upvote
Seriously, Apple is "big tech," but they are the only one that appears to give a crap about privacy at all. And really, they put a lot of money and effort into it.

We need to give kudos when they are due.

Apple's Private Cloud Compute should have won some kind of Nobel Privacy Prize, which for some reason does not yet exist.

reply
They still don't let me install uBlock origin + noscript. Whitelisting per-domain and per-site what can run Javascript does more for my privacy than anything else, and I can do that with firefox on linux and android, but on iOS I'm not allowed to install firefox.

There's obviously no real technical limitation since if you live in the EU you can sideload an alternative browser in theory (though apple has made it unrealistic in practice since they're ignoring the spirit of the law and instead doing their darndest to resist giving users even a whit of freedom).

reply
They also don’t allow you to install Windows executables. They do allow you to run adblockers designed for Safari, like Wipr, and there are any number of noscript-alikes, like StopTheScript. I’m not saying that to be snarky, but to say that different platforms have different ways of doing things.

And Firefox is in the iOS App Store. I know what you meant to say, and that it’s not the same as Firefox on Android, but it’s wrong to say you’re not allowed to install Firefox.

reply
Apple is luxury big tech.

In this day and age, privacy is luxury, so that's what they sell.

I don't think there are any ethical motivations for them (or any other large corporation - none of them have morals so they cannot act morally). It's just that there's a market niche, so it will be filled by someone.

reply
It’s an additional layer of wall for their walled garden to keep the technically proficient users that are more likely to hop walls.
reply
money from advertising basically dwarf user lifetime purchase of privacy tax you mentioned
reply
Only thing I wish they were 20 years sooner.
reply
The person you're replying to is saying "Sites I use block all VPNs besides Apple's subscription service VPN" - I'm not sure they're not blocking it just because they fervently believe in Apple's privacy commitments and engineering :)

Only pointing this out because I love Apple's privacy story and don't want your reply to be misconstrued as sarcasm, and thus the reason why it enjoys a singular exemption is because its ineffective.

reply
I’ve never been under the impression that privacy relay is anything like a true VPN. I mostly thought it stopped BS that happens on public WiFi and public sniffing. It’s meant to protect you only until you get to a major carriers infrastructure.
reply
The design is supposed to be better than a true VPN, because neither Apple nor the exit node (Akamai, Cloudflare, Fastly) are supposed to know both who you are and what you’re doing. Of course, Apple pays them for this service, so they could exchange info.
reply
deleted
reply
deleted
reply