That's the problem being discussed--the fond relationships are built with entities that no longer exist, and it is argued that current brand practices are deceiving for the consumer side of the relationship and abusive on the producer side.
Defining "essentially the same" sounds hard, especially if a series of "small" changes happen over a period of time. Ship of Theseus, anyone?
As soon as you try defining "small changes" and the period of time on which they can occur, it is arguably a problem that will lead to loopholes easily abused by the legal departments of any big corp.
People can't keep crazy conspiracies secret very well, but are completely capable of keeping eroding standards quiet.
I am merely saying that if it is possible at a national level, it is possible at a company level. If it is a culture where you work you can quickly become swept along with it.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2001/feb/17/johnezard suggests otherwise.
that's wildly wrong hypothesis. the complete opposite of these ideas are uncontested knowledge in academia, and in popular culture as well.
see Hannah Arendt's work. (which doesn't even include profit and personal gains!)
If Apple relied on private info for revenue, the warm smile would be the same but the wording would be very different.
Still, the problem is more along the axis of technology. Even if Apple open-sourced their entire stack, we'd still have to take their word for what was running on our phones at any given moment. Encryption protects us but also ensures we can't know what information is sent from our phones to Apple. Hardware security, which protects us as well, turns our phones into a black box.
Are Apple good guys? Well, we could have a whistleblower come forward with evidence that they're not but a lack of whistleblowers isn't evidence that they are. If the entire stack isn't auditable by 3rd parties then we're just going on faith.
Personally, I'm ok with it. I like the aesthetics of Apple products more than their rivals. The threat to me, if it exists, isn't large enough for me to worry about.
If I were a criminal, I wouldn't trust my iPhone for a second.
It is, actually. It reduces the number of possible worlds in which Apple is an evil company, while leaving intact the number of possible worlds in which it is saintly.
It's only weak evidence, to be sure.
Well put. Corporations aren’t people no matter what Citizens United “says.” Their goal is maximizing shareholder profit at any cost. They do nothing out of the goodness of the hearts they don’t have and they certainly are not guided by ethics the way individuals are.
As you said, if Apple “cares” about privacy more than Google or Facebook it is not because it is a more “moral” or “just” company, it is simply because its business model is not, and never was, based on hoovering up and monetizing personal data.
It’s not like a conscious decision was made by Tim Cook or Apple’s shareholders to do things differently than the aforementioned two companies.
Pointing out how Apple “cares about your privacy” is simply a PR (read: propaganda) move designed to gain some extra positive publicity which, of course, helps the bottom line. It’s the kind of thing companies do all the time. Taking these pronouncements at face value requires a certain naïveté (or a wilful suspension of disbelief).
And while Apple might not traffic in its customers’ personal data, the company recently revealed that it scans content stored on its servers, e.g. your iCloud Photo Library, because of “concerns” over child pornography.
This suggests privacy isn’t quite as sacred to Apple as its PR department would have one believe.
(Never mind that there is no evidence whatsoever that mass surveillance reduces incidence of child sexual abuse or decreases the production and distribution of child porn. Which begs the question, why <i>is</i> Apple spying on its paying customers’ personal content?)
Whenever a company, or a government, deploys the cliché “think about the children!” argument as a pretext for increasing internet surveillance, you can bet this reason was chosen because if anyone objects on privacy grounds they can say, “what, so you’re on the side of the child pornographers/suicide trolls/cyber bullies?” It’s a discussion stopping tactic.
Yeah, corporations are definitely not people, they are not your friends and they do not care about you as a person. That in 2020 this even needs to be said is a testament to how thoroughly corporate propaganda has been woven into the fabric of western culture.
I couldn't agree more. But at the same time, I'm completely baffled that while this sentiment about companies is widely agreed upon on HN, people around here don't expand this from companies to much more powerful and dangerous orgs: governments.
https://apple.com/privacy (45 second read)
https://apple.com/privacy/features (many minute read with links to whitepapers)
I believe this goes well beyond following instinct, and at least for me does lead to a strong semblance of trust.
They really did a doozy by not being upfront about Siri's contractors (I already knew so it didn't affect me personally), and they're hemming on E2E iCloud backups (perhaps for Availability, perhaps for China), but they continue to push the envelope on what usable security and usable privacy looks like.
In addition; the iPhone 5s from 2013 is still getting security patches, as recently as March 24th.
I'd go the reverse. The bigger they are, the more I trust them.
> I wish people would stop anthropomorphizing companies that way.
But anybody who trusts them for that reason is indeed crazy.
Maybe out definition of trust is different. For me trust means predictability. Do I trust the sun will rise in the east or a stone will roll down the hill? Do I trust my mother will tell me off if I growl at my sister? Do I trust my father will ask me how the finances are going? These things are all predictable - so I trust them. To a lesser extent do I trust these people to keep their word? The answer is sometimes - if my mother promises to look after the kids then definitely, but if she promises not to buy them presents then I'll trust her a little less.
Companies are also predictable in some ways. Bigger companies more so than smaller ones, simply because it takes a lot longer to change the direction of a bigger ship. In my book predictable means trustworthy.
One of the things you can absolutely have faith in is a bigger company is driven by money. (A small company is more likely to be driven by idealism of its owners.) Money means users, so if a good record on privacy attracts users you can be pretty sure they will do their best to have a good record. Not surprisingly Apple and Google do have an extraordinarily good record on keeping data they store secure - far better than most governments for example.
It does not surprise me at all both companies are making a song and dance about how they are safeguarding your location data, and I trust them to do everything within their power to make good on that promise. Unfortunately they aren't gods - if they receive a court order to cough it up, they will. So trust has limits.
that is just silly.
> bigger company is driven by money
Follow that money. Figure out who pays. Are you the customer?
So to be clear: I'm glad Apple and Google are going this route, rather than allow governments to massively track their citizens. And I don't need to trust Apple in order for that to happen, and that's good.