
My Favorite Facebook Conspiracy Might Be True - TechFinder
https://medium.com/futuresin/my-favorite-facebook-conspiracy-might-be-true-bf153c217773
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zepto
“For me to imagine that Facebook, Google, _Apple_ or Microsoft really cares
about privacy is beyond belief, because these are data companies. Their
business model is all about harvesting data and training it with AI.”

The author loses a lot of credibility by making this clearly false statement
about Apple.

It’s demonstrably false that Apple’s business model is about harvesting data.
The fact that they don’t get this right when there is overwhelming public
evidence that it is false means that they lose all credibility for asserting a
conspiracy theory.

Of course I don’t trust Facebook and they could be lying, but this author has
no credibility on any topic if they don’t check the most basic public facts.

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karmakaze
It's important to be aware of motivations. Apple has demonstrated how it
doesn't directly care about its users (batteries, antenna, throttling,
keyboard, display wiring, and general right to repair). Privacy is only a
business factor because it's working at the moment. As soon as it isn't I
wouldn't expect anything.. Also anything not in the public record doesn't need
to favor privacy either so I don't assume it does.

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zepto
None of those things you listed demonstrate anything negative about Apple’s
motivations.

Not that they aren’t problematic or signs of problems, but literally zero of
them prove that Apple doesn’t directly care about its users, especially when
compared against every one of its competitors.

Take throttling, for example. Throttling is proven to be done to prevent the
iPhone from behaving unreliably as the battery degrades. This _extends the
useful life_ of the phone, and reduces the need to upgrade.

The story that throttling is done to make people want to upgrade is flatly in
contradiction to the facts. No facts support any negative inference about
Apple’s motivation, and the same is true in all of these cases.

Of course if you have a preconceived notion of their motivations, you can
ignore the facts and just assert that your narrative is supported.

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microwavecamera
FB is definitely monitoring Messenger. I have a fake FB account I use just to
chat with my daughter on Messenger. I don't use the account for anything else.
I was chatting (text only, no audio/video) on Messenger via the web client on
facebook.com and on this occasion, we had a conversation on a very particular
subject. The next day day inundated with group recommendations specific to
this very particular conversation topic.

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etdev
I'm curious what the practical repercussions would actually be if it came out
that Facebook was just flat-out lying about this the whole time.

