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Tim Cook makes blistering attack on the “data industrial complex”

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Re: Tim Cook makes blistering attack on the “data industrial complex”

#361

Post by sk5t »

da_chicken wrote: post #308
burtonator wrote: post #258

I'd like to think I'm one of the good guys here. I was one of the inventors of RSS and Atom and worked to push open content and social media. I started a social data search platform named Datastreamer ( http://www.datastreamer.io/ ) which is basically a petabyte-scale content indexing engine. We provide API feeds to search engines and social media analytics companies needing bulk data but don't want to have to build…

And people wonder why I've argued that, at some point, IT needs to be a certified and regulated profession like lawyers, doctors, engineers, nurses, pilots, accountants, electricians, plumbers, teachers, etc. If the future is going to be built using software and data, it's probably going to be essential that the general public have some agency -- public or private -- to safeguard the public interest. It takes years o…

Very true. A "morally flexible" lawyer still has disbarment and legal sanction to worry about, and this may provide a natural balancing force against illegal or immoral client requests. A morally-bankrupt programmer has almost none of those strictures or formal obligations.

Re: Tim Cook makes blistering attack on the “data industrial complex”

#362

Post by jimbokun »

tinco wrote: post #192
mark_l_watson wrote: post #32

I like Tim Cook, I think his heart is in the right place and as much as a corporation can, Apple generally does the right thing. I was having lunch with several lawyers at my company a few weeks ago. One of them was talking strongly about quality devices and Apple’s strong privacy stance. He literally said that we as a society should be grateful for having Apple.

Perhaps it is cynicism, but I'm pretty sure this is just Apple exploiting a competitive edge, and does not necessarily reflect his own opinion, he is speaking to benefit the company. Of course, it's very nice that Apple made the decision to pick this edge, but they did it because they could not compete with Google on web services. So now they're publicly speaking to try and take the sting out of Google's edge. And th…

Apple is also the only major computing player that doesn't make its revenue primarily off of mining and exploiting user data. Maybe Microsoft, too? Certainly the rest of FAANG have huge financial temptations to misuse their data.

So Apple is the one big technology player whose interests are most closely aligned with the consumer in terms of supporting data privacy.

Re: Tim Cook makes blistering attack on the “data industrial complex”

#363

Post by kstrauser »

tinco wrote: post #192
mark_l_watson wrote: post #32

I like Tim Cook, I think his heart is in the right place and as much as a corporation can, Apple generally does the right thing. I was having lunch with several lawyers at my company a few weeks ago. One of them was talking strongly about quality devices and Apple’s strong privacy stance. He literally said that we as a society should be grateful for having Apple.

Perhaps it is cynicism, but I'm pretty sure this is just Apple exploiting a competitive edge, and does not necessarily reflect his own opinion, he is speaking to benefit the company. Of course, it's very nice that Apple made the decision to pick this edge, but they did it because they could not compete with Google on web services. So now they're publicly speaking to try and take the sting out of Google's edge. And th…

> Perhaps it is cynicism, but I'm pretty sure this is just Apple exploiting a competitive edge, and does not necessarily reflect his own opinion, he is speaking to benefit the company.

That's my favorite thing about it: I trust their motives. If Cook were saying this but we knew that the board was getting pissed off about it, I would worry that it was just a matter of time. But Apple is making billions by protecting its users' privacy, investors are raking in cash, and I'd bet the board is thrilled with this. That makes it much, much less likely that they're going to announce one morning that they're abandoning privacy and going all Facebook.

Re: Tim Cook makes blistering attack on the “data industrial complex”

#364

Post by losteric »

kodablah wrote: post #326
cal5k wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that’s an over-simplistic view. Failing to adhere to Chinese law would mean exiting the Chinese market. If the US passed a similar law, Apple would be forced to comply with it (although they would at least have recourse through the courts to eventually show that such a law was, perhaps, unconstitutional).

> Failing to adhere to Chinese law would mean exiting the Chinese market So? Failing to adhere to ad-tech needs would mean exiting the ad-tech market. Did I miss the other company CEOs' blistering attacks on the "Chinese anti-privacy cooperation complex"? Can we at least admit, since violation of privacy by chosen market is a choice, that Tim Cook is a hypocrite?

Why is that hypocritical? Apple does not require that you upload personal data to their cloud, and Apple has no say in Chinese law.

Additionally, Apple's participation in the market (or lack thereof) would have no impact on Chinese data privacy laws, but participation has positive global effects through economies of scale and R&D revenue.

A real hypocrite would actually have to enable oppressive behavior... selling data mining technology, surveillance cameras, etc.

Re: Tim Cook makes blistering attack on the “data industrial complex”

#365

Post by jimbokun »

parthdesai wrote: post #242
tinco wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps it is cynicism, but I'm pretty sure this is just Apple exploiting a competitive edge, and does not necessarily reflect his own opinion, he is speaking to benefit the company. Of course, it's very nice that Apple made the decision to pick this edge, but they did it because they could not compete with Google on web services. So now they're publicly speaking to try and take the sting out of Google's edge. And th…

I'm always baffled how even the tech-literate crowd here continues to give Apple a pass. This is the same Apple that gave up its encryptions keys to Chinese government for the servers located in China. If it actually had user's privacy in mind, it wouldn't give those up.

Apple best supports privacy of all the large technology players.

Re: Tim Cook makes blistering attack on the “data industrial complex”

#366

Post by justtopost »

tomnipotent wrote: post #298
parthdesai wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but when you make blistering attack on "data industrial complex" and advocate privacy, you are held to the golden standard in the entire world. I personally believe that Apple complied to Chinese government's demands is because their bread and butter is in that country (the entire manufacturing of hardware devices).

Do you follow the laws of foreign countries when you travel, even though you live somewhere else?

Not if they are immoral.

Re: Tim Cook makes blistering attack on the “data industrial complex”

#367

Post by bunnycorn »

WhompingWindows wrote: post #284
Spooky23 wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really. They own like 50% of the market. They position like 1960 GM. The $1,500 iPhone is the aspirational thing that everyone talks about. If you have money, you buy the iPhone Xs (ie the Cadillac), if you want to look "better", buy the Xr (Buick), if you don't care, you buy the iPhone 7 (the Chevy). There is almost nothing that the $1,500 phone does that the $1 phone does not. The cheapo androids are more like…

Where is your evidence supporting the claim that Apple owns 50% of the market? That is way above the figures I have seen. Seems to me you are just pulling metrics out of thin air in this post.

It's about that in few countries (US, UK, Japan, Australia).

But it's way less than that worldwide, in India, for example, it's only 1%l

Re: Tim Cook makes blistering attack on the “data industrial complex”

#368

Post by smokeyj »

51Cards wrote: post #360

While I agree with this in principle let's also be frank and say that this is a much simpler stance to take when your company doesn't exist based on data.

Windows 10 doesn’t need your data but they still scoop it up. Let’s be frank, Apple is a superior company morally and technologically.

Re: Tim Cook makes blistering attack on the “data industrial complex”

#369

Post by soneil »

compcoffee wrote: post #110
mark_l_watson wrote: post #32

I like Tim Cook, I think his heart is in the right place and as much as a corporation can, Apple generally does the right thing. I was having lunch with several lawyers at my company a few weeks ago. One of them was talking strongly about quality devices and Apple’s strong privacy stance. He literally said that we as a society should be grateful for having Apple.

> He literally said that we as a society should be grateful for having Apple. Which is utterly cringeworthy. iPhone user thinks iPhone is best thing since sliced bread. News at 11.

The wording is cringeworthy, but essentially I agree with him.

It doesn't need to be Apple specifically, but I'm glad we have competition. If either of Apple or Google were the only real option, we'd be much worse off than we are now.

It's a shame it's come down to a duopoly, but at least they both have something to compete on.

Re: Tim Cook makes blistering attack on the “data industrial complex”

#370

Post by mcbits »

callalex wrote: post #325
mcbits wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know why so many DDG users use '!g' unless they're using Edge or just aren't aware that Chromium and Firefox both let you create an arbitrary keyword like 'g' for a search provider, which is a lot easier to type. Some of the other bang commands do look useful, though.

That won’t take you through DDG’s anonymizing proxy though.

For me, !g just redirects to a normal Google search.
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