
Apple Is a Hypocrite on Data Privacy - cmurf
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2019/01/apples-hypocritical-defense-data-privacy/581680/
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mikestew
My summary: _The Atlantic_ , rather than arguing for government regulation,
argues for Apple to be the regulator. The argument is that Apple only enforced
the contractual agreement, and did not enforce as a part of their privacy
stance (which, to my knowledge, is not part of a canonical, enforceable
document).

 _" Crucially, Apple didn’t ban Facebook from the App Store or the iPhone
platform: You can still download and use Messenger."_

AFAICT, Apple has no legal leg to stand on were they to do so. There is
nothing in their contract with FB (assuming it is at least similar to the one
us little folk get) that says FB has committed an app-banning offense. IANAL,
etc., but this strikes me as the magazine's attempt at "but Apple's just as
bad!" click-bait.

~~~
tbirrell
As I read it, their argument is that Apple doesn't do enough. And they cite
the fact that Apple still associates with privacy offenders as their proof of
Apple's hypocrisy.

So yeah, virtue-signaling click-bait.

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JKCalhoun
Seems to distill down to this one line:

 _" Apple didn’t take a position on Facebook’s creation of a paid “research”
program to extract data from users. It enforced the terms of a licensing
agreement; appearing to fight for user privacy is just a side effect."_

Expecting a stronger argument against Apple given the title of the article.

~~~
intopieces
What's odd about that paragraph is that it's not an either/or situation. Apple
can enforce a licensing agreement and fight for user privacy by having a
licensing agreement that is predicated around user privacy. Which is what the
licensing agreement does.

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cameldrv
This article is ridiculous. Apple is not "merely" enforcing a contract,
they're eliminating Facebook's workaround of the app review process, which is
prohibited by the enterprise cert contract. It's the app review process that
enforces their privacy rules. The whole reason Facebook did this was that
Apple started rejecting Onavo in the app review process on privacy grounds.

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aleppe7766
Basically the author is calling Apple to be its clients’ privacy guardian.
What if somebody prefers the much touted Apple design and is perfectly fine
with his/her data being used and misused by anybody? Apple’s positioning as a
“force of good” rather than another tech company hellbent on making profits,
kind of encourages these “naive” interpretations of Apple’s marketing
positioning. BTW how many units sold does Apple’s privacy stance move per
quarter? If I was in Zuckerberg, I would give a free iPhone to those who
adhere to the spy program :-)

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tedunangst
So the problem with the walled garden is the walls aren't high enough?

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humanetech
Article title is "Apple’s Empty Grandstanding About Privacy"

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cmurf
Would Apple have banned the research app, had it been submitted to the Apple
app store? And if so on what basis? The basis for pulling Facebook's
enterprise cert is that they violated the part of the agreement that says such
enterprise apps are for internal use only, while the research app was deployed
outside of Facebook to regular users.

And to what degree does GDPR require Apple and Google, to take responsibility
for the privacy safeguarding of apps in their app stores? Does it only bind
the application developer, or does it also bind the distributor?

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ntsplnkv2
Arguments about the big companies ultimately devolve into whataboutism. But
google does this! and Apple did that! And facebook did this!

It's frustrating how we treat publicly traded companies somehow as agents of
morality. They aren't and never will be. Isn't it obvious that this needs
regulated by a government?

~~~
bilbo0s
In fairness, if you're waiting for your government to protect your privacy
rights, you're going to be waiting a long time. They have a vested interest in
circumventing the privacy of their citizens, (and circumventing the privacy of
everyone else' citizens too in fact.)

I think the best you'd _ever_ get out of a government is _maybe_ a law that
forbids companies from sharing data with anyone _EXCEPT_ the governments
themselves. This is _kind of_ what GDPR does, but even that doesn't really
have any teeth in it as we're starting to see. No one at all has really
stopped hoovering up all the data they can.

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saagarjha
The issue with Apple regulating apps that abuse data is that this now
encompasses a significant portion of the App Store. So while Apple can and
does slowly lock down the amount of data you can pull off a device, if they
decided to pull every app that sent data off the phone they'd have very few
apps left…

~~~
rubbingalcohol
I'm trying to understand what you're saying - so lots of apps are abusing
privacy rules, thus it would be a problem if Apple banned those apps because
then there would be few apps left? Are you arguing that privacy abusers should
have safety in numbers?

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saagarjha
> I'm trying to understand what you're saying - so lots of apps are abusing
> privacy rules, thus it would be a problem if Apple banned those apps because
> then there would be few apps left?

Yes.

> Are you arguing that privacy abusers should have safety in numbers?

No.

The argument I'm trying to make is that the choice for Apple isn't as easy as
the article makes it out to be. If Apple decided to remove every app that
collected excessive user data, the App Store would be quite bare. This isn't
something that I think users would let Apple get away with.

~~~
rubbingalcohol
Ah okay, that makes sense. I think in this case, making an example of Facebook
is probably the perfect strategy from Apple's perspective. It sends kind of a
"shape up or ship out" message -- if they're bringing the hammer down on a
huge business partner like Facebook (which has enjoyed numerous native
integrations in Apple products) then they can do it for anyone else.

~~~
wtmt
> ...like Facebook (which has enjoyed numerous native integrations in Apple
> products)

That was a thing of the past and doesn't have any value now. The integrations
in Apple's OSes were removed more than two years ago. [1]

[1]: [https://www.imore.com/twitter-and-facebook-are-no-longer-
int...](https://www.imore.com/twitter-and-facebook-are-no-longer-integrated-
ios-11)

