I hope they never become this short-sighted. I buy Apple primarily because I believe that they protect my privacy—or at least that they do a better job of it than everyone else.
They protect your privacy for the very same reason as Apple: To be the sole gatekeeper for effectively reaching you with Ads.
There also won't be any "weakened privacy protections". The goal of Meta/Google/Apple is to reach maximum precision for those Personas they create from their users, and protect the underlying data for competitive advantage.
Personas are legally not personal data, they are abstractions. Advertising to you via a cluster with other people who recently purchased a new car is not a legal violation of privacy.
This is how Meta/Google advertising works and how Apple Ads works as well, their T&C already state this clearly ("your information will be used to show ads relevant to you").
Which competitor has been “removed”?
> Regulate tightly what apple/google are allowed to do with their stores (e.g. like a common carrier)
So there shouldn’t be any rules are quality controls on what should be allowed?
> The elected EU legislative took some points from both approaches AFTER the free market failed to implement a meaningful competition for central app stores.
Yes, the EU is the model of smart regulations when it comes to tech. That’s the reason that it has such a thriving tech ecosystem.
I don't think the (perhaps perceived) lack of entrepreneurship in the EU should be taken as a sign of regulation overreach to protect privacy. Seems liked a red herring in this conversation
By "market leaders" you mean the very many American companies fuelled by unlimited investor money that lose billions of dollars a year with no chance of ever turning a profit?
Even if that’s the case, why aren’t investors willing to invest in EU tech companies at the same level?
On top of that the US is a rather homogenous market with a single language vs. 27 conuntries with 27 different languages (in reality more) and quite a difference in local laws (even if all are compliant with EU-wide laws). IIRC there's also an expectation in Europe that companies should actually turn a profit at one point (though with influc of American money this is starting to change, too).
You still get ASML and Infineon, SAP, Adyen, Amadeus etc.
Outside of Software, aeroplanes and luxury goods come to mind.
But I have zero power over the EU. And yet they're legislating what my iPhone is going to work like. Talk about unaccountable.
The free market did not deliver competing app stores because that is not a problem for the majority of users and is in fact a huge boon for most.
“Your phone is infected. Click here to load our antivirus”
The people whom for such exploits would be dangerous won’t be able to follow the 6 steps to enable them.
If applications suddenly drop out of the App Store (horrendously unlikely) and force you to install them via sideloading, don't do it. It's entirely your prerogative.
Plus, I imagine Apple is going to make it quite involved to actually sideload anything. I think the old people in your life (incidentally, I know a lot more tech savvy older people than younger people, but that's neither here nor there) are safe from the nefarious clutches of added freedom.
> I'll literally pay extra for a locked-down phone.
if not, why just lockdown phones and not pcs?
Depending on how exactly this is done, it might yet be safe: we can have multiple roots of trust, multi multiple app stores, etc.
I'm nostalgic for the bygone days when I didn't feel even slightly concerned about spyware because no bank cards were stored on my device and tech companies didn't phone home so routinely that the EU nations unified their existing legislation into GDPR in a vain attempt to try to get them to stop.
But I don't see those days returning short of a Butlerian Jihad against anything post-2002.
I also want a locked-down phone with no ability to sideload.
If you want only Apple "approved" apps, well you can still do that and you lose nothing. You can't really complain about side load only apps that aren't Apple approved then, because that is exactly what you want. But keep in mind this is orthogonal to the "locked down" level of your phone.
This is true for every powerful country that you are not a citizen of.
For example: EU citizens have zero power over US regulations forcing US companies to share data with them. Plenty of examples from other jurisdictions as well.
I don't think there is a way around this. A global market with these influences is still much better than fully isolated markets.
Another way of thinking about this is what we're taking this so-called overreaching, unaccountable private corporate power from one company and giving many companies that same power.
> The elected EU legislative took some points from both approaches AFTER the free market failed to implement a meaningful competition for central app stores.
You are presenting both Android and iOS, and default app stores for each platform as a duopoly, which is a mistake, because on Android you can already install third-party app stores. The mobile OS landscape is a duopoly, but there are many app stores across both platforms so is is not really a duopoly, it's just that the Google Play Store and App Store on iOS are superior products (particularly the iOS App Store).
On the OS side I think instead of premature legislation and stagnation we should let things just play out. It's a mistake to assume that because the state of the world is X today that it'll always be X. You can't have instantaneous change. It also might just be the economic reality that having just a couple of operating systems is the best for consumers and the market.
>A new report on Advertising Age has revealed what advertisers think of Apple's arrogance when it comes to its mobile advertising platform and its tight grip on user data. This attitude towards its ad business turns off advertisers and makes them turn elsewhere, perhaps other avenues such as Google, Yahoo, or Facebook that make life a lot easier for them.
"One person familiar with the situation exec said Apple's refusal to share data makes it the best-looking girl at the party, forced to wear a bag over her head," the AdAge report read.
https://www.techtimes.com/articles/3568/20140222/apple-cares...
In the meantime Meta learnt that they can't allow others to extract their precious userdata and need to protect their position by clustering data into Personas for advertisers to select from.
Now Apple reenters the ad-business, using the very same scheme as Google/Meta (maintaining Personas based on userdata they safeguard) but with an unprecedented set of profiling data of its users, as they collect data on the Apple-ID level, spanning from positioning data over types of apps used and stocks you're watching to actual purchases in the physical world.
If people consider Meta/Google's practice as spying, I don't know what they expect Apple's Ads to be. Their T&C already describe that they create a persona from your data to display "Ads relevant to you", just like Meta/Google does...
Maintaining shadow profiles on people who aren't even customers and buying user data from third parties isn't spying on people?
Again, it's not the part where you sell ads that is problematic.
Both is done for the sake of understanding who you are in order to sell ads to you.
Is one "spying" and the other "a little bit of spying"?
Because one of those is a perfectly normal part of any business relationship, and the other is absolutely not normal and not acceptable.
I mean, Amazon stopped mailing receipts with line items of your purchases to Gmail customers because Google was maintaining a purchase history for transactions that they had nothing to do with.
> Google’s secret page records everything you’ve bought online
https://www.komando.com/shopping/googles-secret-page-records...
I'm not defending either of these practices, I'm asking how it is any different to what Apple does.
So Apple forcing all third parties on the iOS platform to use Apple's payments APIs to process payments and thus being able to track what you've purchased inside of any third party app they have nothing to do with, is that comparable to what Google does on the Gmail platform?
How is a first party business relationship with your own customer different than buying a copy of people's credit card transaction data, spying on receipts emailed by other businesses, turning on location tracking by default, paying children to give root access to their device (Onavo), setting up user tracking on a huge swath of websites (Google Analytics, Facebook Like Button), and the other sorts relentless spying tactics that we have seen from companies with a surveillance capitalism business model?
> Since 2016, Facebook has been paying users ages 13 to 35 up to $20 per month plus referral fees to sell their privacy by installing the iOS or Android “Facebook Research” app. Facebook even asked users to screenshot their Amazon order history page.
It's not the advertising part that is problematic. It's the part where you relentlessly spy on everyone to make selling ads more profitable.
Now Apple owns the underlying Hardware and tracks usage of every single application and service on top. How exactly is Apple expected to operate their advertising business if NOT with the very same method as Meta/Google (creating personas, selling them for ads)?
Meta has been creating shadow profiles of people who don't even use their products for over a decade now.
https://www.theverge.com/2018/4/11/17225482/facebook-shadow-...
Google, literally, buys a copy of everyone's credit/debit card transaction data so they can spy on your bank account and not just your online activities.
https://www.technologyreview.com/2017/05/25/242717/google-no...
You can sell ads without constantly spying on everyone. Glossy Magazines, Newspapers, Radio, and Television managed to do so for many decades.
Google purchased transaction data to connect online behavior to the real world and refine their Persona profile. Apple doesn't need to do this, because they already collect data from their users' behavior in the real world via their Apple Pay / Apple Card purchases. In 2017 Google didn't know whether you actually have money to buy a new TV, they only saw that you kept looking at TVs online. So they thought it's a good idea to buy this data to refine their Ad Personas. In 2023, Apple already owns sufficient data to know if you can afford a TV or not. They curate your persona from your Apple ID and your Apple Pay transactions and even know whether you went to BestBuy recently.
Putting you in a matching advertising cluster for that isn't a legal privacy violation, your private data will never be shared with anyone. Just like Google and Meta don't share your private data with anyone.
I don't like any of those practices, but let's not buy into the illusion that Apple is doing anything different to Meta/Google. They all create and refine Personas to allow targeted marketing, and protect the underlying data to be the gatekeeper.
It's entirely possible to sell ads based on the content of a web page, just like it's possible to sell ads based on the content of a magazine.
It's just not as profitable as relentlessly spying on everyone.
> Google purchased transaction data to connect online behavior to the real world and refine their Persona profile
Google already has more than enough data on it's customers through their search history. They don't need to relentlessly spy on every aspect of your life, including your bank account, to turn a profit.
Yes. But at some point i.e. Bentley wants to spend its Marketing money only on people likely to buy a Bentley. If Bentley shops for ads tomorrow, they can select Personas like "Age 40-60", "owns a car" and many others from Meta as well as Google as well as Apple. Those are the "ads relevant to you" Apple talks about in their T&C. Again, I don't like it either, but let's not buy into the illusion that Apple is not entering this exact same industry to sell their customers' attention to the highest bidder.
> Google already has more than enough data on it's customers
And so does Apple. Time to start a lucrative ads business.
So they can run their ads on web pages that are related to luxury goods.
It's entirely possible to sell ads without relentlessly spying on everyone.
It's just less profitable.
I'm asking how the persona creation of Google/Meta for selling ads is any different to Apple doing the very same thing, and if those actions when done by one party qualify as "spying", what are the same actions done by Apple then.
You avoided clarifying your view on Apple's actions for hours and instead kept arguing how Google/Meta's action are clearly espionage.
Now you inadvertently clarified that Apple is free to do all of the same that Google/Meta are doing because when Apple is doing it it is a first-party "business relationship". When Google/Meta is doing it, it is somehow never a first-party relationship but always an outside actor spying on people who don't use their products. Despite both parties doing this to refine the persona's they have of their platform users.
That's settled then. Have a good day.
You keep circling around a "good company is good, bad company is bad" narrative.
You condemn the collection of data for the purpose of targeted advertising, because that's "spying". You don't care if Apple is also doing advertising, because it's the collection of data which is problematic.
I just asked how Apple is expected to sell targeted ads any differently than collecting their users' data (to create personas for ads), and you keep reframing it to reply how others are "bad companies" because they collect userdata. This is the straw man argument you keep creating.
You made it very clear that there is no answer. To you Apple is simply different because they are a "good company".
I've given many examples of the difference between a first party business relationship and the sorts of worldwide spying that Facebook and Google have been engaging in.
>How is a first party business relationship with your own customer different than buying a copy of people's credit card transaction data, spying on receipts emailed by other businesses, turning on location tracking by default, paying children to give root access to their device (Onavo), setting up user tracking on a huge swath of websites (Google Analytics, Facebook Like Button), and the other sorts relentless spying tactics that we have seen from companies with a surveillance capitalism business model?
As I've pointed out previously, this isn't the same thing as Amazon having a record of things I've purchased from Amazon.
>I didn't even attempt to convince you
You haven't convinced anyone of your favorite straw man.
It is like thinking that the problem lies with a lion's sharp teeth, and not that the lion it's a flesh-eating predator.
Spying just makes it more profitable. Most of the world would be fine with Larry, Sergey and Mark only being able to afford one mega yacht apiece.
So was the horse drawn carriage. Where is that industry now?
George Orwell could not have conceived a time where everyone was voluntarily carrying an electronic billboard in their pocket. But we are in that world, and that world no longer has room for the Mad Men/Ogilvy/Chiat Day era of ad agencies creating one-size fits all campaigns. Google and Facebook took them out over the past 15 years.
Less profitable is not the same thing as impossible, no matter how much it enriches your bottom line.
I don't want every component of my phone OS broken apart and subject to what some legislator or lobbyist thinks is 'competition'. The competition is between Apple and Google making mobile platforms and we already had a choice.
I chose Apple's approach after a few years with Google. I miss the headphone jack, but having no tacky tracky shit shovelled throughout the OS is nice.
hmm what would I call that.... A standard perhaps..
Then maybe we could make that same application work on several types of devices and form factors that simply run that standard via a web of devices
We could call them Web Apps... A Web App Standard....
Like ads for icloud services in settings? Apple TV and Music subscription promotions appearing above all other the settings links? Personalized tracking being enabled by default?
I don't blindly trust any company, but from what I can tell Apple makes their money from services and hardware. Someone else in this thread has indicated that advertisers are frustrated because they cannot access Apple user data. They recently implemented E2E for all iCloud data. It looks a better offering than trusting every aspect of my online life with a company who makes their $$$ from adverts and data mining.
While I'd love to use a PinePhone running OpenBSD for my mobile needs, having the ability to message my friends is nice. As are online services that Just Work, and if they make their money from me paying and not from selling my data, then we can be content.
what a hill to die on
iOS is a breath of fresh air in comparison and does none of this. I say this as a diehard Android G1/Nexus fanboy from way back before it became obvious to me that Google apps are basically spyware for the surveillance capitalism machine.
However the solution to overreaching unaccountable private cooperations cannot be to hand all the power to another private unaccountable company.
Apple is venturing into advertising and that'll tempt them to weaken privacy protections sooner or later.
Additionally their app store rules went far beyond enforcing security and privacy. They gave themselves an advantage and removed competitors for commercial reasons.
Given that the mobile market is pretty much a duopoly in Europe there were two (political) realistic alternatives:
- Regulate tightly what apple/google are allowed to do with their stores (e.g. like a common carrier)
- force them to give customers a choice by allowing side loading.
The elected EU legislative took some points from both approaches AFTER the free market failed to implement a meaningful competition for central app stores.