Apple’s Privacy is a Feature, Not a Hangup

In the latest article from CNBC, Eric Johnson starts off by telling us that Apple recently hired two Sony TV execs…and then weirdly derails the conversation to talk about privacy instead. I’m not sure what privacy has to do with Apple’s television ambitions, but there it is. His premise seems to be that privacy is holding back Apple Music’s success, so let’s talk about how Apple handles privacy.

Privacy Is a Right

Privacy should be the default of any service, period. When you’re creating a new app, service or other product, start with the premise that your users should have privacy. As an Apple customer, privacy is one of the reasons why I choose to own its products. That doesn’t make me a criminal. It doesn’t mean I’m hiding anything. It means that I have a reasonable expectation that companies shouldn’t know more things about me than is necessary to build their products.

Glenn Greenwald, in a TED Talk called Why Privacy Matters, said it best (emphasis mine):

Over the last 16 months, as I’ve debated this issue around the world, every single time somebody has said to me, “I don’t really worry about invasions of privacy because I don’t have anything to hide.” I always say the same thing to them. I get out a pen, I write down my email address. I say, “Here’s my email address. What I want you to do when you get home is email me the passwords to all of your email accounts, not just the nice, respectable work one in your name, but all of them, because I want to be able to just troll through what it is you’re doing online, read what I want to read and publish whatever I find interesting. After all, if you’re not a bad person, if you’re doing nothing wrong, you should have nothing to hide.” Not a single person has taken me up on that offer.

Privacy Is A Service

Now that the right to privacy is covered, it’s gotten to the point where privacy is considered to be a selling point. It shouldn’t be like this. Everyone should value privacy. In his article, Mr. Johnson compares and contrasts various free services to Apple’s paid services. To use the cliche, this is an apples and oranges argument (no pun intended). How a company implements machine learning shouldn’t mean that privacy is thrown out the window.

Spotify knows what music you like better than you do. Apple Music gives you the world but doesn’t have that same magical insight into you — but you have better privacy.

Personally, I’ve never used Spotify, so I can’t make an honest comparison between it and Apple Music (which I do use). But Apple Music is still capable of suggesting songs you might like with a weekly For You playlist. I’ve personally discovered great music this way. All I had to do to tap the Love button on songs I like, and Dislike on the songs I don’t.

In this way, you’re training Apple’s algorithms, and not sacrificing your privacy. Apple personalizes your music and keeps your data on your device.  I’m not sure what “magical insight” Spotify has that Apple Music doesn’t. Please let me know.

Apple’s privacy and machine learning include voluntary analytics. Opt-in, not opt-out.

Next up: Privacy in photos and video streaming

Google Photos organizes my photos magically in the background. It delights me that it’s somehow able to recognize my child from ages one to 15 as the same person through facial recognition software. It now has 500 million monthly active users — presumably many on iOS.

Apple’s Photos app makes me tag hundreds of photos of the same person to group them instead of recognizing them. The reason is Apple is doing facial recognition on the device instead of in the server.

Now, I have used both Google Photos and Apple Photos.  At this year’s WWDC, Apple announced that its facial recognition in Photos will finally be synced across your devices. Sure, you have to do it manually, but like Apple Music, all you have to do is tap a Yes or No button. It’s not perfect, but it’s also not inconvenient.

Semi-automated facial recognition in iOS Photos. Is it me you’re looking for?

Netflix offers up personalization of your video interests. That’s been part of their DNA since the company was founded in the ’90s as a website: Netflix.com. Apple’s yet-to-be offered streaming video service with great content from the two hotshot new ex-Sony TV executives will likely have no such personalization. You’ll probably see a top 10 list instead — but you’ll have better privacy.

Ah, here we finally get to the original premise of the article: Apple’s interest in creating videos. In my use of Netflix, it’s personalized suggestions to me are awful. I won’t bother comparing a real service to an imagined service. But if Apple does eventually create streaming video service, I can imagine that they would offer the same solution as Apple Music and Photos: tapping Love or Dislike on videos that you…love or dislike.

Let’s not forget the dedicated AI chip that Apple is working on. This chip will no doubt greatly improve the on-device machine learning your iPhone does. I’m no pundit, but it seems to me that Apple’s goal is for your iPhone to be a completely self-contained ecosystem, tailored to you. Combined with another announcement from WWDC that Siri’s knowledge of you will also be synced across devices, and you soon have services more tailored to you.

But that doesn’t mean you have to give up your privacy in order to have tailored services. Apple is working harder to make sure that you don’t have to give it up, with efforts like the AI chip and differential privacy. That, my friends, is the real Apple Tax. When you buy an iPhone, you’re buying (or maintaining) a private lifestyle.

Tally It Up

Apple can do this because it owns the hardware that these other services run on top of, as well as prioritizing itself as being customer-first (as any retailer should). The debate here seems to be cloud-based machine learning versus on-device machine learning. Spotify and Netflix don’t have hardware, and they aren’t going to hand Apple their algorithms and switch to on-device machine learning.

But even with cloud-based machine learning, it should still be possible to protect user privacy. The key difference here is that Spotify sells user data to advertisers. Google does too, even though it does own its own hardware. Netflix doesn’t display ads and as far as I can tell, doesn’t share user data.

So frankly, Mr. Johnson’s argument doesn’t make sense. Netflix can personalize without giving up user privacy (unless I’m mistaken). Spotify sells user data DESPITE having a paid subscription, and Google sells user data DESPITE having hardware and paid subscriptions like Google Music and YouTube Red. It’s because they prioritize advertisers over users.

If Apple decides to create a streaming video competitor to Netflix, there’s no reason why it can’t have a great service without selling its users. Besides differential privacy and on-device machine learning, all Apple needs to do is create a new section in iOS Settings (or streaming video settings like Netflix) called Interests. Customers can check boxes next to video categories they like, and algorithms can deliver exactly what Apple users want—all on the device, without worrying that their data will be sold to advertisers.

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