Alex_V

Regarding number 1 (the other points don’t warrant discussion IMO). All this talk stems from the recent arrival of generative AI tools. And while people immediately rushed to put them to use writing stuff, making crazy images and movies, writing reports, producing ads, making spam emails, etc., the problem is that AI continues to churn out utter garbage. We’ve all seen the reports of AI used by journalists— crap, lawyer— garbage, etc. Apple cannot afford putting out a ‘intelligent’ product that’s going to be wrong/false 30%, 20%, or 10% of the time. Are we going to tolerate an intelligent agent, that is wrong 1% of the time? Will we trust it for facts, navigation directions, and all the other applications? I don’t think so. I applaud Apple’s cautious approach on this essential technology. 

spheric said:

…finally! 

Rhetorical question: Why did Meta/Facebook take so long to release WhatsApp for iPad? Because they really don't care about your tablet computer. So, why did Facebook care so much to buy WhatsApp? For the answer to that, let’s go back to 2012 when Meta/Facebook bought Instagram to become the dominant player in social media. At this point they are feeling pretty happy with themselves raking in all that advertising money. Meta/Facebook know everything that you do on their platforms, your network of friends and family, likes and dislikes, plus much of what you do around the web because of tracking with cookies. This is a pretty sizeable amount of information on each and everyone of us. Unprecedented in human history. 

Meta/Facebook is an advertising company, about 97.5% of their $135B revenue (2023) is ‘advertising.’ But their biggest rival, Alphabet/Google (also an advertising company—$224B ‘ad revenue’ of $283B (2022)), rakes in even more money. How can that be? Well, Alphabet/Google has some distinct advantages: search advertising is huge; they own the world’s biggest TV station (yet they don't spend a cent on content); cloud services, etc all add up… But, mostly, Alphabet/Google has a phone in the hands of most people on Earth using their Android OS. Google knows what you are doing in the real world, beyond the internet: what clubs you belong to, where you shop, what you buy, and so forth… they get this data from the Android device, but also from advertising data aggregators who buy supermarket data etc.. because most transactions these days require a telephone number for data harvesting. What Google knows about us is seriously creepy, and, to be brutally honest, a profound threat to all of us.

In 2014 Meta/Facebook, (who already had a Messenger and a Phone app within Facebook) bought WhatsApp, a messenger and phone app. Why? because they didn't have their users’ telephone numbers. With WhatsApp, they have our telephone numbers, and they can now track our activities in the real world, just as Google does. And that is why the iPad app was irrelevant. Unlike Apple, who want us to communicate seamlessly with iPhone, iPad, Mac, using FaceTime, Messages, Mail etc, and therefore, they built this fantastic technology at the outset… Meta/Facebook aren't in it to provide us with great technology, they sell advertising, everything else is a cost. They bought WhatsApp because it is tied to the phone number in your phone. That's all they wanted, and iPads don't have phone numbers.

Idiocracy. 

beowulfschmidt said:

https://yalelawandpolicy.org/end-running-warrants-purchasing-data-under-fourth-amendment-and-state-action-problem

https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/closing-data-broker-loophole

https://action.aclu.org/send-message/stop-governments-massive-privacy-invasion

https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2025/01/08/2024-31486/preventing-access-to-us-sensitive-personal-data-and-government-related-data-by-countries-of-concern

https://www.newamerica.org/oti/reports/solving-the-transatlantic-data-dilemma/chapter-3-government-access-to-personal-data-held-by-the-private-sector/

https://www.wakeforestlawreview.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/Tokson_Final.pdf

https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/security/us-government-buys-data-americans-little-oversight-report-finds-rcna89035

https://www.lawfaremedia.org/article/when-the-government-buys-sensitive-personal-data

Google "government buying private data to avoid constitutional restrictions" if you need more.

DuckDuckGo returns similar results.

Interesting. 

beowulfschmidt said:

It's not so hard to understand when one finds out that the government buys that data from companies to make an end run around Constitutional restrictions on acquiring that data themselves, which requires judges and warrants.

Do you have any evidence for that? I’ve never heard of anything of the sort, except that probably the Chinese state’s has user data from domestic companies, and maybe Russia too. The point is that Google, Facebook have more data on us than KGB or the East German Stasi had on their citizens, and it’s not a problem. I just don’t get it.