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Comment by teddyh | Hacker News Reader

Why EFF did this is to get journalists to get a story to write about the issue. Nobody involved cared whether anyone at Apple saw it.

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Exactly, and for around $1000 they got good bang for the buck. A reasonable expense for lots of publicity about an important issue.

> EFF did this is to get journalists to get a story to write about the issue.

Except exactly 0 articles were written outside of them writing an article about it themselves. Where is the 'lots of publicity'? They generate just as much when they write and article about anything in general.

>Except exactly 0 articles were written outside of them writing an article about it themselves

It was also covered by MacRumors: https://www.macrumors.com/2021/09/24/eff-apple-park-banner-c...

Ahh finally found one! Btw that was published after it hit the front page here.

See? Story seeding in progress. This thread is welcomed to the media ecochain.

I am rather disapointed to see HN has more power to seed a story than the EFF.

If an organisation writes an article to promote a cause, and it gets picked up and commented on by other websites... isn't it that original organisation who "seeded" the story?

Maybe you're right. My point was that having one banner towing flight is not an outrageous expense of money or CO2.

There's still time. Also it made the front page of Hacker News. So I'd say that's a success.

Yes. People forget that non-profits have marketing budgets too.

Exactly. Most people who deeply agree with eff probably wouldn't even use an iDevice.

Actually, for those who have a strong concern about user privacy, there have been strong reasons to use Apple. Just a few years ago (2016) Apple spent an enormous amount of money and reputation going to court against the US government arguing that guarding the privacy of their users even from the FBI was vital even in a case involving terrorism.

But this on-device scanning proposes to undermine that.

I think comparing EFF targets against Apple actions gives us strongly mixed results. Strongly - because you're dead on. Apple set the bar with protecting users there.

Also strongly because Apple set itself up as a supervillian over right to repair & closed ecosystems - and as an IP bully cage fighter.

You think they use a Google tracking device instead?

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