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Comment by nathanaldensr | Hacker News Reader

The author writes an article on privacy, then ends the article by admitting they use Siri. The author almost certainly has no actual proof of how Apple does or doesn't use their information, but instead applies blind faith. The cognitive dissonance must be overwhelming.

I do everything the author does and I also don't use "assistants" on any mobile device or PC. If you're going to write an article about privacy and post it in HN, you should probably back that up with full action, not just convenient action.

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We all make those trade offs every day. You're likely making convenient choices that compromise your privacy every day too. Do you pay with cash for everything? Do you appear in public without your face covered? Do you drive a car?

I didn't write the article. I'm not professing to make perfect decisions. I just find the author's particular "line in the sand" amusing. "This lack of privacy is horrible, but I use Siri." It makes no sense.

When it comes to the privacy respect I anticipate from the big three, I also have a lot of trust in Apple. Not unlimited, but enough to be comfortable. Amazon’s absolutely at the bottom, to the extent that it puts me off buying a Kindle Fire. Google… I trust but I don’t know if I should.

(I don’t know what to think about Microsoft. I don’t even know if I’m being unfair by not counting them as an equal of the other three).

It would be interesting to see user studies over which platforms they feel the more trustworthy.

Honestly considering the opacity of their privacy rules, it's all about marketing and how receptive you are to it. Apple does communicate a lot more about privacy of its users, but it is unclear whether they actually are objectively better than the others big names.

From a business model point of view however, I agree that it's clear Amazon, Facebook and Google make most of their revenue out of users tracking. It is not true for Apple.

Apple is probably still the least bad of the four, but their dealing with China doesn't exactly inspire confidence from me. If they are willing to include code to censor the word "Taiwan" in iOS, who knows what else they are willing to do to appease governments. Also let's not forget they are part of PRISM and seemingly lied to the public about it.

The other three (Google, Amazon, and MS) are straight-up spyware/surveillance and barely even bother putting a pretty face on it.

Huh. Oddly enough, my positions on amazon and google are reversed relative to yours. And, I think microsoft has a decent, but not significant, edge on amazon.

I agree. Using siri is way different than covering your face in public. Anybody who is even the slightest privacy concerned shouldn't have voice activated anything.

I do not agree. Things are not binary. There are tradeoffs in everything we do. Such tradeoffs do not make his points invalid, they actually emphasize the limits of our control over privacy. I find it quite more honest and exhaustive than just winding about ads.

Selective reading. Full sentence is “I do use Siri on Apple devices. She’s not the smartest but I do have a fragile trust in Apple that their stance on Privacy is more than just marketing.”....author does say he has fragile trus.

instead applies blind faith

It is not quite blind faith. Apple have made a stand for privacy, even confronting over-zealous law enforcement over it. And nothing in their business model requires stealing a user's personal data. It would be blind faith to observe a company whose business model is entirely based on personal data and still trust them.

> thing in their business model requires stealing a user's personal data

To play devil's advocate, both google and apple's business model involves making you buy stuff. Neither requires stealing your personal data (google could provide a significant amount of value without tracking simply by acting as a centralised, trusted marketplace for ads), but both are helped by it significantly. But I do agree that given the current state of affairs, google has a lot more incentive to steal your data than apple.

Yeah, I agree, it's amusing how the author considers this to be going paranoid or something. And the link from the word "privacy" to Apple's website seems a little bit product-placementesque.

I'm moderately cautious about privacy, to the point that i use a free OS and software, encrypted messaging, no smartphone, etc., and I'm evaluating my options on what to do about the Intel ME. Using an adblocker and Apple stuff is like the tip of the iceberg.

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