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Comment by gernb | Hacker News Reader

Can I use AppleTV+ without them tracking what programs I'm watching? Can I get them to stop showing me an ad in front of each program? Can I use Apple Music without them tracking the music I listen to? Can I use the App store without them tracking what apps I browse and download? Can I remove the ads from the App Store? Can I remove the ads for Apple Music from my iPhone?

> they just ate every other 3rd party "secure" backup services lunch just like they did to the Hi-Res music industry.

Except they only control 50% of the smartphone market and 15% of the PC market. So there is still a large market they're not covering

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> Can I use AppleTV+ without them tracking what programs I'm watching?

Can I buy something from my local supermarket without them knowing what I bought? Can I create an EC2 instance on AWS without Amazon knowing who created the instance?

I don't like a super powered monopolistic company as much as the next guy and I totally agree that ads situation in App Store is not a straight business but come on.

Some people want to use their computer completely privately and that's totally fine, but when you are using a cloud service, they probably will know how you use it. What they do with that data and how they handle it on the other hand is of importance. The problem with the whole tracking fiasco starts when the provider sells your data or "access", collected using dark patterns for example to others.

  Can I buy something from my local supermarket without them knowing what I bought?

That is stupid, yes you can easily if you don't use their fidelity card and eventually that you use cash!

I interpreted GP's comment to be more about how it's inevitable that businesses track consumer patterns, because after all it's directly their data. Who bought it is usually irrelevant.

That still leaves the purchase data freely available, and if you purchase the same kinds of items regularly you can probably build a profile. The purchase data itself is still valuable and still tracked.

A bit of a tangent here, but how did you make the quoted text appear differently?

Tell me your secrets! :P

Ah ah, took me a few years before discovering this fine trick.

  You just have to let two empty spaces in front of a sentence. Not less, not more, just 2.

I don’t know about you but when I go to our local supermarket and use cash to buy a beer, the person behind the register kinda sees me and recognizes what I picked. They even happen to know my name as they live in the neighborhood. Do you cover your face when you shop? Because this is the scenario I was talking about.

Apple doesn’t control ads shown on TV outside of Apple TV+.

How will they do recommendations if they don’t keep track of what you listen to? How will they do recently played lists?

How will they know if they should send notifications to your phone for your apps if they don’t have a record of what apps you have installed? All notifications are bundled together and sent from their servers to save battery life.

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