anything"

Re: Keeping your data from Apple is harder than expected

#24

Apple should provide an option to opt-out of Siri "learn from app" for ALL applications. At present, this must be done individually for every app, https://www.imore.com/how-stop-siri-learning-how-you-use-app... . When you later install new apps after setting up the device, you have to remember to go into Settings and opt-out again, for every app, forever. How many people know that iOS devices will default to Siri rea…

The best solution is to set this as opt-in instead.

Re: Keeping your data from Apple is harder than expected

#25
post #16

What I never understand is how engineers working at Apple think about the product they make. Can they love a device that shares data with their employer and advertisers?

> It’s not possible to be sure based on public documents, but Lindqvist says it’s possible to conclude that the data will be used to train the artificial intelligence system behind Siri and to provide personalised user experiences, among other things.

What made you think it is shared with advertisers?

Re: Keeping your data from Apple is harder than expected

#26

Is the whole point of all this data collection nonsense really just to serve me irrelevant ads I never click? What are they doing with all this worthless information? I downloaded a shitty freemium mobile game once and now 80% of my Instagram ads have been ads for shitty mobile games for more than a year. Is this really the best the 500k+ a year ad magicians at Meta came up with? Is this what gives Meta its trillion…

You are getting Instagram ads for shitty freemium mobile games because everyone else does. This isn’t shitty targeting, it’s just bottom of the barrel spray and pray advertising. There’s a reason that Apple is addicted to the revenue from casino games: there’s a lot of it out there.

Yep, I would wager that you have probably opted out from as much profiling as possible. Which means you are served the stuff which targets "everyone", i.e. the people for which they have no profile or can't use it for targeting. And currently that category (on mobile) is casino-games.

It's like if you open YouTube in incognito. It will show you whatever clickbait is most likely to catch an "average" YouTube-user from your country. It's wildly different from what you are seeing signed-in.

Re: Keeping your data from Apple is harder than expected

#27
post #16

What I never understand is how engineers working at Apple think about the product they make. Can they love a device that shares data with their employer and advertisers?

The saddest part is that Apple devices could be even better with more transparency. Apple wants to scrape all data from all apps by default? Fine, put a master on/off switch on the feature. Then expose the collected data to the user for export, so they can evaluate (or create!) utility. Let authorized apps access the data, but only in a non-networked sandbox, like 3rd-party keyboards. Don't silently scrape data into an undocumented target for attackers.

Re: Keeping your data from Apple is harder than expected

#29
post #19
post #16

What I never understand is how engineers working at Apple think about the product they make. Can they love a device that shares data with their employer and advertisers?

No engineers at FAANG companies get to think, they do what the board members and execs tell them to.

That's called "Nuremberg defense". It didn't work great in the past.
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