The "Sign-up with Google" button at the end is the punch line.
Signing in with Google is your choice, the author is not putting the article behind a login wall. I see nothing wrong with it.
Apple vs. Meta: The Illusion of Privacy
131–140 of 359 posts
Re: Apple vs. Meta: The Illusion of Privacy
#132At this point, I don't really care who is to blame between Apple allowing Meta's intrusivity, and Meta or any others just being intrusive.
There is no solution other than "regulate the personal data market out of existence" - meaning going one step further than GDPR and just forbid any use of my personal data except in the context of fulfilling an actual purchase or specific request by me and for communicating with me to the extent I allow it. All other uses are banned.
Re: Apple vs. Meta: The Illusion of Privacy
#133Earlier quoted context omitted.
I would be hard pressed to call a transient operational issue of their service "actively screwing" you.
You missed the point. Apple tracks every app launch. And reports it to an external server. Not localized. Not anonymized.
You didn't make a point. App telemetry is absolutely benign compared to the kind of invasive ad tracking that Facebook participates in. There's no shortage of horror stories of poorly implemented Facebook Pixel integrations passing sensitive user data that marketers then use to create custom ad campaigns.
Most recent examples that come to mind:
https://www.extremetech.com/internet/341111-tax-filing-websi...
https://gizmodo.com/sat-college-board-tells-facebook-tiktok-...
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2023/may/27/nhs-data-bre...
https://themarkup.org/pixel-hunt/2022/12/13/out-of-control-d...
Re: Apple vs. Meta: The Illusion of Privacy
#134Earlier quoted context omitted.
Meta wants to know everything it can about you because other people will pay them for the information. Apple doesn’t. It’s really that simple.
To my knowledge, Apple has not invented a new form of advertising that works without tracking users.
They are called “display ads”. Apple did not invent them. If your site produces above average content, then display ads are likely more profitable then keyword ads, since they target high quality ad real estate instead of high value eyeballs.
Re: Apple vs. Meta: The Illusion of Privacy
#135I think it's unfair to compare Facebook actively screwing us to Apple not adopting your proposed metric on their product and passively allowing a very popular app in their app store. Not a huge fan of Apple, but they aren't Facebook.
If anything the article gives Apple unjustifiable benefit of doubt. Apple exempts itself fron the IDFA transparency requirements it imposes on third-party app developers, and has drawn legal scrutiny in France and the EU, among others:
https://gizmodo.com/apple-iphone-analytics-tracking-even-whe...
Then there is their scanning of iCloud backups for CSAM without being forced to do so by law, something Meta hasn't done with WhatsApp, and obviously not Signal either. CSAM today, messages critical of the powers that be tomorrow, they breached a fundamental ethical line in end-to-end encryption and they are thus now completely untrustworthy on encryption.
Apple's marketing is very effective, but the idea that they are any better than the other Big Tech firms on privacy is just that, marketing fluff without substance if you dig but a little. None of them can be trusted. At this point the only way to really protect your privacy is to connect to the Internet using a MiFI or similar router running open-source software and implementing an outbound firewall blocklist like Jordan Geoghegan's unbound-adblock:
Re: Apple vs. Meta: The Illusion of Privacy
#136Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why are dollar-for-service inevitably going to switch to ad supported? I can't imagine the necessity of that, you already have a paying customer.
Because you always have to be squeezing more money from somewhere to keep your stock going up and ads are an easy place to get it
Ad serving is a (very) low-margin business, and only profitable with huge impression counts. Apple services (think iCloud storage plans) are high margin, with comparatively few opportunities to serve ads. There would be zero point to injecting ads into service contexts (as opposed to something like App Store views).
Re: Apple vs. Meta: The Illusion of Privacy
#137This article seems to conflate Apple for Meta's privacy violations. Yes, the OS can always make it more difficult to do fingerprinting and the app store could add even more "privacy warnings", but in the end if you use a privacy violating third party app they will always find ways to slurp up all your data. Using this as some kind of argument that Apple doesn't care about privacy is dishonest.
The OS is the layer below applications. They obviously can control what data is being sent. Now perhaps that our software model doesn't make it very convenient, but blaming Apple is completely honest and understandable. We should stop seeing our computers as uncontrollable machines that must leak data, they are human made
How exactly does that work, similarly to this self-driving algorithm?
if (gonna_hit_another_car()) {
dont()
}Re: Apple vs. Meta: The Illusion of Privacy
#138You don't expect your health data, financial data and purchase history (does that include anything paid for by Apple pay?) to be shared with Meta just because you are trying out Threads.
Indeed, and you aren't consenting to Apple sharing such data by installing/using Threads.
The privacy label he showed is something Apple requires apps to do to indicate what data they may collect and what they share. Meta has basically decided that people can type in anything in a text box, the servers save the posts, other people view the posts, so every checkbox has to be checked.
Re: Apple vs. Meta: The Illusion of Privacy
#139[deleted]
Re: Apple vs. Meta: The Illusion of Privacy
#140Earlier quoted context omitted.
And uh. Let be honest with ourselves here. Our alternative is currently android. So instead of meta slurping up all your shit, google vacuums it all up and then some, and lets even more of it trickle in to meta.
Don't you need to use Google on Android for them to even have your data? I've seen this propagated, but I havent experienced it. Anyway, in the decade of using android, I am not sure what privacy has compromised. I havent received any custom ads from just using my phone. If I search stuff on the official google search, yes I do, but if I use incognito, I do not. (For instance, I like seeing sports scores occasionally…
Google isn’t collecting your ethnic status to retarget ads. I mean, maybe it changes results a bit.
They’re collecting ethnic status to sell to Cambridge analytica to steal elections.