> “That’s Apple’s marketing working and convincing you to scapegoat us so they can decide how the internet should work — even beyond their devices,” he wrote. “I’m an optimist who works in technology because I think tech can be a lever for democratizing access and giving opportunity. Including for businesses. And if you think this is going to stop with personalized ads . . . well, then I disagree.”
Allowing users to choose whether they want to be tracked passes the decision of "how the internet should work" from companies that sell ads to the users. It sounds like Levy just wants to remain in control of that decision.
Then he has the audacity to mention "democracy" despite wanting to remove power from the majority of the affected people.
While I'm under no illusion that Apple is somehow the lone bastion of mega-corporate ethics, Facebook's interests don't align with mine in any way. Apple's interests do to some non-zero degree, so in this particular instance I don't have an issue with Apple pursuing their interests at the expense of Facebook's.
How does the decision Apple has made "work beyond their devices"? If I'm not on an Apple Device, the iOS changes do not affect how FB can continue to track me.
Is anyone else tired of this worn-out canard? It seems like every message in my LinkedIn inbox is from some company "democratizing" this or that nowadays. Any tech company aspiring to a large customer base now makes a generic claim to liberating the masses as well.
"Sure, it's tracking today, but next they'll want to make it illegal to browse without an iCloud account!"
Shrill.
I'd love to read about any good examples of a large company acting in an ethical way that was objectively harmful to its bottom line (factoring in the financial benefit of PR stunts).
The real issue is Darwinian survival of the most profitable though - if doing the ethical thing isn't sufficiently rewarded with goodwill etc., then the least ethical corporations will expand the fastest, and outcompete the more ethical corporations. In the end, it is up to government, consumers, and workers to ensure that acting in an ethical way is not net harmful to a company's bottom line.
Two small examples that come to mind:
(1) Investing in clean energy is both ethical and cheaper in the long term. This one is straightforward. (2) Apple not turning ads on in iMessage. I assume they could, they just don't. If I was them I wouldn't because then it would start degrading consumer trust in the security of their products, losing that as a differentiator in the long term despite minting money in the short term.
Happy to be wrong though. Some data that I think could weaken my argument is if there are counter-examples of large companies that have been around for a long time that have sustained ethical compromises that haven't see hits to their bottom line because of it.
So, to rephrase the question, can an arbitrary collection of human beings behave ethically? The answer largely depends on your worldview, of course, but all unethical actions are taken by humans. Sure, it is a useful mental model to think of a corporation as a gestalt whole for some things, but that's all it is - a mental model.
That makes it a little difficult to argue with you, doesn't it?
Many companies recycle (use recycled goods) where non-recycling (non-recycled goods) would be cheaper.
But you can just spin that as PR that offsets the added cost.
I guess at the end of the day do I care if it is PR?
All 501(c)(3)s are corporations. They largely exist to achieve ethical, charitable goals.
Why do they need to do this at all? Surely as a vendor of advertising they can use their own to greater and cheaper effect?
Or is their advertising not quite what they claim?
The first iPhone had 128MB RAM and a 400Mhz CPU. It was five years later before an iPhone had those specs.
The first iPad in 2010 only had 256MB RAM. It couldn’t even run Safari without crashing a year later when iOS 5 came out because of having too little memory.
How is that sad? People who enjoy a social networking site mostly about photos need cameras. Making a purchase based on real world examples of something that you find interesting/enjoy is not a negative thing. The capabilities of the new phone cameras are often very noticeable and very different, especially recently with low light, wide angle, good HDR, and portrait modes, which could only be found in dedicated cameras, which these people are not interested in. That's the progression and normalization of "high tech". That's fine.
It will not stop marketers from investing in FB ads. But, it does put the onus on FB to develop privacy centric advertising capabilities. That is a good thing.
Only recently, due to an apple service outage, most of this community were reminded that apple logs everything done on their manufactured devices including trivial acts such as opening an app (note I avoided saying "their devices" because it is our device that we purchase).
They track what apps you open and use, siri is always listening, they control what apps can be installed via appstores, the entire ecosystem is a lock-in, forget about hardware upgrades or right to repair.
Facebook isn't the lesser evil. It is the less potent evil.
However you feel about Apple or Facebook or anything else, what Apple is doing here is saying "you must tell users what you're tracking, and ask them if they're ok with that." That's it. Whatever motivation, good or evil or inbetween, you'd like to ascribe to their actions is besides the point; let's assume that they're doing this out of pure greed or a nefarious long-term goal -- it's still a win for users and their control of their own data. Users can still choose to share everything with Facebook if they so desire -- they'll just be presented with a choice.
You avoided saying "their devices" because you believe that when you buy a device you should own it, so I assume you similarly believe that your personal data should be yours to own and control. Facebook is fighting really hard against being forced to even tell customers what information they're gathering, much less be forced to let them choose to not share it. The position that Apple shouldn't be allowed to limit Facebook's freedom to take away your freedom to choose doesn't seem to align.
We don't have to agree with everything Apple is doing in order to agree with this one particular thing that they're doing.
Apple has made some attempts to keep your data on-device compared to other providers. They are the lesser evil of the surveillance state.
Does adding this new feature make Apple a good and virtuous company? I'll leave that for the Tech Vatican when they decide whether Apple gets to go to Tech Heaven.
Personally, I don't really care about that, I just want the feature and find Facebook's argument against it to be very weak.
Apple does indeed care a lot about user privacy. The system that was logging that data was an effort to prevent malware on end user systems. They are taking steps to encrypt the data, and I would be unsurprised if they use bloom filters to keep the list of apps clientside only.
The privacy issue with Apple isn't that Apple is some shade of "evil", it's that Apple takes the view that your data is safe with Apple because they won't misuse it, and that they know how to keep it safe.
In the age of warrantless FISA orders (known to some as PRISM, which we know thanks to Ed Snowden) mentioned and counted explicitly in Apple's own "transparency report", we now know that that isn't true. Apple knows it, too.
If the government can take any of your store user data at any time without a warrant, at what point after you have become painfully and totally aware of this fact do you become complicit in the fact that you are part of the state surveillance apparatus? At what point do you have a moral obligation to stop collecting data from your customers, knowing that if you save it, it will be available to the state, without a warrant, for all time?
This is the issue with Apple, not some lack of focus on customer privacy. Apple cares a lot about customer privacy, but they seem to have punted on the fact that Apple having customer data also means that the state surveillance organizations have access to all of that same data, as well.
Apple's surveillance-enabling lack of end to end cryptography (or the backdoors they've placed in the end-to-end encrypted parts like iMessage) is the real issue here. I don't think Apple wants to surveil your non-e2e iCloud Photos or nudes in iMessage attachments in your non-e2e iCloud device backup to sell ads or something - but they know or should know that the state does want to surveil this information, and they definitely know that the US government victimized 30,000 Apple users in that fashion last year, without a warrant.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-apple-fbi-icloud-exclusiv...
Why not?
Here's Jobs 10 years ago talking about this.
It seems like you’re arguing that Facebook tracking you across multiple websites and selling that data is not so bad because Apple has a closed App Store. How is that pertinent?
If FB was smart, they would attack Apple as supporting the death of middle-class America by outsourcing their labor to overseas sweat shops and being in bed with the CCP.
I think they have chosen to protect user privacy even though it cost them an easy opportunity that is pretty significant, even at Apple revenue levels. Maybe because they feel that will make more people buy their products, fine with me.
Of course, how many of their customers use Apple hardware?
[1] https://www.npr.org/2020/10/22/926290942/google-paid-apple-b...
The first thing I recommend anyone with an iDevice is to switch to ddg.
i mean lets be honest, facebook didn't get to be its size by being nice and altruistic(nor did any of the other FAANG'ish companies).
The problem is that internally the Comms people believe the shit they post on workplace, which is that facebook is all about supporting small businesses. The issue is that they are so ineffectual that most people only know this when they sit through the 2 day bootcamp induction.
If they want to pull this kind of stunt off then they needed to have spent the last six months bombarding print and TV with their success stories. But they haven't, they've just reached out and referenced numbers that only true believers know.
Basically Facebook's PR appears to be amateurish and unable to understand how to interpret public sentiment. for a company supposedly so good at data, they are sure as shit terrible about commissioning and understanding opinion polls.
