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Top-level
 This #RealityDistortionField is remarkably durable. It remains intact even when rivals take the exact opposite position and demonstrate exactly what a *real*, non-pretextual pro-repair policy looks like: A key tenet of the Cult of Mac is that Apple's sins are actually virtues, because all its monopolistic conduct is in service to its users' privacy and security. 25/ 15 comments
But Apple's commitment to your privacy and security is always contingent, and when its own profits are on the line, the company will swiftly stuff you and your safety out the airlock. Apple refused to weaken its security for the FBI, but when China threatened its access to cheap manufacturing and hundreds of millions of customers, Apple eviscerated its products: https://pluralistic.net/2022/11/11/foreseeable-consequences/#airdropped 27/ Apple blocked Facebook from spying on you, but when it wanted to build its own surveillance advertising empire, it switched iOS spying back on, gathering exactly the same data as Facebook had, but for its own sole use, and then lied about it: https://pluralistic.net/2022/11/14/luxury-surveillance/#liar-liar 28/ Then there's #iMessage, Apple's default messaging tool - "default" in the sense that there's no way to use other apps without taking additional steps. IMessage has #EndToEndEncryption - but only when you're communicating with other Apple customers. The instant an Android user is added to a chat or group chat, the entire conversation flips to SMS, an insecure, trivially hacked privacy nightmare that debuted 38 years ago - the year *Wayne's World* had its first cinematic run. 29/ About 41% of American mobile phone users have an Android phone, which means that any time an Apple customer tries to have a conversation with a colleague, a merchant, a loved one, a friend or a family member, there's a 4 in 10 chance it's going out "in the clear," with *zero* privacy protections. 30/ Presumably, if those friends - or merchants, or colleagues - don't want to change operating systems and throw away their device and all their apps, you should just stop talking to them: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/tim-cook-says-buy-mom-210347694.html One of the clinical signs that someone is in a cult is that they are encouraged to isolate themselves from people who aren't also in that cult: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isolation_to_facilitate_abuse#In_cults 32/ But there are billions of Apple customers and only a small (but vocal and obnoxious!) minority of those customers are actual cult members, which means that there are billions of people who'd prefer to have private, secure communications with everyone in their lives, not just their fellow Apple customers. 33/ That's where #BeeperMini comes in: it's a third-party Android version of iMessage that builds on the work of a teenager who reverse-engineered iMessage and found a way to let Android users receive secure messages sent by Apple customers: 34/ The company claimed that there was some nonspecific way in which Beeper Mini weakened the security of Apple customers, though they offered no evidence in support of that claim. Remember, the gold standard for security claims is #ProofOfConcept code, not hand-waving: 36/ For its part, #Beeper engaged in a brief but intense cat-and-mouse game with Apple, taking countermeasures and countercountermeasures to preserve Apple customers' access to secure communications with Android users: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/12/without-interoperability-apple-customers-will-never-be-secure 37/ This is some serious upside-down cult logic. *Beeper* isn't accessing Apple's infrastructure: Apple's *customers* are accessing Apple's infrastructure. If there were no Apple customers trying to talk to Android users, there would be no load on Apple's servers. But those customers don't count. They aren't real Apple customers, because they want to do things that benefit *them*, not Apple's shareholders. In other words: they're holding it wrong. 39/ I'm Kickstarting the audiobook for *The Bezzle*, sequel to *Red Team Blues*, narrated by #WilWheaton! Pre-order the audiobook and ebook, DRM free, as well as the hardcover. There's also bundles with *Red Team Blues* in ebook, audio or paperback: eof/ |
Gregory's Server
After all, this is the company that faced down the FBI when the US government tried to force it to weaken its encryption:
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/04/fbi-could-have-gotten-san-bernardino-shooters-iphone-leadership-didnt-say
And it's true, they did! They also added anti-tracking features that shut down Facebook's ability to spy on iOS users, a move that Facebook claims cost it $10b in the first year alone (you *love* to see it):
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/05/96-of-us-users-opt-out-of-app-tracking-in-ios-14-5-analytics-find/
26/
After all, this is the company that faced down the FBI when the US government tried to force it to weaken its encryption:
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/04/fbi-could-have-gotten-san-bernardino-shooters-iphone-leadership-didnt-say
And it's true, they did! They also added anti-tracking features that shut down Facebook's ability to spy on iOS users, a move that Facebook claims cost it $10b in the first year alone (you *love* to see it):