Privacy is the main selling point Apple is pushing in their current PR campaigns. They've been slowly building up a brand around privacy with new privacy features.
They've just sunk that entire brand/campaign. Instead of "iPhone, the phone that keeps all your data private", it's "iPhone, the phone that looks through your pictures and actively rats you out to police to ruin your life".
It isn't like the ultimate goal of protecting children isn't worth fighting for, and the ICMEC considers half the countries in the world having no laws against CSAM to be "simply unacceptable." But companies that insist that everything they host can remain private to everyone are lying to their users, and will have to align their marketing claims with the reality of the law, or this kind of backlash will result.
But in general, there are a lot of other descriptors besides "private" that are nothing more than baseless Corporate Memphis copy.
>A majority (72%) of iPhone & iPad users are aware of new privacy changes in recent software updates. When asked how well they understand Apple’s new privacy policies, these were the responses: Extremely well (13%), Very well (29%), Moderately well (21%), Slightly well (9%), and Not well at all (28%). Two in three (65%) users are “extremely” or “very” concerned about their activities being tracked as they use certain websites and apps, while only 14% said they were not at all concerned.
And from https://www.androidauthority.com/android-app-tracking-transp...
>You told us: You really want an Apple-like anti-app tracking feature on Android... Over 30,000 people voted in favor of an App Tracking Transparency feature on Android.
People are becoming extremely conscious of online (and on-phone) privacy issues. Where have you been?
Your statement "don't tell me you believe privacy was at the usual consumers mind when they bought their devices... this is ridiculous or you don't meet many normal users." is itself, ridiculous.
>don't tell me you believe privacy was at the usual consumers mind when they bought their devices... this is ridiculous or you don't meet many normal users.
Is true or false? Because you seem to be contradicting yourself. Are people aware of privacy or not? Is the marketing working or not?
I suspect you were trying to say that people weren't aware previously. Is that correct? Because I don't think anyone would disagree with that.
Small example: I run a small app. The number of GDPR-related requests is zero. The number of emails like "can my deleted account and deleted data still be recovered?" is like 1 per month or so.
WhatsApp is also a good counter example. People want privacy, but what they want more is utility and network effects. Most people I know didn’t abandon WhatsApp despite numerous privacy mishaps and I think the same will happen here with Apple. This will blow over – unfortunately.
The worlds largest online companies increasingly making privacy a priority in their marketing are all wrong. Got it.
>Most people I know didn’t abandon WhatsApp despite numerous privacy mishaps
I never said privacy was the top issue, trumping all else. You're absolutely correct that other issues like convenience and network effects are important.
How did that work out for you?
You mean that country which gives a damn about privacy altogether because all those fancy corps are giving them toys to play? You know, those companies which feed on the worlds populations data as a business model. The country which has a camera on their front door which films their neighbourhood 24/7? The country which has listening devices all over their homes in useless gadgets?
You have to be joking or that scale you impose here is useless.
This whole thing will go by fast and there won't be much damage on the sales side. Apple is the luxus brand. People don't buy it for privacy. Most of the customers won't probably even understand the problem here.
The only thing we might be rid of are those songs of glory in technical spheres.