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Apple decided not to roll out Siri in EU after denied request for exemption

reuters.com

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Re: Apple decided not to roll out Siri in EU after denied request for exemption

#291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The exemption requested was temporary.

EU response said it was "for a minimum of 18 months" — does not sound temporary to me.

How is that not temporary? "Ok, you asked for an exemption for a minimum of 18 months, we're granting you what you asked for, an 18 month exemption".

Re: Apple decided not to roll out Siri in EU after denied request for exemption

#292

I understand Apple's position on this one. This is essentially a backdoor into all of your data. It is also a very useful feature. The EU regulators are disallowing guardrails without which this backdoor will be used to strip-mine people's personal data. The privacy implications are not legible to most people. If I was more cynical I would suggest that this is being used as an end-run around encryption, since the enc…

Why do you use the phrase backdoor?

Is Apple incapable of designing a permissions system that allows a user to grant access to email and messages to an app of their choice?

We already download apps and grant them permissions to subsections of personal data on our devices.

I don’t believe Apple is incapable of designing a system that respects a user’s choices and granted permissions.

Re: Apple decided not to roll out Siri in EU after denied request for exemption

#293
post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are we sure the EU would allow that? Or would it be seen as a way to stifle competition?

I mean, Apple's PCC audits require them to individually vet each auditor before they're allowed to see the PCC nodes. If Apple extended that philosophy to other vendors then yeah, it would be deliberately unfair and anticompetitive.

It sounds like they are whitelisting the hashes of all the Google software and OSes and stuff to ensure nothing is changed out from under them without them knowing.

Even if you could make all the other possible vendors run private cloud compute style stuff that would be a lot to manage.

And I can’t imagine the EU would like, and as a user I would certainly hate, the “OK you can use Grok but you lose all privacy too bad“ dialogue box they could make.

Re: Apple decided not to roll out Siri in EU after denied request for exemption

#294
post #2

Apple said "hey, can we not comply with the law", the EU said no, so it didn't launch. Seems pretty straightforward to me. I can see why Apple might want to request an 18 month exemption, there's clearly extra work required to comply with EU regulations. But on the other hand it also feels like a straightforward play for consumer sympathy: let them get used to using it every day for 18 months, then pressure the EU to…

> But on the other hand it also feels like a straightforward play for consumer sympathy 100% - just like Apple making such a grandiose show of "privacy". "Privacy" for Apple eventually led to Apple specific and Apple-only allowed ads in first party apps and now Siri connecting to Google servers.

Indeed. If they really cared about privacy, they would end-to-end encrypt iPhone backups by default. But since they don't, US law enforcement can request my iMessage chats because the people I talk to (probably) do not have ADP enabled (which enables end-to-end encryption for backups).

Re: Apple decided not to roll out Siri in EU after denied request for exemption

#296
post #2

Apple said "hey, can we not comply with the law", the EU said no, so it didn't launch. Seems pretty straightforward to me. I can see why Apple might want to request an 18 month exemption, there's clearly extra work required to comply with EU regulations. But on the other hand it also feels like a straightforward play for consumer sympathy: let them get used to using it every day for 18 months, then pressure the EU to…

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Re: Apple decided not to roll out Siri in EU after denied request for exemption

#297
post #35
post #2

Apple said "hey, can we not comply with the law", the EU said no, so it didn't launch. Seems pretty straightforward to me. I can see why Apple might want to request an 18 month exemption, there's clearly extra work required to comply with EU regulations. But on the other hand it also feels like a straightforward play for consumer sympathy: let them get used to using it every day for 18 months, then pressure the EU to…

Throwing infinite money at engineering problems doesn't move deadlines arbitrarily. But Apple's position here is actually really wild: Apple claims to protect user privacy all the time. But they can't offer a product in a major jurisdiction that has actually meaningful privacy laws? Didn't they consider that while designing the product? This is quite the contradiction.

>But Apple's position here is actually really wild: Apple claims to protect user privacy all the time. But they can't offer a product in a major jurisdiction that has actually meaningful privacy laws? Didn't they consider that while designing the product?

The DMA isn't a privacy law. In this case, the DMA would appear to require Apple to open up all user data to any AI agent. That removes the ability to provide privacy protections.

You can argue Apple should do that, but you can't in the same breathe argue for privacy.

Re: Apple decided not to roll out Siri in EU after denied request for exemption

#298
post #38
post #2

Apple said "hey, can we not comply with the law", the EU said no, so it didn't launch. Seems pretty straightforward to me. I can see why Apple might want to request an 18 month exemption, there's clearly extra work required to comply with EU regulations. But on the other hand it also feels like a straightforward play for consumer sympathy: let them get used to using it every day for 18 months, then pressure the EU to…

Google eng mgr here. I've worked on a few projects related to compliance with various government policies. This isn't "assign a two-pizza team to it, will be done in a quarter"; these types of compliance efforts can mean completely redoing multiple core systems to handle privacy, wipeout, audit, reporting, per-location policies, etc etc. These efforts can involve hundreds to thousands of people for multiple years. Su…

I have a crazy idea: design the product with compliance in mind already!

Re: Apple decided not to roll out Siri in EU after denied request for exemption

#299
yeah, we are talking about giving random apps gain full control over your whole damn phone and every file in the filesystem.

If I were apple i'd want to give people enormous amounts to tools to control that access. Specific popups whenever it tries to access data (for the first time) from any given app. OpenAI would like access to all of your text messages, yes/no. I'd also want audit logs etc.

The nightmare is facebook (or the like) releasing an ai model into the current facebook app and forcing people to decide between looking at their grandkids pictures or allowing facebook to read your whole damn life into a database. So perhaps these apps need to be mandated as a connector for Apple Intelligence and nothing more.

I mean if you decide you want to give access to Google to everything on your phone, go for it. So far I trust apple, they haven't let me down yet. Placing these models on hardware is a great trust-building feature.

Re: Apple decided not to roll out Siri in EU after denied request for exemption

#300
post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you knew the restrictions day one you’d be able to engineer the system to accommodate them This slows down deploying the system globally. Particularly if the target is moving, it may make sense to build lightly so one can pivot, and then build in the compliance stuff after you know you have a winning configuration. The EU has its laws. Apple has its strategy. The only thing I fault anyone on is the public bicker…

Laws and strategy are not fixed, and public bickering is part of how they get optimized.

Nothing usually gets fixed by making belligerent appeals to emotion in the court of public opinion (which, in the EU, isn't nearly rooting for Apple as much as they might imagine, fwiw). If you want to launch something in a market you know to be heavily regulated, you figure it out or you don't launch. Sure, drop a hint here and there when asked in interviews about your product strategy, but you generally don't pick a public fight with the regulator or legislator in question.

Just imagine a European bank publishing a press release about how onerous the US credit card consumer protection laws are, or a Japanese car maker publicly whining about European car safety testing protocols delaying the market release of some of their models. Apple really is behaving in a very unusual way here.

And even though I don't like the implication of this (the law should not disadvantage anyone purely for being critical of it), I can't help but wonder how many fewer pages the DMA would be if Apple had engaged with its predecessors in good faith instead.

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