[throwaway3699]

Apple's marketing, which constantly gets shit on by tech professionals, does work. Those guys need a raise. Apple, Google & Amazon are equally invasive, all track usage in apps and websites on their devices, but Apple gets a free pass.

It honestly just strikes me as one gets way more favorable press coverage and everyone is swayed.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reality_distortion_field

[flavius29663]

Apple makes the bulk of their money from devices, Google from selling your data. I don't see how you can't see the difference. Sure, Apple is not pure, but their ad revenue is like 1 billion dollars (out of 272), compared to 80% out of 196 for Google.

[dvfjsdhgfv]

It's because Google and Facebook do much worse things, and Apple is shouting: "We don't do these (specific) terrible things!"

This is really an excellent marketing strategy. Ask anyone and they'll tell you that Facebook is trying to sell your data and Apple is a privacy-focused company.

[throwaway3699]

G&F do worse things?

- As far as I can tell, Apple still has extensive analytics about App Store usage, iOS usage. Google does too, but they aren't pretending Android is private, just private from anybody not called Google.

- That data is considered "first party" so Apple gets a massive exception when it comes to running targeted advertisements. iAd 2 could be just round the corner, and after crippling AdMob and FB it's highly likely it will be more profitable this time.

- Anything in iCloud (files, photos, text messages, browsing history) is accessible to law enforcement. Apple China keeps their encryption keys on the mainland.

[jquery]

It’s bad faith to call them “equally invasive”, if you take the time to understand how Airtags actually work and compare them to Sidewalk.