Spoiler: this is Ars Technica. Obviously they suggest you to instead get an Apple TV so that you send your data to Apple and watch Apple ads instead (with the only argument being that "so far they do less ads").
Yup, from the Apple TV article linked in the article[1]:
> According to its privacy policy, the company gathers usage data, such as “data about your activity on and use of” Apple offerings, including “app launches within our services…; browsing history; search history; [and] product interaction.” [...] transaction information, account information (“including email address, devices registered, account status, and age”), device information (including serial number and browser type), contact information (including physical address and phone number), and payment information (including bank details).
Also 'product interaction' is an euphemism to say "if you're sick, we'll sell this information for around 80€" (I think it's close to 200$ for Americans but I don't have any contact in this industry overseas). If you have a cancer and suddenly you see an increase in ads for pseudo-medicine and other scams whose only goal is to extract all the money you have left, and if lucky, your famil's money too, that's from 'product interaction'.
So exactly how do you suppose they sync your browsing history and bookmarks between devices if they don’t store the information? And your browsing history is e2e encrypted by keys on your device. Apple doesn’t have access to your browsing history.
You can give Apple any age you want to. It’s not like it checks.
And I have no idea about the other topics you are going off on and what they have to do with Apple..
Are trying to say it’s not possible to write terms that give them the ability to sync your history without also letting them mine and sell all the insights from it?
From a technical level, exactly how is Apple mining your browsing history and bookmarks if they are end to end encrypted and they don’t have access to it?
I am so curious to learn more about this. Are there any extensive write ups of the mechanics of identification, price points, whatever? Or is it all insider baseball because it is distasteful?
Many tens to hundreds of dollars for that single datapoint is incredible. I have naively assumed we were just packaged up in aggregate and never thought more deeply than that.
What are the most valuable data? Pregnant? Wedding? Divorce? Illness? Home purchase?
What are you going to do with an iPhone without Apple? Yes you can use an Android without Google. But the percentage of people who do so outside of China is meaningless.
It would be a horrible user experience if it didn’t keep track of the series I’ve watched and where I was in shows so I could pick up and watch where I left off on a different device.
This isn’t the iPod days where you would sync your watch history with iTunes.
The entire point of the remark is that you can throw these pseudo-justifications for any and all forms of tracking, since "tracking all the shows you watch" is precisely the issue that motivates TFA.
At the end of the day, they could be taking screenshots of everything you do with your TV and argue it's because of some AI system that will allow you to more easily launch whatever it is you normally do at that time of the day. If you do not see any issue with that, why would you be on this thread?
No the justification for the article is TVs that track your watching no matter what you watching and selling it to advertisers.
Apple tracks what you are watching on AppleTV only.
I’m on this thread because I understand technology.
Are you saying that if you are watching something like “South Park” you wouldn’t want the service that you are watching it on to keep track of where you are in its 25 season run?
> Apple tracks what you are watching on AppleTV only.
So the solution they propose to TVs that track what you're watching is to switch to AppleTV where Apple will track what you're watching? And you still justify this somehow?
So you are justifying it. For the record it's not just what you watch with the streaming service, it is everything you watch through their TV program.
You still do not get it: you can find a pseudo-justification for _every_ type of tracking they do to you. But none of these are really true justifications. You can do _everything_ without any type of tracking -- even the very basic premise: it shouldn't even be true that you need an account _at all_ to use an Apple TV.
AppleTV doesn’t record everything you watch on your TV like the smart TVs. A smart TV can track what you watch no matter which input source you are using.
How could an AppleTV or any device connected to an HDMI port know what you are watching on other input sources?
The AppleTV device doesn’t track what you watch at all. The AppleTV+ service knows what you watch on their service.
Their is no justification for the TV to know anything. There is obviously a reason for each service to know what you watch on their service. What exactly are you arguing? That you should be able to use the AppleTV+ service anonymously?
> AppleTV doesn’t record everything you watch on your TV like the smart TVs.
Obviously it only records what you watch through it.
> A smart TV can track what you watch no matter which input source you are using. How could an AppleTV or any device connected to an HDMI port know what you are watching on other input sources?
I thought the entire point was to _use_ the Apple TV. If you buy the Apple TV, but still use the other HDMI ports for your viewing .... why did you buy the Apple TV in the first place?
> The AppleTV+ service knows what you watch on their service.
And if you use the Apple TV, what you watch through Apple TV's TV program.
> Their is no justification for the TV to know anything.
Of course there is. They will claim this way it remembers your favorite channel, or that then they can send you spam^W updates in the schedule of your favorite programs, or whatever other crap people like you eventually end up thinking as an indispensable feature for which they happily accept tracking for.
> There is obviously a reason for each service to know what you watch on their service. What exactly are you arguing? That you should be able to use the AppleTV+ service anonymously?
That _there is_ a way to do broadcast TV anonymously. You do not need accounts, sync between multiple devices, or anything; and even if you need them, there are alternatives. That you are in error when you think that your pseudo-justifications are worth anything more than the ones Samsung will provide. The fact that that you immediately jump from "I need this" to "Therefore service provider must be able to track everything I do" is telling.
See how much the AppleTV app knows about what you watch on Netflix.
The apps voluntarily integrate what you are currently watching and in the middle of watching with the AppleTV app so you can get a consolidated view. Apple isn’t going in and monitoring any more than it’s monitoring your email when it is sent to you.
How is Apple tracking you when apps are sending information to it? Is Apple also tracking your email when companies send email to your iCloud email address?
Absolutely everyone in the Apple ecosystem complains about Netflix not integrating with the AppleTV app.
Man, how I wish there was a Netflix setting "omit things I've already watched", since I know they already know this.
I can't help wonder if they are just afraid of the offering looking more bare, or is this really such an uncommon desire to want to see "new to me" stuff and not repeat things?
The only way to have privacy from the matrix is to not participate in the matrix. That’s in fact your best option. Does one have to consume the drug of movies/tv? I realize that just suggesting something coming in between the addict and their drug causes consternation, but that also makes the point more salient.
The Apple TV box does not have a microphone and a camera, but beyond that there is absolutely no reason to think it's any more private than a "smart" TV.
There are no ads in the AppleTV operating system itself.
The only Apple “ads” I ever see are inside the Apple TV+ app (yeah, their naming is confusing…) and it’s only for TV shows they’re promoting in their streaming service.
I installed an AppleTV recently, so I don't have much experience. But the first thing I saw after the initial setup was one/third of the display advertising a TV-show on a subscription service I had to purchase. Would that count as an ad?
Apps placed in the top row of the app grid get to display content at the top area, when that app is selected. Most apps use it for things like continue watching or show recommendations.
That’s very different from turning on your TV and seeing an ad for Mercedes or whatever taking up the screen.
On the Apple TV you get ‘ads’ for the apps you have in your top row, with different levels of interactivity. Some are just logos of that streaming service, some show recently watched. The Apple TV app has full-blown ads for Apple TV+ originals.
They won’t actually let you delete the Apple TV app, but if you move it out of the top row you will never see the ads.
My parents have an Amazon Fire TV and when I go to their house and have to use it it drives me insane. Carousels of adds large at the top, banner ads as you scroll, full rows of sponsored apps. Full screen ads for random Amazon products when you pause any show you are watching. Everything you watch on Amazon’s streaming service has minute long unskippable ads. Sometimes when you turn it on Alexa will just verbally read you ads.
