But the threat of Apple turning on its customers isn’t limited to China. While the company has been unwilling to spy on its users on behalf of the US government, it’s proven more than willing to compromise its worldwide users’ privacy to pad its own profits. Remember when Apple let its users opt out of Facebook surveillance with one click? At the very same time, Apple was spinning up its own commercial surveillance program, spying on Ios customers, gathering the very same data as Facebook, and for the very same purpose: to target ads. When it came to its own surveillance, Apple completely ignored its customers’ explicit refusal to consent to spying, spied on them anyway, and lied about it:
The page you’re linking to is a good read. I had heard about a handful of the problems through the years, but having them presented and precisely explained like this was great, I think.
Can you provide any examples of ads someone (maybe you?) received directly due to Apple’s policies and behavior? Totally serious question.
If you use an iPhone and have app tracking transparency enabled then any targeted ads you’re seeing are almost certainly coming from data that Apple has collected from you.
A few years back Apple made a big change to iOS that prevents user data from being sold to data brokers and ran a big ad campaign about how they are the good “privacy option”. But the reason they made the change was not to protect user privacy, but because Apple wanted the money that Facebook was getting from iPhone users. The same data is still being collected and sold, just by Apple now instead of Facebook. That was the crux of Facebook’s big lawsuit against Apple accusing them of anti-competitive practices.
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Don’t believe their ads, they are actually one of the worst!
The page you’re linking to is a good read. I had heard about a handful of the problems through the years, but having them presented and precisely explained like this was great, I think.
Cory Doctorow is uniquely able to cut straight to the heart of the matter. He is the same person who coined the term “enshittification” last year.
Can you provide any examples of ads someone (maybe you?) received directly due to Apple’s policies and behavior? Totally serious question.
If you use an iPhone and have app tracking transparency enabled then any targeted ads you’re seeing are almost certainly coming from data that Apple has collected from you.
A few years back Apple made a big change to iOS that prevents user data from being sold to data brokers and ran a big ad campaign about how they are the good “privacy option”. But the reason they made the change was not to protect user privacy, but because Apple wanted the money that Facebook was getting from iPhone users. The same data is still being collected and sold, just by Apple now instead of Facebook. That was the crux of Facebook’s big lawsuit against Apple accusing them of anti-competitive practices.
You mean the ‘Personalized Ads’ option? Why would anyone enable that?
No. Clicking “ask app not to track” prevents apps from collecting your data. It does not prevent Apple from collecting that same data, which they do.
I was referring to this