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Comment by autoexec | Hacker News Reader

Replaced spotify links should be the least of your worries.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/jul/26/apple-con...

Digital assistants do not exist to serve you or your interests. You should assume that your every interaction with one will be exploited in some way for someone else's benefit, or leaked and/or sold to some third party without your knowledge, or both.

I'm not saying apple isn't wrong for what they're doing to sneakily drive more traffic to their own services for profit, but this is exactly the sort of thing you should expect.

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>> Digital assistants do not exist to serve you or your interests. You should assume that your every interaction with one will be exploited in some way for someone else's benefit, or leaked and/or sold to some third party without your knowledge, or both.

Correct. Siri is Apple's tool, not yours despite appearences:

https://youtu.be/Ag1AKIl_2GM?t=57

If you won’t say it, I will: Apple is wrong for what they’re doing.

These are tools that should be serving their users, not their creators.

What is the basis of right/wrong in this value judgment and why is this basis correct and the others not?

It is wrong that they do not do, what the user who payed for it, asked it to do.

A task it can do, but choose to do a different task, that is better in the intereet of the corporation.

It is a quite harmles example, but it is zelling of the general state of things and where we are heading.

If I buy a device I assume I own it. Thats how it should be. Not that I rent it and the rules to rent change all the time.

Is it not reasonable to expect that the keyword "share" functions the same as the share button? I don't know the standards you have for the things you buy, but I find unacceptable that a thing I paid (handsomely) for twists my orders to share adverting to my contacts under my name, and part of the reason things are so bad is because at every valid criticism there are people defending these stuff as normal

One could ask this same question of any terrible, unethical thing.

The reasonable expectation is that a digital assistant will work for its user and not the corporation that sold it. The corporation is trading on this expectation to exploit its users.

This is not a reasonable expectation for a digital assistant. At all. It is reasonable for a hacker to expect it. But the majority of the public doesn’t care that Apple tries to push Apple Music. If this was sold as a separate service however, maybe people would have other expectations.

Except Apple clearly owns its users, not the other way around. They get money from you for everything you do with their devices (music, vids, books, ads, even purchases of anything now), AND get money from the sellers to let them just talk to you.

"If you can't freely do anything on the device you own, you're the one owned."

Why would you ever think Apple's tools should be doing anything other than serving the interests of their owners? The whole system has worked so well for us by driving massive innovation through the credible promise of being able to use what you created for your own benefit. The thing that stops companies from abusing their users like this is not any should statement attached to their product, it's the fear of losing all their customers to a competitor, which is not a credible threat to a company as large, entrenched and good at using the walled garden strategy as apple. The correct thought here is not a should statement that will never happen (and shouldn't happen because if we make it true it will fundamentally break the innovation machine). The correct thought here is "Apple is way too big and has way too much market power. We need to use the existing antitrust system and break this company up." This correct thought is not unique to apple either, it's equally applicable to many tech companies, apple just happens to be in the small cadre of the worst of the worst.

wow, there are at least five people on here with more than 500 points that don't live in the real world and instead choose to believe this is a utopia where people don't work in their own interest and will instead sacrifice for everyone else to benefit over themselves. Please open your eyes and realize this is not the case and that pretty much any time it has been held up as the case it has turned out to be a cover for self interested (most recent example on here is the Patagonia founder hiding the true purpose of avoiding billions in taxes with the unicorn farts of a charitable donation to a charity controlled by his family) and sometimes illegal (most recent example on here is the SBF FTX debacle. Effective altruism apparently really means fraudulent client fund comingling and theft) behavior.

The first step to a better world is acknowledging the prime driver of self interest in human action and designing systems that support that while protecting from too much power. This historically meant strong property rights, strong speech rights and strong antitrust regulation. Wishing that someone would exercise their property and speech rights differently isn't an effective system and regulating them into right think and right action robs us of innovation because there's no reason for anyone to put in the extra effort to make something better beyond trivial improvements since they won't get to keep that benefit while they pay the cost of development, it is far easier to just stay mediocre and not stick your head out.

I noticed this when I switched to an old iPhone (11) after my phone finally broke down after using android for the last 10 years. I'm liking it so far but it really opened my eyes how much the apple ecosystem is embedded in the OS, and through that likewise with the google apps on android. On iOS i noticed how the OS is very opinionated on how you use it, and I guess that's fine for most users, it's just kind of scary to think about how news and other information is curated by the algorithms before we get to see it. And also how locked into the ecosystem you become if you always follow the OS suggestions and just start using Apple Calendar/Keychain/Maps etc. It's understandable the company wants to make a profit and that the primary objective isn't to make hard- or software that is best for the user, but it still makes me feel a bit "uneasy".

On that Guardian link: you can switch off allowing Apple to use your Siri input for training:

Settings -> Privacy & Security -> Analytics & Improvements -> Improve Siri and Dictation switch.

It has the explanatory text ‘Help improve Siri and Dictation by allowing Apple to store and review audio of your Siri and Dictation interactions from this device.’ next to it.

I’m pretty sure the initial state of this is set by your response to a specific question about it during phone setup.

Only four levels of nesting menus? How generous!

As the GP remembered, the option to share training audio with Apple is presented clearly during the OOBE setup for Siri.

> https://gizmodo.com/apple-iphone-privacy-analytics-class-act...

Apple is currently being sued because they only apply their "do not use analytics" setting to other companies analytics. Apple analytics still track you.

Given that, I would not trust any privacy setting from this company.

I wish I could read the complaint (5:22-cv-07069 - doesn’t seem to be available online?) - but I think it’s more nuanced than that.

The complaint alleges, I think, that if you switch off ‘device analytics’ on your phone (the ‘Share iPhone Analytics’ setting?), the App Store app will still send some data about your device to Apple.

Yes but only from Apple apps, and not just "some" data but apparently "all the data" as in everything you do, every click, every scroll, every button you press, it's all recorded and sent to Apple.

At least according to these researchers and this lawsuit.

That’s why I am slowly training myself to leave the cellphone in the shelf at the house’s exit. Ironically loosing the “mobile” feature of the mobile phone. I see other people sticking paper pieces on both cameras already. I also see people having Alexa in every room:-/ Interesting new age and I feel being Luddite in it.

I was thinking about the idea of being considered a luddite for opting out of 'smart things' yesterday. I don't think that deciding not to use intrusive surveillance in my home should qualify. I still extensively use technology. I don't consider the mining of my data as a trade for voice controlled searching to be technological progress. Give me the same solution-- one I can trust-- one that I can fully control and I will use it. Let me understand and alter the technology as I see fit. To me, that's the opposite of a luddite. I am not going to let the marketing departments of these advertising agencies manipulate me into thinking otherwise.

Luddite is not the best term. The way I have been putting it: We are all Amish now, forced to evaluate each new technology we use lest it use us.

Android users here so I genuinely don't know: can't the voice trigger for Siri be entirely disabled ? I know I never allow my phone to listen for trigger (or even the entirely worse "keep listening when locked for the trigger", aka always record what I say even if I'm not using my phone).

Now whether it does respect my choice or still record but disable triggering is another matter, but that's sadly the world we got into with our purchasing choices of phones, and why I support the EU going after such privacy issues.

Yes it can be disabled completely.

You’re being hyperbolic. It’s not ‘aka always record what I say even if I'm not using my phone’. It’s processing the audio at all times to detect the trigger words.

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