Apple CEO Tim Cook Says Giving Up Your Data For Better Services is 'a Bunch of Bunk' (washingtonpost.com) 118
Apple chief executive Tim Cook urged consumers not to believe the dominant tech industry narrative that the data collected about them will lead to better services. From a report: In an interview with "Vice News Tonight" that aired Tuesday, Cook highlighted his company's commitment to user privacy, positioning Apple's business as one that stands apart from tech giants that compile massive amounts of personal data and sell the ability to target users through advertising [The link may be paywalled; alternative source]. "The narrative that some companies will try to get you to believe is: I've got to take all of our data to make my service better," he said. "Well, don't believe them. Whoever's telling you that, it's a bunch of bunk." [...] Cook said in the interview that he is "exceedingly optimistic" that the topic of data privacy has reached an elevated level of public debate. "When the free market doesn't produce a result that's great for society you have to ask yourself what do we need to do. And I think some level of government regulation is important to come out on that."
Better bet on... (Score:2)
/e/
https://e.foundation/ [e.foundation]
Re: (Score:2)
Buy into our business model. (Score:4, Insightful)
The key difference between Google/Facebook business model vs Apple is how they make money.
Apple you buy expensive hardware, for more money, but your data and privacy is managed much better.
Vs.
Google/Facebook where you may get the same hardware for cheaper, but your data is sold to compensate for it.
It is akin paying for a vacation, vs. getting a cheaper vacation but have to sit threw a time share presentation.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
but your data is sold to compensate for it.
No it's not. Google has never sold anyone's data, much like Coke doesn't sell recipes for fizzy drinks and Apple doesn't sell engineering drawings.
Google sells access. Access to your eyeballs and access to aggregated statistics.
Re: (Score:2)
That language actually does a lot more harm than good. I know it makes these corporations sound very evil to say that they "sell your data" but the problem with doing that is it normalizes that idea and so people think that is what they are doing now and see the consequences of it.
We now have anonymized data being collected, aggregated and then used in an advertising service and the consequences of that should absolutely not be attributed to the much worse idea of them "selling your data".
I mean if these co
Re: Buy into our business model. (Score:2)
Google has never sold anyone's data
Pretty impressive word-twisting, there; you should be in marketing or politics. However, you're likely quite wrong not only in spirit; the odds that Google hasn't sold raw metadata to various governments is less than nill.
Re: (Score:2)
Who gives a fuck, who they sell it to, they collect and trade in your privacy, not for your benefit but to psychologically manipulate you into buying shit products and services against your interest. So they contract out the manipulation so that they can continue to generate revenue, rather than selling raw data, yeah for Google evil is as evil does.
Quite simply Apple is selling privacy as a premium product in order to charge more. Ohh look, people are willing to pay big bucks for privacy contrary to the l
Re: (Score:2)
Problem is, if you pay premium price for a privacy-enabled device but then use it for Facebook, Google or just about anything on the web, or just about any casual app, you get the worst of both worlds: High price and blown privacy.
Re: (Score:2)
Pretty impressive word-twisting
Not at all. It's a very important distinction. The kind of distinction that makes a person want to use a VPN when on the Verizon network so their data isn't "sold", but has not problem having locations services enabled on Android.
Selling data and aggregating it to sell access have two incredibly different privacy implications. It's why I have different levels of trust for the siphon of Google vs the telemetry of Microsoft.
However, you're likely quite wrong not only in spirit; the odds that Google hasn't sold raw metadata to various governments is less than nill.
Who cares, the FBI is watching you masturbate through your webcam right now. And I'm p
Re: (Score:2)
Then Google must give it away for free, because the information is leaking out.
Re: (Score:2)
Then Google must give it away for free, because the information is leaking out.
[Citation required]
Re: Buy into our business model. (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
No I cannot.
You cannot. I can. Google has a lovely form you can fill out to remove your presence under the EU laws.
Re: (Score:2)
You data is sold, to advertisers, it is just not given to them.
Coke wants to advertise to a particular group of people. They purchase a service from Google who uses your data to display the add Coke said show them this. It is akin to Money Laundering of User Data.
Re: (Score:2)
You data is sold, to advertisers, it is just not given to them.
If that were even remotely true then maybe Google's customers should sue for not getting what they were sold.
Instead data isn't sold. A targeted advertising service is sold. I'm not sure why you would even try and write the sentence you did, though Slashdot being an international site it's possible English isn't your first language.
Re: (Score:2)
but your data is sold to compensate for it.
No it's not. Google has never sold anyone's data,
Well, no - they just give it away for free inadvertently while selling targeted ads that use your data, and more.
Re: (Score:2)
Errr no. You fundamentally failed to understand how Google's advertising model works.
Re: (Score:2)
Errr no. You fundamentally failed to understand how Google's advertising model works.
You fundamentally fail to understand how information works. The advertisers have ways to uniquely identify you - and using Google's services, they can then find out things that Google knows about you. Google doesn't sell them that information - but when they ask to serve ads to group X, and you get the ad, they know you are member of group X. It is as simple as that.
Re: Buy into our business model. (Score:1)
Apple you buy expensive hardware
Shit, their hardware is cheap (in quality) and free (in price); it comes free with the purchase of their [extremely expensive] Operating Systems.
(Unlike Cisco, Apple actually is a software company.)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
The cheaper Samsung feature phones are edging up toward 700-800 bucks, so I'm wondering what people buying them think they're getting.
Google/Android has always been an advertising platform. The tradeoff _used_ to be inexpensive phones, but that's starting to fade.
Premium Android phones can copy the iPhone all they want, but as long as they're Android phones, you're carrying around a spy device in your pocket at all times, one with a poorly regulated app store.
Re: (Score:1)
Premium Android phones can copy the iPhone all they want, but as long as they're Android phones, you're carrying around a spy device in your pocket at all times, one with a poorly regulated app store.
Ah of course because your iPhone can't be tracked by GPS and cell towers, your traffic can't be intercepted by your carrier. If you think you're not being tracked and spied on when you're using an iPhone you're an ignorant moron. Of course perpetuating that serves the Apple agenda so we can all see why Apple apologists would do it but it's pretty clear you're either a shill or an idiot.
FWIW I use an iPhone but it would be irresponsible of me to pretend like it's some bastion of privacy and security because
Re: (Score:2)
Yes, the high end has been getting more expensive both in Apple and Android land. But you don't need to buy a Galaxy Note 9 to have a good phone.
Does Google gather a ton of data about you if you use Android phones? Yes they do. I wish they didn't and they could just charge for Android to the OEMs and not gather
Re: (Score:2)
To be honest, I recently got a new phone and switched from Android to iPhone. A major factor is that the iPhone was actually cheaper!
(I don't go with latest models so the older iPhones were still on sale whereas the only the latest Android models were available)
Someone paying $500-$1000 for a phone and then being asked to share all their data to help defray costs is being conned.
Re: (Score:1)
Apple products aren't really comparable to Google ones though, in terms of quality. Compare Siri with Google Assistant, for example. Google Maps vs Apple Maps.
Part of it is just that Google has better tech, but part of it is also because Google has better data. Better aggregate data, and if you want all the bells and whistles better data about you specifically.
It's not just pay more vs. pay less, it's lesser services vs. better services in exchange for some amount of privacy.
Re: (Score:1)
It is akin paying for a vacation, vs. getting a cheaper vacation but have to sit threw a time share presentation.
I used to not mind the time share stuff. Usually it was a really cheap to stay at a really nice place, and then not pay attention to a guy I eventually say no to. Or when I was a kid.... play free video games while my parents dealt with that.
But then came the point where my dad died. Literally 12 hours after his death I get a call asking for him. Tell the guy that he was my father, and he just died a few hours before. Guy's response: "Oh I'm sorry to hear that. I'm calling to see if you are intereste
Re: (Score:2)
Blatant, flat-out lie. You don't know what you're talking about. Or actually you do, because you're clearly an Androidite spreading FUD with purpose.
You can opt-in to send anonymized app data to Apple and developers but in no way does Apple require you to sell your soul to use an iPhone.
Re: (Score:2)
eeehhhhhhh (Score:5, Insightful)
Privacy is good, but I also remember the first time I saw how Google was using that information it gathers to benefit me when I loaded up the Google Assistant app thingy a few years back and it just barfed out all kinds of convenient details about what I had going on. Travel times, package delivery statuses, etc. Obviously there's plenty of bad things that could happen with that information but IF it's anonymized well enough and I get a cheaper product and/or more intelligent service, it's worth it.
Every time I compare Siri and what Apple offers via our iPad to what Google offers through Android, I'm struck by how much more accurate, useful, or contextually insightful Google's responses are. That takes data, and by not collecting and using more of that data, Apple can't keep up.
Are those benefits worth the potential risks? That's up to each individual to decide, but it's not like they're really offering the same services.
Re:eeehhhhhhh (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
I'm glad to be a datapoint. Being a person opens me up to being singled out and sold directly. Being a datapoint in some large set is quite irrelevant to me on a personal level.
Re: (Score:2)
You're not a data point in a large set and being singled out and sold to directly, at the same time. It's 100% the latter.
If you're fine being advertised to, are you also fine having non-advertisers, anyone that wants to rent/buy/borrow/steal that data seeing it? This sounds like the classic 'if I haven't done anything wrong' defense about surveillance.
You might not care about what you do now, but let's say weed is outlawed in your state and the guvmunt suddenly has use for all that location data you've bee
Re: (Score:2)
You're not a data point in a large set and being singled out and sold to directly, at the same time. It's 100% the latter.
Not at all. I'm being sold out as a collective group. There's so far been no evidence anywhere that advertising services the likes of Google provide access to a single user. There is however plenty of examples of this practice from the likes of Facebook and other companies that sell data directly rather than just access to aggregated eyeballs in a dataset.
If you're fine being advertised to
I will always be advertised to. The collection of data only changes how targetted that advertisement is, and again that happens on aggregated datasets.
are you also fine having non-advertisers, anyone that wants to rent/buy/borrow/steal that data seeing it?
Def
Re: (Score:2)
Google won't stop asking. Maybe it's only in the EU or something, but every time you use Google services for the first time it asks you for permission to use data. Every time you turn on some option that needs data, it asks you.
I recently set up a new phone for my wife, and lost count of the number of times I had to allow/deny some bit of data collection or even just a new use of some data they already had.
You can accuse Google of a lot of things, but not being absolutely clear or obtaining opt-in permissio
Re: eeehhhhhhh (Score:1)
Anonymizing data sounds good in theory, but all of the new ways of generating fingerprints to track users online even when you delete cookies blows a hole in that arguement.
Lots of data tracking is going to be a requirement for many services, but laws about how that data is used need to be written. Taking Âanonymous data and analyzing it to identify a person is when needs strict regulation.
Re: (Score:2)
it just barfed out all kinds of convenient details about what I had going on.
The question being whether this really *requires* to be done in Google's datacenter versus an application framework on the endpoints doing the analysis there. Each user experiences all the data that is collected and thus it has the access and the horsepower to do this sort of stuff, but that's not how it does it. I remember for example being shocked going from an early 2000s cell phone that did serviceable voice recognition phonebook dialing to a modern platform that won't even *think* about speech recogn
Re: (Score:2)
This is just it. Google provide services using a wealth of collected and monitored data. Apple can sit on it's high horse while offering you features gained from this data provided by third parties all while claiming that you don't need to give up your privacy.
Or maybe people believe that Apple Maps just knows traffic due to Inference Engine 2.0 or some shit like that.
Re: (Score:3)
The difference was put in an eloquent way by Cooke recently. Paraphrasing: "Your device should know everything about you, but Apple shouldn't."
It wasn't so long ago that an Android flashlight app was collecting your location data without your knowledge and sending it to servers in China. That this kind of thing can physically even happen on your Android phone should tell you about the purpose of that platform.
Re: (Score:3)
First thing I did when the assistant showed up was to disable it. The benefits are far too small to justify giving up privacy. I can figure out this stuff on my own.
Are things being anonymized? I don't think so. The advertising becomes too targeted to the point that it's creepy. Everytime you visit a new web site they always seem to know everything about you already.
Re:Excuses for being last. (Score:5, Funny)
Haha, says the guy with the bottom wrung voice assistant.
Are we talking about Bixby or Cortana?
Re: (Score:2)
I can't wait for a few more years to go by and have everyone realize that voice assistants are dumb and inefficient for those of us that still have use of our arms.
Meanwhile Apple gets $9B/year from Google (Score:5, Insightful)
https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-09-28/apple-looks-down-on-ads-but-takes-billions-from-google [bloomberg.com]
Re: (Score:2)
That's not out of the ordinary. Apple maps gets its traffic data source from third parties too which among other things collect it by crowd sourcing location information.
In other news, my hands are clean. I only paid to have that person killed. I didn't do it myself.
Re: (Score:2)
You just made that up 100% out of thin air. DDG is and always has been an American company.
Re: (Score:2)
If I were dumb/desperate enough to use Google on an iPhone, it doesn't require me to log in or otherwise send my personal data/location back to Google.
Also, if I'm Apple and I don't have my own search engine, and Google comes knocking at my door with $9B free dollars, I'd have to be insane not to take that from them.
Re: (Score:3)
I keep hearing this claim that Google sells or trades your personal data. Seems utterly bizarre, it's the secret sauce that makes their products valuable and giving it to anyone else would destroy their business model. So I usually ask for some evidence, and then get modded down by google haters...
Re: (Score:2)
The "secret sauce" to Google's products is their engineers, algorithms, and more recently, AI - and of course, their vast and unparalleled collection of user data put-together helps. Not to mention collective user analysis to better predict users [stateofdigital.com], their buying habits, and to ultimately influence them (e.g. filter bubble [youtube.com]).
It wouldn't be strange if they sold portions of user data to any entity, as long as it doesn't give the complete picture about that person. e.g. they can sell all they know about your healt
It is easy for Apple to say that ... (Score:5, Insightful)
because they generate most of their income by: a) selling real physical goods ('phones, etc); or b) taking a slice of others who sell into the Apple eco-system via the app store. It is much harder for the likes of facebook & google who do not charge people for their product and thus have to generate income by helping others put adverts in front of their users' eyes. This is not a criticism of Apple - but just explaining that they have a very different business model.
Having said all of that I agree with a lot of what Tim Cook says.
Re:It is easy for Apple to say that ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Slight correction. You refer to Google and Facebook being a product. The reality is that _you_ are the product. Your personal data is the commodity that is being sold.
Re: It is easy for Apple to say that ... (Score:1)
Iâ(TM)m not sure what are you trying to argue here - that Facebook and Google are in the lines of business where there is no other option just to abuse user privacy to make a profit? The fact that no one came up yet with another financing model for say search engines and social networks doesnâ(TM)t make it so. When enough people get will suffer downsides of this model, say companies digging up info in Facebook profile that they donâ(TM)t like and turning them down for a job, it may yet change
Re: (Score:2)
My personal privacy is definitely worth a few benjamins to me. Without a doubt.
Yeah, sure (Score:1)
Says the guy who wants my credit card and login information so my mom can share her own music from one device to another in her own house. Piss up a rope.
Re:Yeah, sure (Score:4, Informative)
You mom has a fundamental lack of knowledge regarding how to share music between iDevices. And I'm guessing family tech support (you) does, also. In no way does sharing your own music library between iDevices require a credit card. And there are ways of doing it without logging in.
It's not about better (Score:3)
Also, and I keep saying this, but I have bigger things to worry about. Like the trade war going on, or paying for the $16k in tuition to my kid's in State college. Or the endless wars. Or bridge collapse. Or medical care. Or retirement. Or...
Re:It's not about better (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm an Apple fanboy, and I use YouTube on the regular with out logging in or giving up any personal info. Occasionally Maps, too.
Thing is that most people don't realize how much data they collect. If your kid is a contact in your phone, Google, Facebook et al has tons of info on him/her, even if they don't have a Google or Facebook account.
Conservatively, Twitter has 1000 employees (likely more like 2500-3000.) What do you think all those people are doing? Even with the millions of users' data they have, it would take like three people to run that place if all they had was your basic info. It can't possible take more than seven people to develop their apps.
Re: (Score:3)
This isn't a recent thing from Apple, it's been baked into their products and marketing since forever. It's just more on the forefront as late because of the abusive practices of the other guys coming to light.
Re: (Score:3)
Does Google need all your personal info at Google HQ to tell you there's traffic? Your phone itself already knows that. Your phone also knows when your flight leaves. Why does Google need that info on their servers? They need it because Google is an advertising platform.
I dunno, I personally don't use Siri that often, but my iPhone itself knows when it's going to take me 20 extra minutes to get to the airport or work and prods me to leave early. All without selling my location and favorite Spice Girl (it's
Re: (Score:2)
Ha HA! You gave away your favourite Spice Girl data for FREE. You fool! I'm gonna monetize the hell out of this somehow!
Yeah, instead.... (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Just have everything done through Apple - pay with ApplePay, subscribe to all the apps you use through the App Store, perpetually pay for iCloud storage....
Yup, don't give up your personal data... just give up your freedom to use other services.
It's warm and sunny in the Garden, there's nothing for you out there. Trust us.
The sad part? (Score:1)
Tim Cook says this: "When the free market doesn't produce a result that's great for society you have to ask yourself what do we need to do. And I think some level of government regulation is important to come out on that."
Yet, he's talking about the same "free market" that allowed Apple to make so much money. Last I recalled, he wasn't so keen on government regulation and interference when it was about restrictions on letting him repatriate money Apple earned abroad without getting taxed on it.
Has Tim Cook read Apple's own EULA? (Score:2)
"The narrative that some companies will try to get you to believe is: I've got to take all of our data to make my service better," he said. "Well, don't believe them"
Tim... you need to talk to your legal and product departments. Your EULA has the same provisions in it. It's also how Apple Maps gathers all of it's data, and how Siri (which does it's processing on Apple cloud servers like everyone else, NOT locally on the phone) knows anything at all about you.
busines model virtue signalling (Score:2)
Says a man whose hardware business model is bloated and slow security updates (if you can get them at all) rendering devices barely out of their puppy years far slower than the day you bought them (even for simply things), soldering RAM onto the system board at 400% markup over street upgrades, and torpedoing the right to repair.
Re:Tim Crook (Score:4, Interesting)
It's not BS. Giving your data to corporations because they tell you it's good for you is stupid. Do not trust corporations! (including Apple) Keep your data to yourself, even if some company whines that this hurts their profits.