131–140 of 244 posts
Someone much more tech savvy than me should try to use Charles Proxy on an iOS device and see how often your phone is communicating with Apple servers. It’s pretty wild.
Does that include things like communicating with Apple APNS? If so then I'm not surprised at all.
I remain shocked anyone trusts Meta, Google, or Apple marketing on privacy. These companies are all fundamentally similar in that their proprietary software collects an insane amount of data that will end up in the hands of your enemies either by sale, court order, or security compromise. It is relatively easy to opt out of all of these companies and take some actual control over your privacy.
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…
To you they are irrelevant ads you never click. To millions of small business they are the only viable way to reach their customers. As tech focussed people we often ignore this or play it down. Facebook (as it’s the most used example) being blocked in a country or region (EU for example) would be devastating thousands/tens of thousands of businesses. The usual reply is “those businesses shouldn’t be so reliant Faceb…
In this day and age this should be read as "To millions of dropship vendors". And no, I don't want to see their scammy ads either.
I find local small businesses through Reddit or google maps. Never have I encountered an ad for one in the wild.
Always wanted the option to disable network access for an app. The lack of this made me suspect that Apple had too much to lose (in harvesting data) to allow this.
iOS has a "Local Network" Setting for some apps, e.g. VLC, PhotoSync.
okay, so where are the steps?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
To you they are irrelevant ads you never click. To millions of small business they are the only viable way to reach their customers. As tech focussed people we often ignore this or play it down. Facebook (as it’s the most used example) being blocked in a country or region (EU for example) would be devastating thousands/tens of thousands of businesses. The usual reply is “those businesses shouldn’t be so reliant Faceb…
> Facebook (as it’s the most used example) being blocked in a country or region (EU for example) would be devastating thousands/tens of thousands of businesses. You've stated this as a fact but small businesses thrived before Facebook, so I think it's fair to assume they'll thrive after Facebook is long gone, absent other evidence. The only type of business I genuinely see suffering are those who advertise crap drops…
The unit economics have totally changed though as there are many more businesses that exist now that simply could not have done in the old model.
The previous company I started was a direct to consumer UK heating product. In the old world we would have had to go through big shed retailers and lost 50-60% margin with 90 to 180 day payment terms and would have had to stock all of their stores from day one. The expense would have stopped that business from ever being started.
With digital platform advertising we could specifically reach our target demographic, loose only 20% margin to customer acquisition and postage costs (so afford to start with smaller manufacturing runs), get paid the day we sold the unit so cash flow positive, hold much less stock and order from our suppliers in response to demand and run our own just in time factory.
The business was much smaller that it would have had to be in the previous world, much less risky and, frankly, only viable thanks to very targeted advertising that allowed us to tell our potential customers about our product when they most needed it.
In this kind of discussion people seem to assume the product spectrum is binary. It's either useful and so would thrive regardless of advertising or useless tat that only exists thanks to digital platform marketing.
That just isn't the case, sure - those ends of the spectrum exist but there is a vast array of businesses in the middle that could not have existing in the old world and aren't useless drop shipped tat.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You have to make it sound bad or no one would read it and earn you ad revenue (edit: donations?)
Aalto is a public university, and there's no ads on that page. So it's rather: You have to make it sound bad or no one would read your press release.
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?
Other than basic information at set-up time, I don't see any indication that the collected info leaves the device
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That's called "Nuremberg defense". It didn't work great in the past.
Not a defense here, just an explanation. Also c'mon let's not compare two radically different things now.
They do get to think. Ergo it's only an excuse/defense.
Someone much more tech savvy than me should try to use Charles Proxy on an iOS device and see how often your phone is communicating with Apple servers. It’s pretty wild.
You can also see this just by running an iOS simulator with Xcode on a Mac that has Little Snitch installed. The amount of phoning home by iOS (and macOS, for that matter) is shocking.