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Comment by cloutchaser | Hacker News Reader

This is the crucial point I think. Apple claims its on the side of privacy when it suits them. When it doesn't they don't care. In fact as the only big tech company allowed in China, you could argue they have a much worse effect on privacy overall for humanity than any other tech company.

It's all bullshit, and marketing. Apple is doing this to grow apple ads. That's it.

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> In fact as the only big tech company allowed in China, you could argue they have a much worse effect on privacy overall for humanity than any other tech company.

I would argue that it would be far worse for humanity if they decided that they did not have to follow local laws. Regardless of what you might think of our laws here, I do not want a foreign company feeling entitled to ignore them and impose their American views. They do it far too often as it is already.

If you want Apple to provide better privacy, change your laws and make sure they are followed.

In the meantime, until Apple is found to have violated local data protection laws, the whole “but China” argument is a red herring.

All companies are sociopaths that are only after the dollar. If Apple does something "good", it is basically benefitting them in some way, if it stops doing so they will change. Name me one company which sacrificed profitability for ethics.

China has very strong privacy laws, though. In fact, Grindr recently stopped operating there because their business model was made very difficult by the new PIPL law.

Seems like a sick joke as people have zero privacy from the government in China.

source?

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/04/sports/olympics/pelosi-pr...

One could be reductive and say that the Chinese Government has given themselves a monopoly on privacy invasion. Is that strictly worse than privacy invasion as a capitalist business model? I think the answer to that is highly subjective and highly culturally dependent.

Obviously the the ideal would be to have neither.

Private companies are usually not allowed to make you disappear

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