[LukeWalsh]

One highlight is that there's a heavy emphasis on private recommendations inside the news app, including magazines (the app downloads a set of articles and manages recommendations on-device). There was a slide "Apple doesn't know what you read." Apple is doubling down on not giving data to advertisers.

[LukeWalsh]

Nothing similar about private personalization was definitively mentioned for the recommendations inside the AppleTV app, however. From what I can tell Apple will be collecting viewing information, not only for content on iTunes but now, content viewed via cable subscriptions and streaming subscriptions like Hulu and Prime Video. The value proposition of this new app is "all of your content in one place, regardless of subscription." The only commitment from Apple was that they wouldn't share personal information with anyone (not that Apple won't have access to this information).

It's no wonder there wasn't a partnership that worked with Netflix here since Netflix uses information about viewing to guide licensing deals and inform what the studio should produce.

[karmelapple]

Apple News is available right now, but Apple TV+ doesn't launch until the fall. I'm unsure what the existing TV app does as far as privacy (and a quick search isn't turning up much), but I imagine as the launch of Apple TV+ nears we'll hear more about the privacy aspect of things.

I am indeed curious what the current TV app shares on an Apple TV, though.

[dmix]

Because they are charging a monthly fee to access it and don't need to sell your data as a business model.

Not having to deal with advertisers has always been a gain of paying for online services via subscription. Although some try to mix the two.

[scarface74]

Charging for magazine subscriptions hasn’t stopped publishers from selling your information to advertisers before.

[NoPicklez]

Just because you pay for a service doesn't mean that you still aren't partially the product you're paying for.

There is nothing stopping companies from selling your data despite you paying for it.

[jahlove]

> Because they are charging a monthly fee to access it

Only for the magazines, not the news.

[beenBoutIT]

If this is true Apple's not going to be able to offer you valuable insight or recommendations based on your unique reading habits. It also means losing your device is saying goodbye to your data. You can't get insight without giving data.

[dchest]

Not sure if they do this, but recommendations can be encrypted on your device and stored on their servers. They can't read it, but if you lost your device, they are still available.

[oplav]

Do they have a way of getting recommendations to carry over across different devices?

[LukeWalsh]

I assume it works like Pocket personalized recommendations in Firefox. 1/ The reading history is stored on-device, 2/ encrypted on-device, and then 3/ kept in sync with other authenticated devices that are able to decrypt the reading history (which is stored on the server but not readable by the server because it's encrypted).