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njbentley1 | 1 year ago
Google’s entire business model is dependent on personal data. AOSP may have privacy features that are verifiable but Google Play Services is not open source and undoubtedly collect lots of data for Google. Most AOSP-based phones all largely include GPS. Sure, you can limit what access GPS has but then you’re sacrificing features. The majority of people probably opt-in.
In contrast, Apple doesn’t need your data for most of the products / services they sell. Privacy is a selling point, so they’re incentivized to build robust privacy features. I’d love to see more commitment to open-sourcing underlying technologies but imo Apple is way more privacy conscious than Google.
I will however give Google credit for their privacy initiatives in recent years. They seem to be taking it more seriously.
talldayo|1 year ago
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.
fsflover|1 year ago
This is not even funny:
1. "macOS sends hashes of every opened executable to some server of theirs" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25074959
2. https://sneak.berlin/20231005/apple-operating-system-surveil...
3. Apple fined $8.5M for illegally collecting iPhone owners' data for ads (gizmodo.com) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34299433
4. Google collects 20 times more telemetry from Android devices than Apple from iOS (therecord.media) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26639261
5. Keeping your data from Apple is harder than expected (aalto.fi) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39927657
fsflover|1 year ago