What about Apple?
Tim Cook was in court not long ago defending Apple against Epic Games, the company that made Fortnite. I’m rooting for Epic. Just to be clear, I’m not a gamer; I hate computer games, because the stories they tell, if they exist, are anemic. I hate Apple a lot more, though! (Almost as much as Amazon.) Just recently we discovered that Apple gave in to Trump’s DOJ subpoenas and released phone records of corporations, reporters, and at least two congressmen who Trump considered his enemies. I assume the company is not completely fascist like some German ones in the 1930s, but they’re certainly not fighting fascism!
From its birth (a bit like Rosemary’s baby’s), the company has bamboozled consumers, making products that are so propriety that they generally worked with only other Apple products. In my old day-job, managers, who stupidly loved playing with their new toys purchased from the tech giant, would struggle to make slides produced on Apple machines compatible with other machines, or vice versa, even though people were supposedly using the same software (usually Microsoft’s, so Bill Gates’s company is also culpable). Even syncing and sharing emails and data from an Apple device was torture for other device users (yes, I remember the iPhones-to-Blackberry problem—Apple won that battle…unfairly). And Apple didn’t give a rat’s ass. They still don’t, because, like Bezos’s Amazon, they think they’re the center of the tech universe!
The legendary arrogance of the corporation isn’t its only sin, of course. How dare they try to monopolize the gaming and music industries? They’ve tried to monopolize the ebook industry too (there’s some weird comfort in that they compete with that evil retailer, Amazon). They farmed out most of their manufacturing to China in order to pay workers less and make more profit, to the detriment of US workers, and they signed deals with that fascist-capitalistic state that would never be permitted in the US. And they’ve invented an anti-tracking app to combat tech spying (I doubt it blocks their own tracking!)—that’s one of the biggest tracking culprits claiming they can police themselves. C’mon!
It’s eerie. You’re on Amazon, or some other retail site, looking at product X; you go to Facebook and an ad for X pops up. Same for most social media. It’s like you’re being spied on. Well, it’s not “like”—you are being spied on! Facebook and Twitter and other “social media” sites make tons of money by using tracking data provided by other retailers, including Apple, to target you with ads. Zuckerberg’s Facebook is the chief culprit, and he’s been at war with Apple over it. (Google lurks in the background, slyly collecting and selling info too, that info obtained from every Google search and every gmail you make—if you think the latter’s free, think again.)
So Apple decided to offer an app that will stop the spying. This is like giving the fox the only keys to the hen house. What about Apple? Who’s going to police them in this and many of the company’s other nefarious activities? The US seems to be inept when it comes to policing tech (or the Good Ole Piranhas make sure the government’s hands are tied to protect their rich, fascist friends).
I don’t trust any retail sites or social media sites on the internet. Period. Everyone’s spying on everyone else, collecting everyone’s personal information and handing it out to anyone, including Russia’s GRU and SVR, and many of those US companies who spy employ lots of bots and people to do it. That’s you they’re spying on! That’s your information you no longer control!
Younger generations don’t seem to care about this spying and sharing of information. They stupidly share personal data all the time…willingly! They’re the majority, but lots of people are complacent about their personal info now. The elderly have no idea because they’re not as tech savvy, so they’re often exploited. (You wonder if the young are truly tech savvy too, i.e. not aware of how much their cherished tech exploits them.) Many people forty and younger often seem to be narcissistic fools, posting Facebook pics showing where they’re at, for example, which often means they’re announcing to the world they’re not at home, a message to thieves to rob their houses. They proudly show vaccine cards and other key documents online; they talk about health and financial problems. In short, their lives are an open book any bad actor can read and exploit, including Putin’s GRU and SVR agents!
The elderly at least have the excuse that many aren’t computer savvy. They’re often gullible targets because of that. Everyone else can give up their privacy too, not just the young. And everyone can be a target for ransomware and other scams (a new one arrives every day on my machine—don’t click on those links!).
Is Facebook or Apple as bad as the SVR? In a way, Facebook and Apple are worse. First, hiding under their corporate cloaks, they are willing collaborators with Russian, Chinese, and other agents, if only for not protecting us. Apple’s corporate ties with China are particularly dangerous; and we all know what Russian agents did in the 2016 and 2020 elections. Second, they’re both guilty of offering information to anyone wanting to target ads to consumers for everything from popcorn to porn. It’s all about greed. Their business models, along with Google’s and other competitors’, go far beyond e-connecting people, because they make a lot of money targeting their users.
Apple just might be the worst of the bunch, though. The idea that they’re policing other apps would be laughable if it didn’t make me grimace. It all started with Jobs and Wozniak’s toaster and their monopolistic tendencies, all and generalized and continuing today. The policing initiative and attack on Fortnite just represent the tip of the iceberg for consumer atrocities committed by the company—and that’s without considering the latest collaboration with Trump’s DOJ. There’s nothing altruistic about them. Apple is fighting in a new cyber war between rival corporate gangs, and consumers are caught in the middle. The other combatants are Big Tech tyrants too. All of them are willing to squash our liberties in order to make money!
My recommendation? I don’t have one! It’s a brave new world. Governments can’t compete with Big Tech’s multinational giants, and the latter are out of control. Like it or not, we’re being spied on and controlled by Big Tech…and it will only get worse! There are only two possible solutions: Invent a time machine to take us back sixty years, to better times before the internet. Or, we can flee to a desert island, where there’s no internet, to live the happy life of a recluse. Otherwise, you’ll just have to grimace and bear it!
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Comments are always welcome.
Leonardo and the Quantum Code. You saw the cover reveal last week (also at left). Here’s the summary of this new novel in the “Esther Brookstone Art Detective” series: Trouble again finds Esther Brookstone on her home turf. An old friend from her Oxford days is developing encoding and decoding algorithms that involve entangled quantum states and quantum computers, all motivated by some of Leonardo Da Vinci’s ideas found in a newly discovered notebook of the artist. His project is financed by MI5, but both the Americans and Russians want his results…and so does a mysterious stranger. Cloak-and-dagger suspense abound in this fifth novel of the series. Coming soon!
Around the world and to the stars! In libris libertas!
