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DuckDuckGo will use Apple Maps

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Re: DuckDuckGo will use Apple Maps

#151

Post by SEJeff »

Kye wrote: post #141
SEJeff wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because Tim Cook, as a homosexual, has teared up when speaking about human rights abuses of homosexual under repressive regimes, and how as the CEO of apple, he will do anything within his power to ensure your data stays safe on apple infra / hw because he personally thinks about it. Can't remember the interview, but it was quite touching actually. He's very clear in shareholder calls / letters and in their privacy p…

"Homosexual" is not strictly offensive, but does mark you as potentially holding regressive views. It's easy enough to see from context that you're probably okay, but you can't always count on context. You can just say gay. -- Signed, The Gays

I can't reply to your other one because of HN max-thread rules, but yeah. My wife has a masters in social work, or as we like to joke, is a professional social justice warrior. Keep fighting the good fight.

Re: DuckDuckGo will use Apple Maps

#152

Post by symlinkk »

throwawaymath wrote: post #101
Kiro wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Surely DuckDuckGo has implemented their own search engine, crawler and indexer apart from other providers? No. They have their own crawler but it's only used for Instant Answers and other widget stuff. https://duck.co/help/results/sources > In fact, DuckDuckGo gets its results from over four hundred sources. These include hundreds of vertical sources delivering niche Instant Answers, DuckDuckBot (our crawler) and c…

But then what's the point? EDIT: This is an honest question, not snark. I'd appreciate an honest answer instead of a blind drive-by downvote. I don't learn anything about why a thin UI layer over a bunch of search engines I can access directly is useful for privacy if you just downvote my comment.

Because you're not accessing the search engines directly, you're going through a sort of proxy that hides your identity.

Re: DuckDuckGo will use Apple Maps

#153

Post by fady »

A+ DDG! I have been using DDG (duck duck go) since Gabriel created it in 2008. It’s been my default search on all my devices. When I need to route searches through Google, I do, as Google is still king at knowing and giving you the exact results you want, whereas DDG, gives you great results, with a different algorithm on the type results plus the added security of what DDG is about. They don’t track you. They don’t save your searches. I don’t use apple maps as i use android, but I like that DDG continues to go against the grain and choose privacy over comfort.

Lastly, I know the bulk of my searches go through DDG so I don’t have to think about what I searched, on what devices, was it on a public net, was VPN enabled?? etc etc.. What are you thoughts? Do you use DDG?

Re: DuckDuckGo will use Apple Maps

#154

Post by symlinkk »

Kye wrote: post #141
SEJeff wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because Tim Cook, as a homosexual, has teared up when speaking about human rights abuses of homosexual under repressive regimes, and how as the CEO of apple, he will do anything within his power to ensure your data stays safe on apple infra / hw because he personally thinks about it. Can't remember the interview, but it was quite touching actually. He's very clear in shareholder calls / letters and in their privacy p…

"Homosexual" is not strictly offensive, but does mark you as potentially holding regressive views. It's easy enough to see from context that you're probably okay, but you can't always count on context. You can just say gay. -- Signed, The Gays

So how should he have said it?

Re: DuckDuckGo will use Apple Maps

#155

Post by ChrisLoer »

lukeqsee wrote: post #105
jethro_tell wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They were using an open source map company, not google maps. By that standard, I feel this is probably a privacy regression. I'm looking forward to the day when people know what they are talking about.

> They were using an open source map company, not google maps. By that standard, I feel this is probably a privacy regression. I'm not sure this is a fair comparison. Open source is not the same as privacy-friendly. Apple makes privacy a core-tenet of their product. I do not see the same stance from Mapbox.

I work at Mapbox. Not speaking officially for the company here (for that see https://www.mapbox.com/privacy/), but I can say it's definitely an internalized norm that in order to earn trust as a platform we need to be very careful with any user data we get. While user-generated location data does flow into updating our map, we are aggressive about anonymizing and aggregating that data as quickly as possible (including stripping out data on the client side).

But I agree Apple has consistently advertised their focus on privacy and backed it up with their actions.

Re: DuckDuckGo will use Apple Maps

#156

Post by mda »

willio58 wrote: post #130
gowld wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

DDG's main marketing model is talking about how they believe Google is privacy threat, so they'll highlight that angle in any change.

The best kind of marketing is marketing based on universally known truth.

Or.. DDG is just a tool in a bigger war in the background. It feels like it can exist only because its benefactors allow it to exist.

Re: DuckDuckGo will use Apple Maps

#157

Post by elliekelly »

SEJeff wrote: post #131
taf2 wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are they or do you just believe that because of what you think you know about the difference between the two companies?

Because Tim Cook, as a homosexual, has teared up when speaking about human rights abuses of homosexual under repressive regimes, and how as the CEO of apple, he will do anything within his power to ensure your data stays safe on apple infra / hw because he personally thinks about it. Can't remember the interview, but it was quite touching actually. He's very clear in shareholder calls / letters and in their privacy p…

I'm an attorney and have worked with several financial institutions drafting policies/statements/investor disclosures about privacy and user data. For most financial institutions user privacy is good for the bottom line but expensive so they tend to do the bare minimum. The bare minimum is not a lot but it's quite a bit more than nothing, which is what most non-medical/non-financial institutions have to do. I've never worked with a tech company on privacy matters but I would expect any company that depends on collecting and monetizing user data to be much more aggressive than the typical financial institution. That said, comparing Apple's privacy policies to those of a financial institution they are truly above and beyond any minimum regulatory standard.

I know most people don't pay them any attention but I'm really not sure you could find a more customer-focused privacy policy. I've yet to find one and I would guess I've read at least 10x as many privacy policies as the average person. Everything from what their disclosures say to how they've structured them to be easily read, easily understood, and (dare I say) engaging is indicative of just how much they prioritize user-privacy.

edit: meant non medical

Re: DuckDuckGo will use Apple Maps

#158

Post by lukeqsee »

ChrisLoer wrote: post #155
lukeqsee wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They were using an open source map company, not google maps. By that standard, I feel this is probably a privacy regression. I'm not sure this is a fair comparison. Open source is not the same as privacy-friendly. Apple makes privacy a core-tenet of their product. I do not see the same stance from Mapbox.

I work at Mapbox. Not speaking officially for the company here (for that see https://www.mapbox.com/privacy/ ), but I can say it's definitely an internalized norm that in order to earn trust as a platform we need to be very careful with any user data we get. While user-generated location data does flow into updating our map, we are aggressive about anonymizing and aggregating that data as quickly as possible (includi…

Hey Chris, glad to hear that is an internal focus!

I hope for the sake of the Internet that one day discussions about privacy aren’t needed because it’s the default everywhere. Then everyone wins. :)

Re: DuckDuckGo will use Apple Maps

#159

Post by JohnFen »

fady wrote: post #153

A+ DDG! I have been using DDG (duck duck go) since Gabriel created it in 2008. It’s been my default search on all my devices. When I need to route searches through Google, I do, as Google is still king at knowing and giving you the exact results you want, whereas DDG, gives you great results, with a different algorithm on the type results plus the added security of what DDG is about. They don’t track you. They don’t…

> Google is still king at knowing and giving you the exact results you want

Not for me, it's not. The quality of Google search results for me has been falling for years now. These days, DDG and Google are about equally good on that score.

I suspect that it's because Google tries to tailor my search results to what it thinks I'm looking for rather than just giving me the results I actually asked for, and it's really, really terrible at it.

Re: DuckDuckGo will use Apple Maps

#160

Post by JohnFen »

kuschku wrote: post #126
aphextron wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I wish they were explaining why they moved away from Mapbox and OSM in general! Because it sucks. Isn’t that obvious? There’s no point in having a feature that nobody uses. I switched to DDG a few months ago and this has always been the one weakness. This is really good news IMO. Apple maps has come a long long way since launch, and their data is about on par with Google at this point. You can argue all day that of…

In many places (e.g. many parts of Germany) Google and Apple maps are far inferior compared to OSM and Mapbox specifically. I tried finding an address recently on Google Maps, and just couldn’t find it, only to discover that that street was added 4 years ago, so ofc Google (with data from 2011) didn’t have it. OSM had it.

Yes, OSM can give truly excellent results for certain areas. And truly awful results for others.
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