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Comment by systemvoltage | Hacker News Reader

I’m not convinced. Fundamentally, Apple is a services and a hardware company. They have no business in advertisement. Do you follow Stratechery (Ben Thompson)? He writes about Apple’s privacy fundamentalism here (midway through the post): https://stratechery.com/2019/privacy-fundamentalism/

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Aside from the fact that Apple DOES do advertising, you have to understand that even outside this - your data is valuable to apple and they take steps to keep it turned on. In some cases they are contractually obligated to collect the data.

Here's the thing -- by circumstance they are like arms dealers stuck selling arms to both sides. They must entice app developers to develop for their platform, and they must also entice consumers to buy their products.

Personally I think if apple was concerned about privacy, they would let you see what your phone is doing, and let you firewall your phone (one that could block apple traffic).

What good is it to bombard a non-technical user with packet dumps and firewall settings that probably only break apps?

Apple certainly does have an advertising platform for the App Store and Apple News. They describe their privacy stance here: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT205223

Maybe this is better in practice than other ad platforms, but they explicitly say that they use information about you to serve you targeted ads such as: location, age, gender, purchases from the App Store, what news you read, etc etc.

see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24782678

You are funny. According to this article Apple makes a great deal of money from search and advertisement:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnkoetsier/2020/06/08/apple-c...

Please note that is is a blog post and not an "actual" Forbes article.

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