Posted on 02/01/2021 11:16:11 AM PST by Kaslin
Over these past few weeks, Apple has experienced something it isn't used to: bad PR in the wake of essentially banning popular social media app Parler from its phones without publicly providing any truthful explanation
War is brewing in Silicon Valley. A long-simmering fight between Apple and Facebook — two of the architects of Big Tech — spilled into the avenue this past week, with commercial and legal threats hitting the pages of both tech publications and broader media.
To read the Cult of Mac journalists who dominate Big Tech reporting, you’d think America had flipped the calendar back 10 years to a simpler time when Apple, Inc. was seen as some white knight fighting for innovation, user privacy, and a freer, hipper future. Facebook, on the other hand, you might read, stands for old-fashioned corporate greed.
It’s garbage, of course — the good guy part, anyways.
But why fight now? Over these past few weeks, Apple has experienced something it isn’t used to: Bad PR in the wake of essentially banning popular social media app Parler from its phones without publicly providing any truthful explanation. As its carefully crafted rebel chic began to look a more and more like polished corporate liberalism, what did Apple’s Tim Cook do? He attacked Facebook’s privacy-last profit model.
At first glance this might seem strange, but it isn’t. Indeed, fake battles and shiny objects are the core of Apple’s PR strategy.
Mark Zuckerberg and Tim Cook have been feuding over business practices and reputation for years. After reports emerged this week that Facebook is nearing a launch point for an antitrust lawsuit against Apple’s controlling and greedy App Store, Cook struck back, successfully shifting the conversation from Parler, the App Store, and antitrust to Facebook’s commoditization of its users.
It’s ground Apple likes to fight on. Why talk about how we’re profiting from religious genocide in China? Instead, let’s talk about how Apple sued mean old North Carolina for saying men can’t use women’s bathrooms and little girl’s locker rooms.
Why talk about the suffocating control the App Store exercises to ban politically or financially troublesome nuisances like the app Hong Kong democracy protesters were using to escape arrest? Instead, let’s talk about how Apple stood firm in refusal when the U.S. Department of Justice asked for help accessing the phones of domestic Islamic terrorists targeting American soldiers and office Christmas parties.
Why talk about how Apple moved first (and very likely colluded with other companies) to destroy Parler for daring to think they could build a tech company that might compete and didn’t suppress Americans’ free speech? The important thing to remember is that Facebook is bad.
Perfectly enough, the first public shot fired in Cook’s longstanding battle with Zuckerberg’s business model was during a long 2014 interview with Charlie Rose after iCloud was reportedly hacked for hundreds of private naked photos of Hollywood actresses. Let that sink in a moment: In an interview about a massive, humiliating, and illegal breach of Apple customer’s privacy, Cook turned the subject to Facebook’s privacy policies.
To be clear, Facebook is no friend of the consumer either. As Cook correctly pointed out in his Thursday speech attacking the social media site, their business is mining our data with a deeply disturbing level of granularity and invasiveness obscured behind hundreds of pages of legal “privacy agreements.”
Their world is built around constant and mindless addiction to a flashing advertising platform, powered by short and empty endorphin bursts. Facebook, like all of its peers at the pinnacle of the Valley, takes more from us, our children, and our society than it gives back.
Of course, a company that profits from the vast Chinese slave state doesn’t really care if Facebook mines you for cash, and just behind the thin rebel veneer and corporate libertarian buzzwords lies Cook’s true motivation for war with Facebook: control. Here’s more from Cook’s speech:
What are the consequences of prioritizing conspiracy theories and violent incitement simply because of the high rates of engagement?
What are the consequences of not just tolerating but rewarding content that undermines public trust in life-saving vaccinations?
What are the consequences of seeing thousands of users joining extremist groups and then perpetuating an algorithm that recommends even more?
It is long past time to stop pretending that this approach doesn’t come with a cost. A polarization of lost trust, and yes, of violence.
See, in addition to having a different but similarly unethical business model, Zuckerberg is the sole tech titan to push back on the woke left’s plan to control and censor speech and people deemed threatening to the woke left.
This doesn’t mean he’s come up with better solutions, though. Faceless foreign organizations performing external fact-checks on conservative American media, for example, are an outgrowth of Zuckerberg’s resistance to becoming the arbiter of which speech is true and which speech is not allowed — a role Cook, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, Twitter’s Jack Dorsey, Google’s Sundar Pichai, and their woke allies have enthusiastically embraced.
Influential tech journalist Kara Swisher perfectly laid out the left’s scorn for Zuckerberg not devoting himself fully enough to their new religion in a Jan. 16 edition of Politico’s Playbook, writing:
Most of all, they have tried to duck responsibility. I have always been amazed by Facebook CEO and founder Mark Zuckerberg’s statement that he did not want to be an ‘arbiter of the truth.’ My question for him: Why then did he build a platform that requires it?
Got that? How could they not arbitrate truth? Facebook groups, these people claim, are why Americans rejected obvious moral choice Hillary Clinton and elected bad orange man Donald Trump. If Facebook were responsible little liberals, they would rush to become “arbiters of truth” just like their properly pious peers.
Shiny garbage fights like these are crucial to Apple. They allow the first publicly traded American corporation to earn $2 trillion in a single year to play the hip, innovative rebel in a black turtleneck. They allow a company that stubbornly refuses to shift manufacturing from a communist slave state to American states to play defender of the oppressed. They allow a sprawling monopoly committed to controlling your speech to play champion of your privacy.
If there’s a path to roll back and reconfigure Big Tech’s data-mining business models, we should absolutely take it. Just don’t let yourself be distracted — Tim Cook is not your friend.
Facebook commoditizing its users is not news. Apple’s attempt to pretend it doesn’t do the same is a charade. And they should be forced to divest their app store.
“...If there’s a path to roll back and reconfigure Big Tech’s data-mining business models, we should absolutely take it. Just don’t let yourself be distracted — Tim Cook is not your friend.”
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I have to disagree with the author. When it comes to PRIVACY, Tim Cook is most definitely my “friend”. And data privacy is what the whole current feud is about.
ping
The myth of Apple protecting your privacy died when they refused the feds access to a terrorists phone, but readily turned over data on conservatives’ phones.
“The myth of Apple protecting your privacy died when they refused the feds access to a terrorists phone, but readily turned over data on conservatives’ phones.
****
Yup. Freepers have a short memory..
A raging leftard like Tim Cook, saying no to obama’s fbi? I find that laughable. He just pretended he “fought off” the fbi, but in secret, he didnt want to upset his master. Had to argue this point to our resident Apple-loyal freepers..
If you want on or off the Apple/Mac/iOS Ping List, Freepmail me.
Apple, for all of its Liberal and stupidly Progressive faults, is not pretending. It does not sell its customers’ data. Apple does not even collect it. I’ve gotten the file that Apple has on me as a customer and it’s minuscule. They know what Apple devices and software I have and when I’ve contacted them, but that’s about it.
Under the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, if it were ever to be revealed that Apple were acting contrary to their official statements on customer privacy, the officers could be held personally civilly and criminally responsible if those discoveries had an adverse impact on Apple’s stock valuation. This would. The fines would be $10,000,000 to $20,000,000 and prison sentences of 10 to 20 years. . . and those are personal. The fines can’t be paid by the company.
That’s the crux of it. The woke mob that makes these decision appear to have colluded to destroy these small upstarts, and on spurious grounds. There is far more hatred, racism, incitement and the like spewed on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook etc but you don’t see them moving to deplatform those companies. They are insiders with the same political and ideological views; and apps that were built to meet the needs of people who were tired of the double standards moved to create competing apps - this is an anti-trust issue.
It is also a free speech issue but they are not the government so they don’t have the restrictions; however I’d suggest that when an app or site gathers a certain number millions of users they should be treated like a utility. They don’t shut off you gas, electric, water or phone because they don’t like the things you say at the dinner table or to your friends. Same with these big tech companies. Treat them like utilities and take the power of censorship out of their hands.
And anyway, Dan Bongino (wishing for a speedy and happy outcome for his treatment) made an excellent point. The whole idea behind “social media” is that it is a public square to debate ideas. Good ideas beat bad ideas if they are publicly vetted. We don’t need a middle man to tell us what we can and cannot say. And if someone offends you so greatly, just block them! It’s very simple. And if it’s criminal, forward it to the authorities. They just caught a moron who posted a video of himself with 2 dead women he allegedly shot on I think FB livestream. Why haven’t they been deplatformed? More still, these apps can develop a feature where you can “turn off” certain topics, names, or posts that contain profanity or racial slurs very easily. Like in a day. But they don’t want that. They want control. Again, we don’t need the apps to be censors we are all adults we can handle it.
I’m not so sure about that. They have all kinds of data about their users, phone numbers, email addresses, the apps users download, the location of your iChat messages etc. Maybe it is true they don’t sell it to 3rd parties. But I find it hard to believe they don’t track the ads for performance that appear on the free apps and games people use from the Apple Store. Or your music preferences if you use iTunes or Apple Music or Apple video whatever they call it.
Now maybe it is true they don’t share it with 3rd parties; but I do not believe they don’t gather as much data as they are capable of at least for the purposes of improving the quality of their services. And their policies could change. Did anyone think that AWS would kick legit companies off their servers when so many people use AWS for all kinds of strange and perverse uses either directly or indirectly?
Apple’s control of the apps you’re allowed to use on your iPhone is just like IBM demanding that you use IBM approved punch cards. IBM lost on that and yes I’m that old.
Neither of those things occurred. Apple has always responded to legal search warrants. In the case of the terrorists, Apple responded to a legal search warrant for the contents of the terrorists’ iCloud backup files and supplied them.
Apple then volunteered to assist the FBI and San Bernardino authorities in unlocking the iPhone 5s that San Bernardino County Health Department owned and had issued to the shooter. Apple was turned down. In the fumbled efforts of the FBI and San Bernardino IT specialist, they succeeded in not only locking the phone, but changing the Terrorist’s AppleID, making it impossible for even Apple to unlock it.
The FBI went to a San Bernardino Magistrate Judge with an All-Writs Court Order an FBI lawyer had prepared and got the judge to sign it, ordering Apple to create a new version of iOS that bypassed the security of iPhone and provide it to the FBI. This was NOT a search warrant. It was also an illegal application of the All-Writs Court Order because it required Apple to do work not in the normal course of its business that in addition would damage its business. The order required Apple to give the FBI a means of unlocking not just THAT terrorist’s iPhone, but ALL iPhones, everywhere. They wanted what was characterized as an FBiOS. . . An iOS that would bypass users passcodes and encryption. Apple challenged that order in court, pointing out the US Supreme Court had constrained such All-Writ orders years before.
In addition, the Federal Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA) of 1995 prohibited exactly what the FBI was trying to get Apple to be required to do... which was that CALEA prohibited any law enforcement agency or court from requiring a manufacturer of communications equipment (such as Apple) to make any changes to weaken any encryption or device security. Oops!
Apple was on solid legal ground.
On the claimed assistance for the conservatives, Apple received legal (?) search warrants for the data from their iCloud Drive backups. It was provided as Apple has always done per search warrants. I do have questions about the proximate causes for the search warrants. That will have to be fought, hopefully in a fair court.
Incidentally, Apple never had possession of the terrorist’s or the conservatives’ iPhones to hand over the data stored on those devices.
But, Savage Rider, these days, the Feds and many police agencies don’t need Apple to unlock iPhones or other makers’ phones.
The FBI has at least two different technologies that can brute force passcode on iPhones by bypassing the lockout timer. The two major ones are Cellebrite and GreyKey.
What the FBI and their tech boxes can’t get around is a hardware input delay which limits how fast any system can reset to accept another passcode and the time before the next try can be made. This is ~1.2 seconds. This is short enough between trials not to irritate a human, but an eternity to a computer. The computer can try four to one-hundred characters very fast, but to see if the iPhone unlocks takes 1.2 seconds before it can put in the next try.
If your passcode were only four numbers, the original simplistic passcode, only 104 or 1,000 possible passcodes existed. To try all of them, the machine would need slightly over 1,200 seconds (there’s some overhead time) or about 20 minutes. A six number passcode, 106 or 1,000,000 pass numbers would require about 14.5 days.
Toward that end, use a complex alphanumeric plus symbols passcode of at least seven characters, preferably eight. For example: Am£2}°[
There are 223 characters that can be reached from the iPhone keyboard. With 7 characters, there are 2237 or 27,424,204,663,190,048h possible passcodes. They don’t need Apple’s assistance to unlock iPhones and Apple can’t do it anyway. There’s no back door. To be really secure, let’s add more characters. Now, let’s consider the case of our 7 character alphanumeric+symbols passcode... would you think that having the FBI’s cracking machine trying to crack your iPhone’s passcode for more than 8,696,158,251 years to try all the possible passcode would be sufficient to keep your data safe? Perhaps you’d be satisfied with just ~38,996,225 years... you could keep it busy with just a six character passcode. For those who aren’t want to wait around, a five character complex alphanumeric+symbol passcode would let the agents go home after only ~17,487 years!
So, you can decide how secure balanced by how convenient your unlocking should be.
You and I are close to the same page on this. Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely. . . we see this with all of these companies, Apple included. The App Store is a good example. Curating to keep users safe from malicious criminal intent has now morphed into keeping them "safe" from unsure thoughts according to "chairman Cook". That’s opinion and subject to Cook’s whim, or the status of his breakfast. Corrupt.
They track that kind of stuff only to better serve you what you want in music. It’s not sold to third parties. It’s not shared outside of Apple. If any data is to be Shared, they’ll tell you. They do gather data for service improvements but you can opt out and in fact you opt in.
‘Many things are happening I never thought would but my ability to be surprised died a long time ago with these people.
I am a very long time Apple fan (I even have a @mac.com email address, it has been decades since they became unavailable to new customers) but removing Parler is difficult for me to swallow.
Does anyone have even a reasonable speculation on why that was necessary?
As an aside, do you know a good, non-AT&T wireless service and non-Android phone to replace Verizon and iPhone? G*b phone hasn’t come out yet.
“Does anyone have even a reasonable speculation on why that was necessary?”
Because Tim Cook is a BLM-loving,, woke joke who licks the butt of the SPLC, and who, like Google and Facebook, already carved out the legislation and regs they want from Jobamala and traded cracking down on The Right in exchange for it.
F*** ALL OF THEM.
This is war, and you do NOT FEED YOUR ENEMIES.
Buy NO NEW EQUIPMENT from Apple, Google, or Microsoft, buy only used when you need it;
STOP SHOPPING ON AMAZON, close down your prime membership, buy local or from anyone else, (don’t shop via Facebook either, close your facebook account), click on no ads on Youtube or Twitter or Facebook, start using alternate free speech social media.
SEVENTY FIVE MILLION of us at least voted foe Trump. We need tens of millions of Americans to kick these techno-fascists in the wallet and in the face.
tx
Because like most institutions of America, the Left targeted taking over control of everything, including the boards of directors of major corporations. The trend to use people who had been on Government Agencies on the boards to be assured they would have access to the levers of power guaranteed it would happen, plus putting people on boards who went to Ivy League Colleges instead of who rose from the ranks. They are convinced of their elitism.
Steve Jobs, despite being a Liberal, was not a Leftist, and kept Apple out of politics, recognizing that half of Apple’s customers did not agree with him. He even stated so when asked why Apple did not take a more political stance. Tim Cook is a rabid Leftists which was not apparent until he got himself firmly in charge with his cronies on the board.
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