Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

Apple is luxury big tech.

In this day and age, privacy is luxury, so that's what they sell.

I don't think there are any ethical motivations for them (or any other large corporation - none of them have morals so they cannot act morally). It's just that there's a market niche, so it will be filled by someone.



It’s an additional layer of wall for their walled garden to keep the technically proficient users that are more likely to hop walls.


Technically proficient users can figure out their own solutions for throwaway emails e.g. aforementioned Fastmail.


Sure, but technically proficient users often have other things they want to spend their time on, outside of exercising technical proficiency on every single thing.

Heck, I don’t even do my own oil changes anymore despite it being easy. Life gets busy, you know?


Many systems out there have specific exceptions from their VPN policy for iCloud emails and iCloud private relay. Places that would immediately block fastmail because of its alias feature will not block iCloud because too many people use it. Market share is real power. You can ban 0.1% of your customers, you can't ban 30% of your customers.


Privacy is the niche they know Google can never follow.

Apple sells hardware, Google is an ad company.


money from advertising basically dwarf user lifetime purchase of privacy tax you mentioned


The ad business has a lot of people chasing after the same ad spend.

Superbowl ads, TV ads, radio ads, print ads, billboard ads, public transit ads, youtube ads, podcast ads, search ads, e-mail ads, social media ads, in-app ads, in-store ads, sports team sponsorship, individual athlete sponsorship, stadium naming, product placement ads, elevator ads, cinema ads, bathroom ads.

And Coca-Cola doesn't increase their advertising budget just because someone finds a new place to slap ads on - they just re-allocate their spending.

Sure, Google and Facebook make a good chunk of money from ads. But it's a very, very competitive business.


yet and they still dwarf

if any, Apple user are the most expensive ads money industry willing to pay for




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: