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Comment by gigatexal | Hacker News Reader

I’ll never use one for this reason. Apple records my voice to my HomePod but I trust they’re deleted after some time.

Not to be facetious, but why exactly do you trust Apple to delete your data after some time? What has Apple done or said to earn your trust? Genuinely curious.

They've got a pretty stunning record for not keeping data around longer than needed. They build their products at the hardware level (secure enclave) so they can't even access certain types of user data.

Their business model doesn't involve monetizing user's data, and they've been public and explicit about that.

A brand is a promise. Apple's brand is heavily security-focused.

If their promise is broken, their brand will suffer.

Amazon has no such promise or brand. They offer low prices and high convenience.

Where can I read more about this promise? What, exactly, was promised?

Sure, someone like Apple may have a strong brand. But once it's built up, it's an attractive asset to deplete, the way corporate raiders go after a company with a lot of cash (which Apple also has). Many companies have followed a pattern of building up a brand over a long period of time and then hollowing it out and degrading it. GE home appliances come to mind.

The other thing is that sometimes a company does something by accident that would damage the brand if anyone finds out, and covering it up is the only way to save it. I don't think there's any way to prevent this from happening somewhere at a huge company from the top, because people are always going to make mistakes and bad decisions and then they don't want anyone to know for fear of consequences.

Your skepticism is the proper viewpoint, but facts/previous actions matter.

When has Apple ever done that?

Apple's style would be getting everyone to buy into the feature that has privacy implications with some mitigations.

They’ve no business use-case to keep or monetize it.

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