The argument is that there's less profit in selling out user trust. Of course, this heavily depends on the context, especially if you have a regulatory lock-in where users can't leave. However, there are cases where keeping user trust _is_ the profitable route.
Oh you mean like when Apple spent year claiming to be the champion of privacy when they in fact recorded all of what you said all the time and send it to its team to improve Siri[1]?!
Did you see a mass exodus from Apple after that? I have seen barely any coverage this being covered outside of the French speaking world…
There's too many shady practices for the consumer to track, and you cannot even move to an alternative since everybody is doing bad stuff.
People don't operate rationally when it comes to Apple. They have been so good at manipulating people that even when they get criticism it's always in a very tone down way.
Apple privacy stance is bullshit and disgusting. I know for a fact that they collect as much information as Google (in fact in my case, looking at the takeout of data they know much more about me than Google) but the pretense is that they don't use it or sell it. Yet the average user has zero way to make sure of that and the incentive are so bad that's it just a question of when Apple stance will change (anything is possible for profits, Tim Cook has very much proved that).
If Apple was truly serious about privacy, they would refuse any type of cloud offering and completely disowned their App Store model. But the only thing Apple cares about is money, privacy is just a very easy marketing target without having to prove anything.
Microsoft is shady, Google is borderline, Facebook is careless but by far, the evilest of the bunch is Apple.
I understand where you're coming from, I'm just saying there's been many companies I've worked for where protecting the user _was_ the most profitable play. And that's what we did. Yes, you're less likely to see it in bigger corporations with ecosystem lock-in (like Apple) because the math begins to sway towards exploiting users being more profitable.
This kind of thing always starts with the free tier and then creeps into every other tier. I can absolutely see Cloudflare doing this for free tier users "in order to recover costs"
Comments
The argument is that there's less profit in selling out user trust. Of course, this heavily depends on the context, especially if you have a regulatory lock-in where users can't leave. However, there are cases where keeping user trust _is_ the profitable route.
Oh you mean like when Apple spent year claiming to be the champion of privacy when they in fact recorded all of what you said all the time and send it to its team to improve Siri[1]?!
Did you see a mass exodus from Apple after that? I have seen barely any coverage this being covered outside of the French speaking world…
There's too many shady practices for the consumer to track, and you cannot even move to an alternative since everybody is doing bad stuff.
[1]: https://www.politico.com/news/2020/05/20/apple-whistleblower...
People don't operate rationally when it comes to Apple. They have been so good at manipulating people that even when they get criticism it's always in a very tone down way.
Apple privacy stance is bullshit and disgusting. I know for a fact that they collect as much information as Google (in fact in my case, looking at the takeout of data they know much more about me than Google) but the pretense is that they don't use it or sell it. Yet the average user has zero way to make sure of that and the incentive are so bad that's it just a question of when Apple stance will change (anything is possible for profits, Tim Cook has very much proved that).
If Apple was truly serious about privacy, they would refuse any type of cloud offering and completely disowned their App Store model. But the only thing Apple cares about is money, privacy is just a very easy marketing target without having to prove anything.
Microsoft is shady, Google is borderline, Facebook is careless but by far, the evilest of the bunch is Apple.
I understand where you're coming from, I'm just saying there's been many companies I've worked for where protecting the user _was_ the most profitable play. And that's what we did. Yes, you're less likely to see it in bigger corporations with ecosystem lock-in (like Apple) because the math begins to sway towards exploiting users being more profitable.
This kind of thing always starts with the free tier and then creeps into every other tier. I can absolutely see Cloudflare doing this for free tier users "in order to recover costs"