Last Updated on July 26, 2022 by srinivas
You selfish people. Did you know that every time you deny a company access to your personal information, you contribute to a global financial disaster of epic proportions?
Of course not. Because you only think about yourself.
In a thread on Twitter, says Alex Gurevich, director at a venture capital firm, that Apple’s privacy changes in iOS 14 DESTROY EVERYTHING! (Tip of the antlers to tay.)
1) I’m still surprised by the lack of public discussion about the impact of @apple’s iOS 14 changes – all in the name of privacy…
What exactly is “privacy” anyway?! Privacy is just the little bit of your information we haven’t monetized yet!
… – leading to enormous negative consequences for SMEs and innovative companies everywhere.
“Innovative” here is short for “New ways to get your Social Security number, blood type, and the weight of your kidneys for when we can later take them out of your body to sell.”
They may be as much to blame for a recession as inflation.
Wow! That’s quite an accusation. But if you think Apple isn’t the bad guy here, Gurevich says, check out this study from Meta.
@Meta did some analysis here…
Oh, do we just believe things Meta/Facebook says again? Because That always comes out very well.
“Facebook lied about video stats and it killed profitable companies”
IDG
Later in the thread, Gurevich links to this piece on the negative business effects of the transparency of Apple’s app tracking in The Harvard Business Review referring to it as a “less biased source”. It turns out that one of the authors has written a book on “freemium economics” that…blargh. The other — oh, this is a weird coincidence — worked in Facebook’s marketing science research group. How weird is that? So weird.
“If you don’t believe these people who are stubborn about selling people’s privacy, maybe you believe these other people who are stubborn about selling people’s privacy.”
Seven tweets in, Gurevich admits:
@Meta is not a saint…
Oh? You mean the company that paid teens to install spyware is “no saint”? You don’t say it.
The difference between Apple and Meta is that Apple has never promised companies huge rewards by protecting people’s privacy. It said, “Yes, if you take advantage of people’s privacy, we don’t care if you go bankrupt.”
Apple is definitely a company, yes, and it does the kind of things that big competing companies do in capitalist societies, many of which are super rude. By way of contrast, Meta is a waste company that repeatedly lies about statistics, allows people to sell guns on its pages in violation of its own policies, but pulls all references to abortion pills and happily sends people down uncritical rabbit holes of conspiracy theories and extreme political opinion. Meta is perfectly happy when your Uncle Bob starts to believe the moon landing was faked by secret Kennedy clones operating out of that taco truck on the corner, as long as he watches a few ads and shows them all his tracking information for the past six months. gives .
The Macalope always wonders how valuable the private information of a group of increasingly radicalized idiots is, but apparently our entire economy is based on it because Apple just started a recession.
It’s certainly possible, as Gurevich suggests that once it destroys the rest of the tracking-based ad economy, Apple plans to roll out its own ad economy, as it will be the only one with that information. It’s already playing to its own hands with App Store searches, causing app makers to pop their apps at the top of searches for competing apps. This is certainly what a lot of people in the advertising world think is going to happen and the Macalope isn’t naive enough to think this is out of the question.
However, if that happens, it would be a serious betrayal of Apple’s image and relationship with its customers.
Ultimately, the Macalope believes that “This will hurt small businesses” is largely an evasion, as it stems directly from Meta’s marketing and phrasing of this change. The company these people are really concerned about is Meta. But even if you take it at face value, it’s just shorthand for “This will hurt small businesses that rely on targeted advertising to survive”. The Macalope’s answer to that is:
¯\_(ツ)_/¯