To say, what you're saying, but with fewer words; with Apple you pay for your privacy with money, rather than paying with your privacy instead of money.

At least for now, until they decide that they can get your money and also further monetize the private info that only they have, which will command a premium. Hopefully that doesn't happen, but who knows.

Indeed. Unfortunately none of us can predict the future. For now, the best we can do is make an informed decision based on what is presently the case. One day hopefully, steps will enter the mainstream to prevent the need for trust by guaranteeing our information isn't collected and thus can't be sold.

Which private info do they have?

That’s one way to look at it.

Apple has two sets of customers. They architected the worlds greatest casino through the AppStore, and the developers who make the machines are just as morally pure as Facebooks customers.

Look at the Epic controversy, which boils down to who should get the biggest cut of real money from selling bullshit virtual funny money.

> I would argue that Apple is at least in some ways structured so that its own self-interest regarding privacy results in positive privacy conscious outcomes for everyone.

Is it though? I thought they still had an ad network so I searched a bit to find it and how it was itself impacted by this button to find this:

https://support.apple.com/en-ca/HT202074

So they only got ads on their store, perfectly fine, and it seems to be impacted as the button does say All advertisers. It even seems to show what information they use on the store, seriously that's well beyond what I was expecting A+.

And then I saw "Turn off location-based ads". Weird the first screenshot didn't have that checkbox... It's hidden in System Service, who really go there to set Advertising setting? Even more so while you got the perfect place already on the perfectly logical "Settings > Privacy > Advertising".

Their self-interest regarding privacy aren't aligned at all with yours. They are just trying to make the most buck out of you and they found one more profitable than ads. For location based ads, it seems like they still believe it will bring them more cash.

That means that the day ads will be back as the most profitable way for them, you'll be back to square one ;) with just much less competition. Good luck!

I think you do get this argument and we're actually saying pretty much the same thing.

I'm saying people shouldn't look at this decision as "Apple has our interests in mind" but rather "in this particular case Apple's self interested is aligned with our own because of their business model".