
Tim Cook says Apple’s customers are not its product, unlike Facebook - rbanffy
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2018/03/tim-cook-says-apples-customers-are-not-its-products-unlike-facebook/
======
throwaway84742
To Tim’s credit, Apple did remove FB and Twitter integration from iOS 11.

I wrote a snarky post first suggesting they do that, but then discovered they
already have. I just didn’t notice because I weaned myself off social cancer
years ago.

------
IBM
Apple needs to vocally lobby for privacy legislation or it'll be way too easy
for the internet industry to squash it. Facebook and Google have been using
trade groups to fight privacy legislation for years where it can be "out of
sight, out of mind" [1][2]. Having the most valuable company in the tech
industry go against them in a public way would expose the rest of them in a
way they've been able to avoid until now.

[1] [https://calmatters.org/articles/facebook-even-as-it-
apologiz...](https://calmatters.org/articles/facebook-even-as-it-apologizes-
for-scandal-funds-campaign-to-block-a-california-data-privacy-measure/)

[2] [http://fortune.com/2016/06/30/facebook-google-facial-
recogni...](http://fortune.com/2016/06/30/facebook-google-facial-recognition-
lawsuits/)

~~~
legitster
Counterpoint: Apple doesn't want to lobby for privacy, because it's one of
their selling features.

~~~
IBM
I would almost guarantee you that the general public (as well as tech people,
judging by the comments I've seen here) has no idea how Apple is different
from everyone else when it comes to privacy/security, despite their attempts
to talk about it wherever possible. It's simply too abstract and only reveals
itself in acute ways when these breaches happen.

~~~
politelemon
I disagree and want to note a worrying the - It's only different on HN where
Apple seems to get a free pass and its security foibles tend to be forgotten
or simply ignored. We may like to present ourselves as impartial but we're an
echo chamber like many other online communities.

------
noetic_techy
There was some talk way back during the FBI iPhone unlock crisis about Apple
positioning itself to be strong on privacy so as to leverage their massive
cash reserves to become a bank:

[http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-
static/2016/03/follow-t...](http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-
static/2016/03/follow-the-money-apple-vs-the-.html)

Although this idea has also been shot down:

[https://www.vox.com/2016/3/30/11326016/apple-
bank](https://www.vox.com/2016/3/30/11326016/apple-bank)

I think its still a good bet that Apple is going to leverage itself as the go
to company for privacy. You pay a premium, but you get a curated ecosystem and
no data harvesting.

I think they should take this opportunity to launch a privacy-centric social
network and attract more people cast adrift to the walled garden.

------
aylmao
I read somewhere that the only way of making truly global software is to sell
ads, because it effectively means big companies are subsidizing your
distribution. A lot of people in the world don't have money to spend on
subscriptions.

Not defending Facebook though. Selling ads shouldn't imply lousy privacy.

------
parallel_item
I heard an iOS developer make a comment once saying that deciding to develop
for iOS means less folks may have access (under the assumption that Android is
more common) but you are guaranteeing that those with access to your
application have more money to spend because of Apple's price point. If
Facebook's targeting and ad exchanges are what productize the company's
customers then I would say Apple does the same to a lesser degree by charging
a premium for its exclusive ecosystem. I consider Apple many degrees safer
because they heavily screen what can be added to the app store and the
inherent nature of targeting going on is limited to "paid for an Apple device"
instead of the greatly higher dimensional data accessed leveraged by Facebook.

~~~
joelrunyon
Having bootstrapped multiple apps for both iOS and Android, no matter how much
Android users scream for equal access - iOS makes 2-4x the android equivalent.
Not sure if it's the users, the app store or the expectations - but we always
build for iOS first.

------
danlevine
Implied: “... and google”

~~~
zombieprocesses
... arstechnica, HN, Reddit, newspapers, tv, etc.

------
hirokiky
"customer" of Facebook is user of Facebook Business (advertisers) only, not
people who use in daily life. The leeking of Facebook is like just car was
stolen at car shop. Google, Twitter, and HN too, just don't use them.

------
amelius
Yeah, but Apple pushes new phones onto the market every year, leading to
unnecessary environmental impact.

Every industry has its vices.

~~~
AndrewStephens
Pssss. Over here. Down in the reply section. You seem to be under a
misapprehension so I'm going to let you into a secret; this is just between
you and me. I'm going to write in lower case so nobody else sees this, lean in
close and don't go spreading this around...

you don't have to buy a phone every year. apple directly supports its phones
for 4 or 5 years and even then they don't self destruct. you can even go out
in public with an old phone - it is not illegal.

shhhh, someones coming.

HOW ABOUT THAT LOCAL SPORTS TEAM, HUH? <whistle>

~~~
aylmao
This is the quality content I come to HN for hahah.

Psss. keeping it on the down low, I do think apple should've been louder and
more clear about the whole battery thing. Cynics could interpret that as
forcing upgrades by making people's phones slow. The repairability and
upgradability has also been not great lately, but anyway, my Apple products
have still lasted me a solid 3-5 years (:

------
tcfunk
I'm sure this has been repeated ad nauseam here, but a good rule of thumb:

    
    
      Did you pay for the product?
        No:  You are probably the product.
        Yes: You might not also be the product.

~~~
rhombocombus
It bears repeating.

------
zombieprocesses
The same could be said of arstechnica, HN, news and most of media. They are
selling "customers" to their advertisers. Also, not sure where Tim Cook has
any room to talk. By most measures, Apple is just as bad or worse than
facebook. They are in bed with china exploiting slave labor, using
advertisement to peddle overpriced junk to the uneducated masses and of course
using tax loopholes to avoid paying taxing.

Microsoft used to say something similar as well. But when they realized that
they could make much more money off customer data, they went converted to an
ad-centered model with their OS.

The only reason Apple is acting high and mighty is because they are able to
rob their customers by charging ridiculously high priced products.

~~~
mercer
For some reason I'd not considered HN compromised, but considering the nature
of Ycombinator and their investments, it's probably safe to assume that all my
activity here is 'out in the open'.

All my comments and writing style, all my alts, and all my opinions are
compromised, and it's more a matter of 'when' than 'if' as to the leaking of
this data to entities that I emphatically do not want to know all this
information.

And linking this information to my person is probably easier than it already
seems in my occasional thought experiments.

~~~
zombieprocesses
> For some reason I'd not considered HN compromised, but considering the
> nature of Ycombinator and their investments, it's probably safe to assume
> that all my activity here is 'out in the open'.

If you aren't paying for it, you are the product. It's the model that google
popularized in the early 2000s. I'm really puzzled ( though I have my theories
) on why FB is being targeted for something everyone does.

> And linking this information to my person is probably easier than it already
> seems in my occasional thought experiments.

Given enough data points it shouldn't be that hard. Browser fingerprinting, IP
address ( even if you have dynamic IP ) and enough raw data, it should be a
cakewalk. Throw in browsing pattern analysis, writing analysis, click
analysis, etc and they could tie much of everything together.

------
cryptoz
> "I think the best regulation is no regulation, is self-regulation," he said,
> according to Recode. "However, I think we’re beyond that here."

What does this mean? This is completely self-contradictory. Clearly Facebook
has demonstrated that regulation is required. How could Tim Cook possibly
_still_ say that the best regulation is no regulation? Clearly Tim should want
a healthier tech ecosystem than what we have now and clearly be agrees
regulation is needed. Very confusing quote.

~~~
totalZero
"However, I think we’re beyond [self-regulation] here."

\- Tim Cook

You are arguing with half of the quotation, and ignoring this other half. He
doesn't seem to be advocating self-regulation as a practical policy.

~~~
cryptoz
I am not arguing or ignoring anything. I'm expressing confusion by the lack of
continuity in the full quote.

Edit: I am now banned from replying to comments on HN again. Probably because
of the enormous wave of downvotes that follows me everywhere. I don't
understand why HN thinks it is better for me to reply like this than in the
now-banned reply box below. Oh well, here is my response to the comment below.

> He is saying that ideally self-regulation is best, but here and now we need
> regulation because we messed up self regulation.

Ookay, but to me, that says that self-regulation was _never_ going to work,
and we should just admit it and move on. We should have had regulation on
social media from the beginning. We didn't "mess up" self-regulation. Self-
regulation in a hyper-capitalist environment is obviously going to fail. It
has been shown time and time again, every day, that corporations will be
selfish and do everything they can, legally or not, especially exploiting new
dubious legal territory, to extract cash in the short term using dubiously
moral and legal methods no matter what.

Corporations should be regulation and it's insane that Tim Cook is just saying
"ahhh ooops they messed up, guess it wouldn't work out that way, too bad" but
it has _always_ been that way. There was never a world in which Facebook was
going to "self-regulate".

~~~
matthewmacleod
Chill out there - you’re not banned from replying, but the HN site imposes a
steady increasing delay on comment replies as the thread gets deeper,
primarily to avoid rapid back-and-forth flamewars.

To your specific point: I don’t think it’s contradictory, and I tend to agree
with Tim Cook. We should assume that markets are unregulated by default; the
job of government is to step in when there is a problem or imbalance and use
regulation to correct it.

I would argue that this is almost bound to happen by definition, purely
because the emergence of any new market is into a society that doesn’t
regulate it. You say that we “should have had regulation on social media from
the beginning” - but what _was_ the beginning? What is it that defines social
media versus “traditional” media? Was Isenet social media? Web forums?
MySpace?

It’s difficult, in most cases, to preemptively regulate a market. We’ve moved
quite quickly with self-driving cars, but there the dangers are much more
obvious and easily understood. The implications and danger of social media are
harder to understand. What would regulation look like? Is the concern the
treatment of personal data? The tracking of behaviour itself? The manipulation
of users?

The point is, I think it’s more complex than “obviously it should have always
been regulated”.

~~~
cryptoz
> Chill out there - you’re not banned from replying, but the HN site imposes a
> steady increasing delay on comment replies as the thread gets deeper,
> primarily to avoid rapid back-and-forth flamewars.

No, you are incorrect. I am/was banned from top-level comments too. This
comment turns out to have gone through. I think it is time-based. I don't know
how it works. But daily I get banned from making submissions and comments
across the site.

> We should assume that markets are unregulated by default; the job of
> government is to step in when there is a problem or imbalance and use
> regulation to correct it.

This sounds extremely dangerous, and _always_ allows for large-scale actors to
break society's expectations of their good behavior every single day. Society
can't function by just trusting huge megacorps to play nice every day. They
need to be regulated from the day they start work, not a decade and a half
later after so much damage is already caused.

> We’ve moved quite quickly with self-driving cars, but there the dangers are
> much more obvious and easily understood.

I don't agree with this. In the 90's all the adults in the world were telling
kids about the dangers of being online with your real name and all the scary
abuse that could come with that. What happened is that the adults _forgot_
this advice. It was already known and it was not a surprise when it happened.

> The point is, I think it’s more complex than “obviously it should have
> always been regulated”.

No, I don't think it is. Regulation is simple and useful.

~~~
matthewmacleod
You seem to have hand-waved away the main point I made - I don’t think that
regulation is simple at all. “They need to be regulated from the day they
start work” - what does that even mean? Even if we accept that strong
regulation is required - what are you actually proposing we regulate? You say
it’s simple - so what is it?

------
randomerr
I would disagree because of how closely Apple tracks it's users. Yes, they
don't sell the data but they use it for internal marketing.

EDIT: From Apple's own website:

The personal information we collect allows us to keep you posted on Apple’s
latest product announcements, software updates, and upcoming events. If you
don’t want to be on our mailing list, you can opt out anytime by updating your
preferences.

[https://www.apple.com/legal/privacy/en-
ww/](https://www.apple.com/legal/privacy/en-ww/)

~~~
millstone
Apple does not closely track its users.

~~~
randomerr
Have read the ULA?

The Apple Privacy Policy was updated on January 19, 2018.

[https://www.apple.com/legal/privacy/en-
ww/](https://www.apple.com/legal/privacy/en-ww/)

What personal information we collect

* When you create an Apple ID, apply for commercial credit, purchase a product, download a software update, register for a class at an Apple Retail Store, contact us or participate in an online survey, we may collect a variety of information, including your name, mailing address, phone number, email address, contact preferences, and credit card information.

* When you share your content with family and friends using Apple products, send gift certificates and products, or invite others to participate in Apple services or forums, Apple may collect the information you provide about those people such as name, mailing address, email address, and phone number. Apple will use such information to fulfill your requests, provide the relevant product or service, or for anti-fraud purposes.

* In certain jurisdictions, we may ask for a government issued ID in limited circumstances including when setting up a wireless account and activating your device, for the purpose of extending commercial credit, managing reservations, or as required by law.

BTW: How your iPhone is tracking your every move

[https://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/advice/11056373/How-y...](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/advice/11056373/How-
your-iPhone-is-tracking-your-every-move.html)

~~~
jimsmart
But that is not "closely tracking its users", that's capturing the necessary
information for those transactions.

It's certainly not Apple making its customers into products. Both Google and
Facebook are classed as advertising companies, for a reason.

Have you read Google's Privacy Policy?

[https://www.google.com/policies/privacy/](https://www.google.com/policies/privacy/)

Wow. All the same stuff as Apple _plus_ Device IDs, actual physical location,
WiFi identifiers, pixel tags, and more — All because: tailored advertising.
That's what a company-whose-users-are-its-product looks like, by comparison.

BTW: I looked at your scare link: my iPhone had no data there, because it has
never had Frequent Locations enabled. Nor has it had Location-Based iAds
enabled. YMMV of course.

