| The idea that a company can "sell" privacy is completely fabricated by those who are collecting vast amounts of data about users. Revenue-producing mass data collection by "tech" companies creates a "privacy" issue. Is the solution to "sell" privacy. Of course not. Data collection makes more money. That is why "tech" companies offer so many things to users for "free". There would be little or no money to be made in selling these things, relative to using them as fronts for data collection and surveillance. Apple does not try to claim, "We make no money from collecting data on Apple customers." Instead they claim they protect customers' privacy from other companies, who also want to collect data on Apple customers. When Apple itself stops collecting data about users, only then can I start to consider Cook's claims that the issue of privacy is so important. At present, Apple's actions do not match its statements. There is no privacy from Apple and the company has built datacanters to hold vast amounts of private data collected from customers. These companies have certainly swooned some, judging by the comments I see on HN, into believing they must make "tradeoffs". How did we reach a point where anyone could believe that a company who is collecting vast amounts of data on users of its products is some sort of privacy crusader or privacy merchant. Anyone who cared about privacy would not be doing surveillance and data collection. The only answer I can come up with is that these people who cannot see any alternative besides "tradeoffs" were born into a world of where companies were already engaged in dragnet data collection from the internet as a "business", and they never saw what the internet was like before this nonsense began. They honestly do not know what a reasonable level of "privacy" is because they never had it. The idea of "paying for privacy" is no different than paying protection money to a mafia or paying ransom to a ransomware group. The solution is to stop the wrongful behaviour, not to make payments to the organisations that are engaged in it. |