Apple vs. Meta: The Illusion of Privacy

Not a huge fan of Apple, but they aren't Facebook.

I received a letter from Target that by default they’ll sell my information to unaffiliated third parties and I have to call or write a letter to opt-out. I’m sure I agreed to that at some point (and anyone signing up for a loyalty program that doesn’t cost anything should realize that’s what they are agreeing to, even if they are not explicitly told that), but perhaps they should be required to explicitly list the actual costs to the customer along side the benefits.

Last week I was picking up a prescription at CVS. In between confirming name and address and signing for payment or receipt of Rx they slipped a marketing agreement that I stupidly agreed to before realizing that it wasn’t an agreement related to the prescription purchase. So in someone’s compromised medical state (assuming), when you just want to get medicine to get back to normal they hide an agreement to sell information.

None of this improves my life. I just want to transact money for items and end the relationship until it happens again. I don’t need every advertiser knowing every one of or even habitual purchase I make.

If you work in ad-tech or are responsible for these front-end schemes to collect more information:

1: screw you

2: it’s super creepy and even if you’re not creepy, the stuff you’re working on and the people you are working for are

3: seriously, it’s really disgusting, immoral, and deceptive to find all manor of ways to trick people into agreeing to sell personal information that they assume (rightly) is private (even when done in public)

4: start leaking information on schemes, tricks, & loopholes so something can be done to destroy invasive ad tech

Have you gone through Apple's onboarding flow recently? The process of creating an Apple ID and setting up an iPhone is pretty similar, and has similar click-wrap terms to allow endless data use, including [1], [2], [3], [4], and [5].

Apple has done a very good job of marketing privacy. But they engage in pretty much all of the same practices they call others out for.

Also, Threads didn't launch in Europe because of DMA data separation requirements between products. It has nothing to do with the invasiveness of the data collected per se as is implied here [6].

[1] https://www.apple.com/legal/privacy/pdfs/apple-privacy-polic... [2] https://www.apple.com/legal/privacy/data/en/apple-id/ [3] https://www.apple.com/legal/sla/docs/iOS16_iPadOS16.pdf [4] https://www.apple.com/legal/internet-services/itunes/ [5] https://www.apple.com/legal/internet-services/icloud/

[6] https://www.theverge.com/23789754/threads-meta-twitter-eu-dm...

"There it is again. That funny feeling."

All credibility was then swept away by "Sign up with Google" to the mailing list on the last page. Hilarious.

Stay offline for your safety.

This is obviously unrealistic for many in the modern era. So now the question is - regardless of how much or what is collected, which companies are least likely to sell you out, by any means? By pretty much any criteria Apple is near the top of that list. Though, they're not the very, very top. Companies like Mullvad offer services in a way such that nothing is collected at all, and since you can pay cash in theory no way to come back to you.

Personally, for me - it's more important to think about whether or not you trust the organization you're dealing with, than whether or not they're collecting stuff or not. Of the big tech companies I'd say I trust Apple the most from their track record, but I am not under any illusion that I have absolute privacy while using Apple products, and neither should you.

Ballot measure to replace the “right to be forgotten” with the “permission to be remembered”, that need to be renewed every, 1-3 years. If companies fails to obtain permission in 3 years, then it must remove your data. Such permission is non transferable, meaning that if you started an account with Good Company, Inc. and it was acquired by Evil Corp, Inc. The latter need to get a new permission under the new name. Oh, and data brokers can’t have your info, unless they ask you for permission.

Right to “opt-out of sale” needs to be replaced with “option to opt-in”. Basically meaning you opt out by default and companies need your explicit permission to sell you data.

The ability to record and post a video is effectively baseline functionality and requires those permissions.

Certainly Meta is doing shady things here but not all of the permissions are necessarily sketchy. (I would agree that much like position data more specificity would be good for permissions)

Also, "they just use fingerprinting" is a myth. Fingerprinting is never ending cat and mouse game between Apple and data collecting companies. In short, fingerprinting is not working reliably if you not actively improving it non-stop while risking App Store ban.

Sign up to get this free Ethical design cheat sheet: [ Google Sign in] [Email Sign in]

The rumour is that Threads couldn't launch in the EU due to upcoming Digital Markets App. Which is also a good thing: https://ia.net/topics/unraveling-the-digital-markets-act

I would argue that there is something wrong with a bit of data collection. Just take credit score for example, there's never an ethical reason for a social network to ever ask for or know my credit score.

edit: the author implies that collecting this kind of stuff is OK as long as companies are transparent about what they're doing and why. I don't think there's any level of transparency that makes collecting this user data OK.

Still apple is not your friend and is actively working against your interests in all kinds of ways.

i worked at a large health co. that had a partnership with apple to publish an app (which apple wrote the code for, designed, etc.) under health co.'s name. the purpose of the partnership was to promote use of HealthKit on apple devices and increase sales/adoption.

much later, i took over technical ownership of the partnership and while i was getting up to speed, the value of the partnership didn't make much sense to me from apple's perspective -- it seemed to be incredibly beneficial to health co. and ostensibly not very much so for apple, health co. got a free, polished health app for its customers and apple got… not much of anything? a small boost in sales at most. yet, it was clear it was a priority for apple based on how they managed the partnership (very responsive, helpful, etc.).

suddenly, a few months after i got up to speed, apple informed health co. that they were terminating the relationship on a near future date (a couple months at most). this was surprising given the seeming importance of the partnership to apple in the past, and we weren't able to get convincing reasons as to why apple's attitude had changed.

but then, once it came time for apple to transfer ownership of the app to use, things got a bit odd.

* at first, they told us they'd be fine with handing over non-sensitive code and assets (e.g. removing apple internal libraries, etc.).

* then, they said instead of handing over code they'd do a technical overview of the architecture and the code but couldn't give us the physical code.

* then finally, they reversed course entirely and informed us it was impossible to de-instrument their sensitive "telemetry" from the code and couldn't share any information about the code with us at all (mind you, this was an app that was published by US that we were legally responsible for).

this led me to suppose that their code was doing something they didn't want us to see. given the purpose of the app, the most valuable, nefarious thing you could do was vacuum up massive amounts of user health data about all of health co.'s users -- not only that, but being able to do it at one step removed, not legally AS apple (not their app, after all).

this speculation was reinforced when i realized the date of termination of our partnership was one day prior to the change to the App Store's privacy disclosure guidelines -- they made one final update to the App Store (probably removing the telemetry, etc.) and didn't have to make a disclosure about data usage. any subsequent updates would have had to have made this disclosure.

I thought that they made a good point about how the Threads screen that links to the privacy policies doesn’t highlight the links very well. But it seems to me that the average social media user probably doesn’t care and would gloss over it anyway.

I liked their suggestion that the App Store use a “privacy rating” feature.

e.g. Threads may collect your financial data! But only if you give it to them, usually to purchase ads or verifications, etc.. This scary warning is over-scary.

e.g. Mastodon collects less data about you, but there's no warning for "The backend is unencrypted and likely run by a handful of humans (who are probably nice but answer to nobody)."

There is no solution other than "regulate the personal data market out of existence" - meaning going one step further than GDPR and just forbid any use of my personal data except in the context of fulfilling an actual purchase or specific request by me and for communicating with me to the extent I allow it. All other uses are banned.

No.

Apple is first and foremost a lifestyle company, then a b2b platform company, then a hardware company.

The lifestyle company ensures customer acquisition and the 'unreasonable' pricing . The platform company is the revenue, the moat and the golden handcuffs for every 3rd party company who works with Apple. The Hardware company ensures that Apple stays ahead, so no one can be the next Apple.

Apple could be an ads company too.

But ads companies bleed trust. That weakens the value of both Apple the lifestyle company and Apple the hardware company. Apple already skims 30% of your app revenue. They don't need to make money from ads, when they can make money from those who make money from ads. Apple being an ads company would spook the partners of Apple the platform company.

I trust Apple not because they're good. But because selling your data hurts their bottomline. Trust capitalistic incentives and teack records, everything else is virtue signalling.

I guess this guy thought knocking Apple for Meta's unscrupulous methods would just guarantee some nerd-kudos, but didn't feel any need to follow his own advice in practice.