From the linked, long Mark Zuckerberg interview:
Q: Tim Cook, the CEO of Apple, gave an interview the other day and he was asked what he would do if he was in your shoes. He said, “I wouldn’t be in this situation,” and argued that Apple sells products to users, it doesn’t sell users to advertisers, and so it’s a sounder business model that doesn’t open itself to these problems.
Do you think part of the problem here is the business model where attention ends up dominating above all else, and so anything that can engage has powerful value within the ecosystem?
And Mark Zuckerberg’s response:
You know, I find that argument, that if you’re not paying that somehow we can’t care about you, to be extremely glib and not at all aligned with the truth. The reality here is that if you want to build a service that helps connect everyone in the world, then there are a lot of people who can’t afford to pay. And therefore, as with a lot of media, having an advertising-supported model is the only rational model that can support building this service to reach people.
That doesn’t mean that we’re not primarily focused on serving people. I think probably to the dissatisfaction of our sales team here, I make all of our decisions based on what’s going to matter to our community and focus much less on the advertising side of the business.
But if you want to build a service which is not just serving rich people, then you need to have something that people can afford. I thought Jeff Bezos had an excellent saying on this in one of his Kindle launches a number of years back. He said, “There are companies that work hard to charge you more, and there are companies that work hard to charge you less.” And at Facebook, we are squarely in the camp of the companies that work hard to charge you less and provide a free service that everyone can use.
I don’t think at all that that means that we don’t care about people. To the contrary, I think it’s important that we don’t all get Stockholm syndrome and let the companies that work hard to charge you more convince you that they actually care more about you. Because that sounds ridiculous to me.
Shots fired.
Apple cares about its customers, because its customers are who give it money. Who are its customers? The people who buy its products. Facebook cares about its customers, because its customers are who give it money. Who are its customers? The advertisers who buy ads.
Zuckerberg is so bad at this stuff. His entire rebuttal amounts to “Apple Tax!”. He’s like an internet troll. The fact remains that Facebook profits by selling your data and has been unethical in how they’ve handled it. Cook is completely correct that without some sort of legislation, companies like Facebook have proven, and written in internal memos, that growth trumps all other concerns.
It’s just a matter of visualizing the transaction, as a user. Many users decide that their personal privacy has little value, and that’s fine. They get wonderful products from Google and from Facebook, and what they trade in is their privacy. If they don’t feel it has value, then that is a really good deal for the consumer!
We may look at that trade-off and feel, “no, my privacy has value, so I choose instead to use dollars instead of that to pay for these products.”
I’ve seen the occasional comment about how people already know they’re signing away their privacy when they use Facebook or Google, and so they shouldn’t be aghast when revelations come out like those that we’ve seen the past couple of weeks. And sometimes I see responses that that’s blaming the victim or whatever. I think that’s beside the point. It’s just valuation: what price tag do you put on your privacy? If you believe that your privacy is out there anyway, that there is no way to avoid it anyway…well, then it has little value and you might as well leverage it to get more free or very inexpensive stuff. I don’t see a problem with that world view.
Zuckerberg would have a leg to stand on if Facebook had not repeatedly shown indifference to our privacy.
The problem is that many people aren’t signing up, explicitly, for what Facebook does with user data. One of the central issues with the Cambridge Analytica scandal is that only 790,000 people took the quiz that provided their data but Facebook allowed the app to collect data on all of their friends which is how we got to 50m. Most of those 50m never agreed to share that data with CA. Zuckerberg should clean his own house and STFU until he does.
The companies that “work hard to charge you less” are able to do it primarily because the companies that (supposedly) “work hard to charge you more” did all the hard work before most folks even knew it was a thing.
Amazon is able to deliver a cheap tablet because Apple developed the entire supply chain, the engineering, the R&D, the machines to make the products, the silicon, the software, and the go-to-market strategy. A bunch of half-assed companies replicate the work, resell it to other companies and those companies slap their brand on it. Then they have the audacity to throw on a mock turtleneck, pretend to be visionaries, and say, “Of course it looks and works like that. How else could it be?”
The little bird on the elephant’s backside is not working just as hard as the elephant. He’s just getting a free ride.
Zuckerberg has a leg to stand on in this. Has Cook or Apple ever acknowledged or apologized for giving complete screen permissions to Uber without informing users. That incident to me, while relatively short-lived in the press, was the biggest peek behind the curtain. It showed that Apple is just as willing as the others to mortgage user privacy if they see an immediate, short-term benefit. Especially as this came to light after Cook threatened to pull Uber for tracking users.
Zuckerberg is such a hypocrite. He wouldn’t know the truth if it was a bus and it just ran him down.
“But if you want to build a service which is not just serving rich people, you have to build a service that commoditizes everyone else.”
Fixed that for you, Mark.
Except that humans are very bad at evaluating things, particularly amorphous things like privacy. Even more so when the terms of use are written by lawyers.
What percentage of users have, for example, downloaded their Facebook file? I’d guess less than 1%. And you can easily find instructions.
Is “I don’t care if terrorists use FB to kill people” Boz still there?
Apple initially gave Uber that entitlement because the early versions of the Apple Watch couldn’t handle rendering the Uber map. The workaround was to render the map in the frame buffer of the phone and send it to the watch. We don’t know what precautions were taken in reviewing the Uber app while it had this entitlement. We don’t know that user privacy was ever in jeopardy.
Except the entitlement enabled Uber to look at the screen even when the Uber app wasn’t in the foreground. You’re right that we don’t know what precautions or monitoring were undertaken because that was never shared publicly. It’s not like Uber, particularly of that era, is the most aboveboard and trustworthy company. But that’s part of the point, typically when something like this comes out, someone like Apple, Google or Facebook go out an explain in order to tamp down FUD. Instead Apple just waited for it to go away, which is a bit more suspicious.
Yes, that was the purpose, except the entitlement allowed access even when Uber was on top. Uber had also shown willingness to go beyond official limits and did not care much about user privacy.
And the privilege wasn’t disabled after the Watch was able to render on it’s own, it was disabled after the privilege was made public.
I get that, I do (this applies to Rick’s post above as well). Just like with anything, we sometimes think something is worth X but later decide it’s worth Y. I would imagine that right now some segment of users is going through that reevaluation process right now. Some might decide, “OK, I’m still good with it, I still value the money in my bank account more than what I think I’m giving up in privacy,” and that’s OK…at least now they have been spurred to consider it more fully.
#deleteFacebook
Well, I don’t have the option of trading money instead of data for Facebook and there’s not an equivalent social network where that’s an option (and I wouldn’t trust FB to not sell my data if they started a direct pay option at this point).
Again, it’s not really about the direct connection between what someone decides to trade off and not. It’s that FB trades all kinds of data about me even without explicit permission (see above).
I think the Jobs video posted here awhile ago sums it up best – ask people, explicitly and repeatedly when sharing personal data. That way there’s no confusion about what’s happening
Right. If Apple isn’t PERFECT then they’re just as bad as Facebook. In some highly simplistic world, I imagine that’s true. Here, though, it’s just silly.
No, Apple is definitely better than Facebook, but Apple doesn’t inherently care about your privacy any more than Facebook does. If Apple’s fortunes changed such that they’d need to monetize user data to continue to compete, they’d do it in a New York minute. They’re all profit oriented companies not privacy advocates.
“Apple doesn’t inherently care about your privacy any more than Facebook does”
So they’re lying to us? You know what they really are thinking? Do you have any idea how insulting it is to assert that what people say isn’t want they really think and that, furthermore, you know what they really think?
Very well said.
Agree completely. Fracas aside, follow the incentives. Apple and Facebook attend to entirely different customer requirements.
It’s the hilarity of Zuck. Intensely private man throws a fit whenever he perceives that people misuse or expose *his* personal information, but thinks his corporate behemoth has carte blanche to do whatever it wants whenever it wants with everyone else’s personal information.
Spot on. The Bezos Kindle example is about Amazon making money by selling customers ebooks through a low cost device. Logical equivalence kind of fell of a cliff there.
That’s not how ad companies work. FB doesn’t give the user data to advertisers. Not for moral reasons, but to ensure they come back. Same with combining credit file info. Basically what FB does with credit file info is combines it with their info to let you target. So if you want Gen-Xers with good credit, income >$150K, into 90s hip hop and live in NYC, LA and SF, FB will combine all that data and put it in front of them. They will not tell you who those people are. If they did, why would you go back to FB again?
This isn’t to say that FB isn’t a creepy horrorshow, but that they are creepy in a different way than is commonly thought.
Yup. Important to note those incentives don’t come about by mistake. Companies build the constraints they work within.
What are you talking about? Apple gave Über permission to screen capture their map on the iPhone so it could send an image of the map to Apple Watch to get around performance issues. Once that was fixed, the privilege was disabled and never used again. Apple and Über (a company I don’t like and don’t use if I can avoid it) have collaborated on several privacy-sensitive issues in the past and Über has not violated that working relationship ever since Tim Cook wrist-slapped them for the tracking users when the app was closed issue.
Yes, the Uber app was able to support the watch app even when the iPhone app was in the background. That makes sense. Apple was also reviewing the Uber app, so it wasn’t just a case of trusting Uber to do the right thing (which as you say, it has a history of not doing).
Apple hasn’t historically addressed stories like this. The fact that it went away likely means reporters couldn’t find anything to support further reporting.
Outside of leaks, it would be hard to get more information. And all of these types of stories go away after a while. If you ignore a story, it doesn’t get as much oxygen and the harm was based on external research rather than there being internally provided, hard evidence
Reviewing the app doesn’t tell Apple what happens in flight. Uber specifically had its app work differently when it was within Apple HQ.
This seems like a fundamental misreading of what Facebook and Google do with your data. If Coke wants to market to Gen-Xers that like Tupac, Facebook doesn’t provide that data to Coke. Instead Facebook provides Coke’s ad to Gen-Xers that like Tupac. Doesn’t make what Facebook does any less creepy (hard to get creepier than their attempts to change people’s moods and study it), but it’s a wholly different enterprise.
ETA: Note that this isn’t due to high minded principles, but to force the advertiser to have to come back to the Facebook black box for more.
Apple could have a much bigger advantage if they wanted. All of your data is stored on their devices, and we post our FB data through their devices. They make a decision not to collect and use our data in that way.
I think their incentives are different. Better to avoid touching the data This article lays out my feeling better than I can. Apple also tried its hand at serving ads and killed it not because of high minded principles, but because it wasn’t a successful business.
And I don’t know what they think, but I have never been disappointed mistrusting corporate executives and politicians.
https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-03-30/apple-and-microsoft-are-healthier-than-facebook
And don’t forget companies like Cambridge Analytica who have nothing to do with advertising. Facebook just flat out sold them our data. And the worst part is, Facebook is still claiming that CA got the extra data by violating the FB rules. That is either not true or Facebook failed at setting up their system to not allow someone to break the rules. Are we supposed to believe that they allow their customers to operate on a trust basis?
Your assessment of this is pulled directly out of thin air. Apple’s job would currently be easier if they didn’t care about privacy. They are literally making it harder on their software engineers so that they can respect our privacy.
You are saying things that you think are true but that have no basis in fact or evidence. It makes all of your arguments hold less weight.
This is stupid, It’s like asking the president of Hilton Hotels why they don’t use the same business practices as, say GM…people are only comparing Apple to Facebook because they’re both successful Silicon Valley companies, despite the face that they’re completely different businesses.
Latest version of the Facebook app is making this an easy choice: it’s never been this buggy.
iAd wasn’t a successful business, true, but the WHY is important. And the major why is that Apple valued its customers’ privacy over its advertisers’ ability to mine data, combine data, and directly target.
iAd’s broad, build-to-protect-privacy demographics are a hard sell when companies like Facebook exist that will not only let you target an individual human being directly, but tap into a deep graph of their personal data and connections, and even do things like roll their credit file data into your ad buys.
Many people aren’t signing up at all. If Facebook is scanning your contact list, there’s no guarantee that any of those contacts signed up. If Facebook is reading your conversations, the other end of the conversation might not have consented.
FB and Apple also differ in GOGS and labor costs (also incentives).
FB’s “natural resource”, or data, is obviously generated and submitted by its users. Hat off, MZ, as Apple doesn’t have an equivalent advantage.
This might then raise a question about the actual price FB users currently “pay” for the service: how much is their data worth, how much is their time worth? Apple’s “high prices” might not be so high after all.
I have often wondered what the price of a hypothetical paid Facebook would be. But I would not pay Facebook that to not violate my data, but only because I wouldn’t trust them not to double dip.
I see what you’re referring to but Apple’s privacy policy is worth reading before entertaining something like this.
Regardless, Apple’s GOGS is simply not comparable to a company like FB. FB “builds” its product from user submitted content. That’s a profound advantage, one it shares with others in social media, but not with a company that ships a physical product.
The only point in exploring this was to look at MZ’s critique of Apple’s pricing model.
It’s not black and white. Each of them have valid points… neither Facebook or Apple are angels.
Each company exists for one reason – to get as much money from their customers are possible. Both companies have different ways to achieve this.
They’ve only been “spurred to consider it more fully” because Facebook got caught in a damning controversy.
So the data collection is ok NOW just because Facebook got exposed?
The extent of Facebooks data collection has never been ethical. Particularly on Android where they are collecting data and building profiles on individuals who are not even the user, by mining Android users contacts/call logs/SMS etc.
Its all rather sickening. And I just don’t see how it can be justified as NECESSARY to operate. They don’t need to mine Android users unknowingly. I’ll never accept that is needed to operate. They can generate revenue without being sleazy and reckless.
“Each company exists for one reason – to get as much money from their customers are possible”
Well, yes, that’s what I said. You’re imagining things about what you think I said, as opposed to what I actually said.
“Each company exists for one reason – to get as much money from their customers are possible. Both companies have different ways to achieve this.”
Yes. Again, that’s what I said. Apple works to extract as much money as possible from its customers (eg, by charging high prices). Facebook works to extract as much money from its customers (eg, by giving them valuable product information, where “product” means people).
And no, it’s not black and white, but it sure ain’t equal shades of gray.
(in the future, please do actually read what I read and respond to that, rather than your imaginary version).