Eric Jackson, CNBC:
Apple announced recently that it had hired two big Sony TV executives to head up Apple’s original video strategy. It’s the strongest signal yet that Apple has grand plans to offer its own slate of original video content to compete with the likes of Netflix, Amazon and HBO.
Yet as Apple brings more high-quality content to its users, it’s likely to highlight a growing dilemma: Is it going to start offering better services to users with less privacy, or continue offering inferior services with strong privacy?
The title is provocative and, I think, needlessly so. I believe Apple is protecting our privacy, sees that as a fundamental principle. But Eric does make some interesting points, worth reading:
On Ben Thompson’s Exponent podcast from two weeks back — “Fruitful Clapping” — he discusses how Siri stops using your utterances/voice queries after 6 months. That’s problematic to improve Siri’s algorithm. You can’t compare utterances today to utterances a year ago.
And:
Spotify knows what music you like better than you do.
Apple Music gives you the world but doesn’t have that same magical insight into you — but you have better privacy.
And:
Google Photos organizes my photos magically in the background. It delights me that it’s somehow able to recognize my child from ages one to 15 as the same person through facial recognition software. It now has 500 million monthly active users — presumably many on iOS.
Apple’s Photos app makes me tag hundreds of photos of the same person to group them instead of recognizing them. The reason is Apple is doing facial recognition on the device instead of in the server.
These are all excellent points. But don’t dismiss Apple’s privacy protections as hangups. The malware haunting Windows and Android, the exploits based on backdoors that Apple protects against, are all part of the reason I appreciate Apple’s commitment to privacy. This is not a hangup.
But the question here is, where does privacy end and personalization begin? Can Siri know me, know my habits intimately, read and parse all my email, accumulate my personal preferences/habits/even peccadillos, all without breaking my privacy?
To me, that’s the core of the issue. If Apple can do that without selling that information to advertisers, employers, and insurance companies, I’m OK with that.
But where there’s accumulated data, there’s privacy danger. What if some black hat hacks Apple’s servers and uses that information to my detriment? What if an activist investor took over Apple and brought in their own management team, forced them to change their privacy policies?
Good food for thought. Personally, I like that Apple is stepping carefully here. That privacy hangup is one I can live with.
Given the focus on machine learning in this year’s WWDC it looks like Apple is going to try to move the learning to devices and securely sync using iCloud. If they can pull that off it could be the best of both worlds, great services providing exactly what you want while also keeping all that insight about you under your sole control.
Certainly a balancing act. The closer you get to complete security the more ‘imprisoned’ you become. The sweet spot my reside somewhere, about 0.618 on a spectrum between Complete Security,1.0 and Total Freedom, 0.
The golden ratio has proven useful before 😉
It may be that I’m just old, in a part of my life that I find myself using the computer less instead of more. But I feel that the need to offer “better services” gets lesser and lesser. What’s so bad about the services we have now? I don’t ask a lot of Siri…but I don’t lack for the ability to get information simply by using a browser and Duck Duck Go. I don’t need Google to magically do my photos…I can curate them just fine, and the tools to do so are much better than they were ten years ago!
“But where there’s accumulated data, there’s privacy danger.” This is most succinct way of putting it. I’m going to use that. It’s not that I mistrust Google. I see commenters on The Verge getting all bent out of shape because Google doesn’t sell your data, but rather it uses it. But that doesn’t change the reality that Google is spying on me, and that because all that data exists then some bad actor might be able to get at it. I don’t see the marginal benefit of smarter technology being anywhere close to the marginal cost of risking my privacy that way.
“Hey Siri, define peccadillo” Nice vocab, Dave. That’s a new one for me.
By focusing so intently on privacy, Apple has quite literally tied a hand behind their back.
Which will make it all the sweeter when they catch up.
This stuff just shouldn’t require privacy violations. Caring nothing for privacy just makes it easier and cheaper.
Isnt this a focus of differential privacy which they started talking about last year?
Also, the linked article author LOVEs Google Photos… and seemingly does not mind the relative privacy invasion. Fine. They can choose that. Apple Photos seems to do a decent job recognizing faces for me and I don’t give up privacy. I choose that.
I’d expect a CNBC reporter to recognize the free market – these are two competing approaches and people can choose which they prefer. Apple doesn’t need to do jack and it’s tiresome of so called analysts who insist that they do if they want to survive.
Apple needs to…STFU.
I feel that same about this debate as the ACA/AHCA debate, most people are not using the right words. When debating Obamacare and Trumpcare people keep talking about “health care” when they’re really talking about “health insurance.” They’re not the same thing, the later is how we, help, pay for the former. Privacy has nothing to do with online services, but everything to do with online advertising.
In a lot of these fields of technology, slow and steady can win the race. Apple’s platforms are fully-baked before they get released and the result is that catastrophes are nearly impossible, people actually use the services regularly and long term, and their interfaces gradually become so intuitive that yet more platforms are built directly atop.
Setting aside the political stuff… privacy certainly affects services. Tracking you and learning all about you lets services be tailored and more useful to you.
Or you could. Why are you still around anyway?
Apple always champions “it just works.” And now it also champions “privacy”. Problem is .. does it just “work” when you tag your wife face on iPhone photo and that tag doesn’t carry to your other devices? No, that simply doesn’t work.. and I refuse to use it.
The fact that Apple allow this to happen, the fact that they didn’t think it’s a “bad idea”, tells me they’re too hung up on “privacy” for their own good.
I agree with the article. “Just works” should come first before privacy. Without it, there’ll be no Apple we know.
I disagree with this entirely. Apple should not put services into the wild until they can do so without compromising your privacy. Their priorities are correct on this matter. The marginal benefit of the improvement in services at this point is less than the marginal cost of removing the privacy-safer option. You can still use Google Photos on your iPhone and Mac.
Apple keeps Siri data longer than this articles implies. They use all Siri requests anonymously for up to 2 years to improve the algorithm… they keep it tied to you using an anonymous ID for 6 months but they keep it completely anonymized for much longer to help improve accuracy and collect statistics on requests.
https://www.wired.com/2013/04/siri-two-years/
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