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Comment by cshenton | Hacker News Reader

It's probably not correct to say the stance is insincere. If it is purely profit motivated, then it would be quite sincere of Apple to say they care about privacy, in the same way it's sincere of them to say they care about quality. They may or may not care about the quality intrinsically, but they certainly care that it allows them to charge more for their product.

So long as there's a disincentive to lie about privacy, caring about it for profit reasons is still caring about it. Since privacy is trust based, destroying that trust would destroy a large chunk of the perceived value of the products.

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I completely agree, and given their competitors' stances on privacy, it most certainly gives them a way to differentiate themselves and provide an advantage in ways that others can't (or don't/won't).

If they can provide value to customers through privacy and security in their products, that adds customer value to their products, which ultimately improves their bottom line.

Privacy is privacy no matter what the motivation.

Edit: We can ponder whether or not their motivations are sincere or not, but it may be a good business move in the long term as well as a genuine value for a person's privacy.

I generally agree with your statement, but Apple goes a step further to say they believe it is a human right. That feels a little forced from a massive corporation.

I get where you're coming from; I too feel a great cynicism when it comes to corporate proclamations of values. However, I also think that balancing out ever-present greed and short-term thinking are people who sincerely believe in the values presented; people working at Apple who believe that those values will lead to greater value over the long term; people working at Apple who believe intrinsically in those values being greater than the profit motive.

I think that though it's useful to a first approximation to think that a corporation always values profit uber alles, it's also helpful sometimes to step back and realize that a corporation is also in sum the actions of people who work for it. For example David Atkins has made a career of holding corporations to their own statements of values and pointing out to PR executives when 1. their actions are in conflict with their stated values and 2. when that conflict is/can lead to worse profit outcomes. After all, a corporation is not a perfect profit-maximizing entity, and can often benefit from external signals.

In short, I think that though it is easy to cynically dismiss Apple's statement of values of privacy as a human right, that statement itself can have real world effects and consequences if we choose to hold them to it.

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