I was going to say, nobody believes in any privacy Meta alleges. Even when they do E2EE they still collect anything else about you that they can.
Google is currently trying to sell additional ways to spy on users built into the newest version of Chrome as a "privacy sandbox".
> all of Google's documentation about this feature feels like it was written on opposite day, with Google calling the browser-based advertising platform "a significant step on the path towards a fundamentally more private web."
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/09/googles-widely-oppos...
Exactly what Twitter, Microsoft and Amazon do too.
> as Google said in a blog post on its new service for marketers, it has partnered with “third parties” that give them access to 70 percent of all credit and debit card purchases.
https://www.technologyreview.com/2017/05/25/242717/google-no...
This is a for-profit company. It will always do what is more profitable, even if they don't do it right away.
There is an interesting lesson you can learn from history: Google Maps vs Apple Maps.
Google set up their system to track each individual's location history forever, even if the user turned off the setting that Google said would stop this behavior. This data can be handy when you're trying to keep map data updated.
However, you don't have to track each user's location constantly to get the benefit.
> “We specifically don’t collect data, even from point A to point B,” notes Cue. “We collect data — when we do it — in an anonymous fashion, in subsections of the whole, so we couldn’t even say that there is a person that went from point A to point B.
The segments that he is referring to are sliced out of any given person’s navigation session. Neither the beginning or the end of any trip is ever transmitted to Apple. Rotating identifiers, not personal information, are assigned to any data or requests sent to Apple and it augments the “ground truth” data provided by its own mapping vehicles with this “probe data” sent back from iPhones.
Because only random segments of any person’s drive is ever sent and that data is completely anonymized, there is never a way to tell if any trip was ever a single individual.
https://techcrunch.com/2018/06/29/apple-is-rebuilding-maps-f...
I'm sure we could find great examples of other companies that made similar privacy aware decisions, only to then turn around and throw all that out of the window for increased profits.
Call me skeptical, but these entities have one purpose: profits. Why would I trust they won't ever misuse my data?
A bit more history.
A shareholder once berated Tim Cook for doimg things for reasons other than profit.
Tim Cook's response:
> When we work on making our devices accessible by the blind, I don’t consider the bloody ROI [return on investment]. When I think about doing the right thing, I don’t think about an ROI.”
If you want me to do things only for ROI reasons, you should get out of this stock.
However the fundamental difference is that their model is being an hardware company.
Remember what their advertising clients disliked about Apple's ad platform compared to the likes of Facebook and Google?
> A new report on Advertising Age has revealed what advertisers think of Apple's arrogance when it comes to its mobile advertising platform and its tight grip on user data.
"One person familiar with the situation exec said Apple's refusal to share data makes it the best-looking girl at the party, forced to wear a bag over her head," the AdAge report read.
https://www.techtimes.com/articles/3568/20140222/apple-cares...
All of these companies deserve their due scrutiny. Specifically around the illusion of privacy though, nobody has further to fall than Apple.
Also, CP scanning was deliberately proposed as a way to actually enable e2e icloud - but they just didn’t want to be liable, as storing CP encrypted on their servers may also be problematic. So, I don’t see them malicious against privacy at all, in fact that is a core selling point of theirs, it would hurt them greatly to cheapen it out.
Apple provides a backdoor into Chinese citizens' iCloud to the Chinese government, while praising itself as the bastion of privacy.
Doing so because of money is all the more hypocritical.
Sure, on a local moral compass it is no good look, but if Chinese people are forced by their governments into that -- is really a private company from another country supposed to fight with them over it? In any other case I think you would agree that private companies should STFU about local laws, right? That fight is on the Chinese people.
This is also exactly how the US operates WRT state surveillance, so it confuses me that you don’t see the relevance.