Apple is taking another swipe at its fellow tech giants for their privacy policies, this time in a new commercial that touts Apple’s stated focus on protecting user privacy. Without naming the likes of Google, Amazon, and Facebook, the TV ad invokes what many consider to be their lax privacy stances.
“If privacy matters in your life, it should matter to the phone your life is on,” the ad says, jumping among a few dozen images of people wanting privacy, including slamming doors, hushed diner conversations, windows locking, padlocks clicking shut, and one visitor to the men’s restroom nervously seeking out the most private urinal.
Under CEO Tim Cook, Apple has promoted its efforts to protect user privacy on its devices. Unlike Facebook, Google and, increasingly, Amazon, Apple doesn’t rely much on advertising revenue, making money instead from sales of devices and service subscriptions.
At times, Apple has gone to great lengths to protect user privacy. The company, for example, has built most of its A.I. technology on Apple devices themselves, rather than storing personal data in the cloud, as most tech giants do. That decision has led some to argue that Apple is lagging Google and Facebook in the race to develop A.I. products.
But Apple has had its own privacy lapses, including a security flaw in its FaceTime app (which the company fixed last month) that potentially allowed people to listen in on users’ conversations. So far, though, the company has escaped the brunt of criticism that Facebook in particular has received for how it has managed and secured the personal data of its users. Facebook has been attempting to retool its products to focus more on privacy.
Cook has publicly slammed his tech rivals’ privacy policies several times. Last June, he chided them for not using humans to filter out fake news. A few months later, Cook called out the “data-industrial complex” that has “weaponized” personal data. And in January, he wrote a piece in Time calling for a federal privacy law. “It’s time to stand up for the right to privacy—yours, mine, all of ours,” Cook wrote.
The 45-second commercial began airing on U.S. television on Thursday, including during broadcasts of the highly rated National Collegiate Athletic Association’s March basketball tournament.
