Having a gay CEO in times of re-emerging bigotry and homophobic oppression probably does help make Apple genuinely committed to some privacy for its own sake, and its revenue model does give it more latitude to serve the needs of customers.
But at the same time when it comes to advertising, it's clear that Apple has the same sense of self-serving "we mean private between you and us, not private to you. Total coincidence that that means we can build a walled garden around our ad platform" that is an industry norm in the US.
I recently unlocked my iPad mini while staying in downtown Boston. Right there on the Home Screen was a geo-based app suggestion for Dunkin' Donuts. It felt very wrong, like when a Smart TV tries to give you a suggestion. I don't want my iPad spying on me. I've never used the Dunkin' Donuts app and had no interest. Apple had clearly used my location to target me with a suggestion. That told me everything I need to know about how far they are willing to push privacy.
“Having a gay CEO in times of re-emerging bigotry and homophobic oppression probably does help make Apple genuinely committed to some privacy for its own sake,”
I doubt that. He will use his billions to get privacy for himself while the users will be used for profits.
Occam's Razor suggests that marketing explains it better than "he's gay so he must like privacy". By that line of logic, it's equally possible that he is sensitive to privacy because he has a cocaine addiction. This kind of mental gymnastics gets me so fired-up on HN; there are people so convinced that $BIGCORP is benevolent that they'll refute other people's arguments by assuming things on something as arbitrary as sexuality. There's no putting the cat back in the bag now, every single FAANG member is completely compliant with the NSA's surveillance program. There's been an overwhelming number of leaks and whistleblowers over the past few dozen years, and we still have no decent refutation for PRISM.
Privacy is not a luxury that can be offered by a US-based company, especially not at that scale.
You read too much into my words. And sexuality is far from being arbitrary. I'm not saying cook drives the company on this factor. But I'll bet solid money that he his leagues above straight CEOs on term of being aware of privacy reach.
Any chance that was a location based App Clip suggestion in your Siri App Suggestions home screen widget?
That or the App Store widget (which is essentially a banner ad widget) are the only reasons I can imagine where:
1. You don't have the Dunkin' Donuts app installed
2. You saw the Dunkin' Donuts app icon on your homescreen
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If it's an App Clip suggestion in your Siri App Suggestions widget, you can disable this behavior in a couple of places (depending on what you care about):
I don't mean to suggest that Apple is free and clear of guilt. They often add new options with their preferred value as the default – rather than a user-focused default.
However, I don't think this is caused by advertisements in the same way that Smart TVs suggest things.
Tim Cook emphasizes personal privacy in every interview I've seen with him, and he seems genuinely affected and passionate about it. He's also backed tough fights with the FBI and DoJ. I don't mean to reduce a gay person to their sexuality, and I'm no psychoanalyst, but every person I know who was a gay adult in the 80s and 90s has a very personal sense of how important privacy is and it has a very material color to it.
Well maybe Tim Cook could turn over a new leaf by refusing to help China hunt down ethnic and sexual minorities in their country. Maybe show a little backbone, if this is something he feels strongly about.
It's an open secret that Chinese authorities have access to all domestic iCloud data without a warrant, which is often used to profile political dissidents and the Uighur populations that Apple relies on to build their iPhones. This is only possible because Tim Cook agreed to move the nation's iCloud datacenters into Chinese territory. So, when Tim Cook says "Privacy is a human right", what he apparently implies is that not all humans are created equal. It's certainly an ugly hill to die on, but it also makes it incredibly hard to believe that Apple has an ideological attachment to privacy when they bend over backwards for China more than any other FAANG member.
I just turn off all the toggles for personalized suggestions from Siri and targeted advertising and don't worry about it? I don't receive anything targeted to me as far as I've seen.
I believe the toggles are fairly visible under Settings > Siri, and then I'd probably search for Privacy and Advertising and do toggles there too.
To be fair, I rarely have location services turned on either. Mostly just cause I enjoy looking at the maps more than I enjoy getting directions as opposed to a big concern about being tracked. I find I learn the areas I'm in better that way.
I feel obliged to push back on the "gay people would respect privacy better" narrative with a couple notable counterexamples. J. Edgar Hoover and Roy Cohn.
I have to add that attributing virtue or vice based on nothing but personal demographics in this fashion is overwhelmingly likely to lead you to some bad conclusions.
That sounds like a location-based app suggestion, not an ad. iOS will suggest an app that is used a lot at your current location. (Edit: Siri uses other signals as well to suggest apps. You can turn off the whole thing by removing “Siri App Suggestions” from your lock screen.)
I get in my car. The weather app is suggested to me, because I oftentimes, when getting into my car, want to check the weather. This is innocuous; definitely not an ad.
I get in my car. Candy Crush 2 is suggested to me, because I oftentimes, when being driven around by my wife, play games.
At a surface level, one could argue: Candy Crush did not pay for that impression, its not an ad. On the other hand; Candy Crush does pay Apple 30% of every transaction in the app; and that service fee includes not only access to market on the iOS App Store, but also, critically, access to be installed at all on iOS. Developers pay Apple to be allowed to install Applications on users' phones; any installed application could be given preferential display by iOS in suggested applications, location based suggestions, etc; Apple has a monetary interest (30%) in suggesting applications which would generate revenue for both them & the developer; the algorithms which power these application suggestions are black-boxed and poorly understood by consumers.
Similarly; I drive up to Starbucks, and iOS displays the Starbucks application. The innocuous argument is: arrive at location -> many users open this app at this location -> presenting it is convenient. The "weirder" argument is: arrive at location -> Apple wants to keep Starbucks happy, in the App Store, and using Apple Pay -> presenting it is monetarily beneficial to Apple & Starbucks, Starbucks knew that their app could be presented like this and approved of it, and thus its an Ad. Critically, there's nothing different about these two situations beyond intent, and to some degree that just speaks to the fact that we live in a capitalist society. But I label the situation "weird" for a reason. And "weirdest"? Arrive at location -> There's a starbucks & a panera bread right next to each other -> iOS can only recommend one application, so which does it choose? This is where being explicit about "this is an ad" actually matters; its no longer a matter of convenience or "wow that's cool", its a matter of "a billion devices are now pushing their users to make getting coffee at Starbucks a little bit easier than Panera", and that's not ok even if the intention is totally ethical.
I think there's an argument, maybe not a strong one but extant nonetheless, that any "preferential display" iOS exhibits toward one app over another, anywhere on your phone, is advertising, simply due to how intertwined their megacorporation interests & reach is with how money flows through their platform.
Whether if they're ads or not, these preferential display recommendations also end up entrenching the top apps, which doesn't exactly help discoverability for new players.
If the app is monetized then apple makes money if you use the app. It’s in apple’s interest to advertise things to you. Doesn’t matter if it’s paid for.
That's different from what the OP was saying, which was seeing a Dunkin Donuts app recommendation, while he was in a different city, and didn't have a history of going to DD.
So your thing is not an ad, just an unnecessary reminder. I imagine after going the first couple of times, you don't need navigational assistance to get there.
So iOS is obviously not spying on its owner in ways that matter. If OP ordered from DD, Apple got that transaction and iOS started suggesting DD to OP across devices, that would be insidious enough to stop me from using Apple tech. Dumb location-based triggers are nothing, though I don't have them on because I need fewer distractions.
What feels as spying to me is, for example, seeing a specific medical care ad on YouTube after I talked to a friend about a health issue using a completely unrelated chat app or even IRL. There are clearly a lot of moving parts, a bunch of data stored outside of my device, and if it's not already tied to my identity it's likely de-anonymizable.
I at least personally appreciate it because when I get in my car after class (to drive the place I drive 90% of the time after class–home) it'll push an ETA onto my lock screen. It's not always right but it's generally very predictable (and can be disabled).
But did Dunkin’ Donuts learn your address and buying habits when it paid for that advert? Apple could be serving you accurate ads that rely on collected data, while only telling DD that an ad was sold to Apple’s idea of a relevant viewer and let them judge if they want to buy more. I think we need to distinguish this, perhaps you are with the walled garden spying. Do you trust the option to reset your advertiser ID?
You're most likely right about what Dunkin' Donuts know. I'm less confident about what Apple themselves know. Apple have people talented enough that they can build a privacy-preserving back-end too so that their operators and staff have no way to know where I was. I hope that is how it works, but I've never seen it explained that way. If Apple end up on the wrong end of broad subpoenas to find out who was near abortion clinics ... getting better recommendations for donuts wasn't worth it.
> Apple end up on the wrong end of broad subpoenas to find out who was near abortion clinics
I would be more concerned about ATT/Verizon/T-Mobile, who have real-time data on where every connected phone is all the time and a FISA court can always serve them with a secret warrant.
Also, what you are describing is not Dunkin paying Apple for an advertisement. If it is, then it would be huge news that Apple is pushing non Apple ads to its devices.
> who have real-time data on where every connected phone is all the time
Not really. They know which mast it's connected to and can do signal strength triangulation. Their location info is a lot less good than what the device makers with wifi map data can give you, hence why every so often we get a news story about how Uber knows where you are a lot better than a 911 operator does.
But at the same time when it comes to advertising, it's clear that Apple has the same sense of self-serving "we mean private between you and us, not private to you. Total coincidence that that means we can build a walled garden around our ad platform" that is an industry norm in the US.
I recently unlocked my iPad mini while staying in downtown Boston. Right there on the Home Screen was a geo-based app suggestion for Dunkin' Donuts. It felt very wrong, like when a Smart TV tries to give you a suggestion. I don't want my iPad spying on me. I've never used the Dunkin' Donuts app and had no interest. Apple had clearly used my location to target me with a suggestion. That told me everything I need to know about how far they are willing to push privacy.