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SoftTalkerlast Tuesday at 2:56 AM3 repliesview on HN

Why bother with all that cloak and dagger stuff when they can just buy the data? You believe Apple and/or Google isn't selling it? I have some land in Florida I'd like to talk about.


Replies

appplicationlast Tuesday at 3:43 AM

Having worked at Apple, I will say I firmly believe they do not sell data. I worked in data science and we had the shittiest inference because we had essentially no access, even internally, to longitudinal or cross-app user data. Best we had was 15 minute rotating sessions for a single app. There are internal teams dedicated to deanonymizing data to try to narrow down users - if they can successfully do so, and relevant fields that lead to deanonymization get permanently purged from internal logging.

I can’t speak to the current architecture but Apple has shown a consistent willingness to sacrifice access to user data in the name of selling privacy instead at a premium price (you could argue precisely because no one of their competition have any meaningful posture on this). I do believe they are quite serious in their commitment to that, as they have found this strategy to be more valuable than the data itself.

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boringglast Tuesday at 2:15 PM

Apple's incentives don't align to sell private data as their whole thing is privacy. They do that they tank their business. If you have proof that they are doing it -- I'd love to see it. (*3rd party actors from an app re-selling data doesn't count)

Google is 100% doing that because thats their entire incentive for the business. They sell low cost software / subsidized hardware on the grounds that you pay with your sharing data. That's the implied cost.

Show me the incentives - I will show you the outcomes.

cheriotlast Tuesday at 6:43 AM

Apple/Google make less money if they sell the data because their ad product would no longer have an advantage. So no, I don't think they do that.