Comment by reificator

4 years ago

In the modern age isn't the audacious claim that they're not?

No. Apple has a history of being extremely careful with personal data, and almost always goes out of its way to make sure it never even collects anything personalized. Of course, those could all be lies, I suppose.

  • They run an ad network and are the entity that manages device identifiers for iOS.

    I certainly trust that they are better than Facebook or Google on the privacy axis. I don't blindly trust that they are innocent.

    • To which ad network are you referring?

      They have a couple: https://searchads.apple.com, https://support.apple.com/en-gb/guide/adguide/apda0878bbd9/i....

      They cover ads in Apple News, the App Store Search ads and promotions, and there's the results of Siri search I suppose too. But all of these are internal Apple products and marketplaces. They are not running advertising auctions to any bidder on the basis of guaranteed user groups or targeting strategies.

      If you are in fact suggesting that they sell ads beyond their internal marketplaces I'd consider that motivation to move away from them myself, and I converted away from OSS when I got bored fixing my workstation more than my work.

For an advertising supported business, sure.

But not for Apple where advertising revenues a rounding error on a rounding error, and they’ve built their brand on their commitment to privacy.

  • Apple runs ads as far as I know.

    They also run the app store, which is an advertising platform

    • We're talking about the ads in apps here?

      It's hilarious: most of the journalism I'm finding via DDG search is anti-Apple from the advertisers perspective. All these bloggers and Forbes writers decrying the fact that Apple keep making it harder for third parties to exfiltrate user data. Outraged that Apple would use this data internally making the marketplace non-competitive to both "tiny ad networks" and "Apple's corporate rivals" alike.

      This is bogus. It seriously strangles the capabilities of the rival giants to get hold of that trove of data, but the small ad networks, representing businesses with whom Apple has a formal supplier relationship (the Apple Developer Program) and no direct competition are really no worse off.

      Shock and awe.

      The big change that caused this flurry of self-serving smear? Making 3rd party advertising opt-in. Forgive me if don't swoon with relief that they are now holding off on this user-empowering, privacy focussed change until next year: "to give advertisers and publisher more time to prepare" and come up with ways to subvert the new order.

      Throughout this whole discussion users are talking about "ecosystems" and buying in to one or the other, and the effort of changing. The original issue in this thread was serious, reasonably short-lived, and an infrequent screw up (though that frequency is increasing if you ask me). The issue of Apple's ads is moot. They protect their right to be custodians of the user data they hold (or own, I'm still kind of unclear on that) and they continue to shore up the fences that keep the wolves at bay.

      Point me to another major hardware/software/data vendor who shares those values.