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by talldayo 652 days ago
> Google Play Services is not open source and undoubtedly collect lots of data for Google

Google Play services is not everything though, and Android being what it is, you can actually replace and spoof most of these features to your heart's content. Having used Android without Play Services for a few years now, I honest to god do not notice the difference. microG coming preinstalled on most Android derivatives helps a lot there.

> Privacy is a selling point, so they’re incentivized to build robust privacy features.

Problem is, that's a tautology. Apple says that, and certainly stand to gain quite a bit from claiming it. But nobody is holding them accountable besides themselves; if Apple was asked to compromise their privacy by a third party, their users may never know. Nobody can earnestly say that iOS is a comparatively private operating system, because we literally cannot see how it behaves!

Apple's approach to "privacy" is publishing whitepapers and then absolving themselves of real accountability. That's how they approached iPhone security, that's how they approached Mac security, and lord only knows how they approach iCloud security. When you say that Apple is "privacy conscious", you mean to say they market privacy better. You don't know how conscious Apple is of privacy, you only know what they claim to be true.

As I said; it's not a competition. Marketing-based security is not a threat model; transparency is.