Apple Reaches Deal to Take Billions of Dollars in China's WeChat

what I find extremely hypocritical and beyond nasty is how compliant apple is with china , and didn't hesitate to ban and remove homosexual dating apps just a few days ago, yet fights tooth and nail when it comes to giving a wee bit of openness in the EU, much to the chagrin of US apple users , who, for some reason, see it with a bad eye.

there was a lawsuit and they had to pay roughly 100M (think it started in france), where they proved siri was listening to you , where apple used that data, and also sold it to third party contractors I believe.

they got a deal to push google by defaut in safari and spotlight web engine.

they don't give a flying **** about freedom, ecology, and arguably privacy and advertising. yet, perhaps in some sort of cognitive dissonance, the vast majority of the userbase seems to believe that apple is nice and trustworthy. I would admit they're probably the least worst of the devils, though it seems to be more of a demeanor they're showing thanks to heavy marketing tactics , nay brainwashing. go figure

This is such an odd story.

So it's a payment processing deal?
For Apps distributed via WeChat (not the App Store)

...and at 15%!?

This feels like there's some big component we are not being told about.

And now we are wondering what Tencent is getting from Apple in return...

Damn, how many Labubu did Tim agree to buy in exchange

there was a lawsuit and they had to pay roughly 100M (think it started in france), where they proved siri was listening to you , where apple used that data, and also sold it to third party contractors I believe.

Just to be clear, what happened was that it came out Apple’s contractors ("third parties") were reviewing small samples of Siri recordings without users’ clear knowledge, as they had been hired to improve the "Hey Siri" functionality. When it came out, Apple halted the program, made it opt-in, and yes faced a lawsuit that it eventually settled (without admitting wrongdoing), while reiterating that recordings were anonymized and used only to improve Siri’s accuracy (which obviously you don't have to believe, but I see no reason to doubt them on it).

In other words, they were not selling the data to third parties (in fact, Apple was paying the "third party", not the other way around). They just had a contractor do the grunt work of analyzing Siri recordings to improve the feature rather than have Apple employees do it.

what I find extremely hypocritical and beyond nasty is how compliant apple is with china , and didn't hesitate to ban and remove homosexual dating apps just a few days ago, yet fights tooth and nail when it comes to giving a wee bit of openness in the EU, much to the chagrin of US apple users , who, for some reason, see it with a bad eye.

there was a lawsuit and they had to pay roughly 100M (think it started in france), where they proved siri was listening to you , where apple used that data, and also sold it to third party contractors I believe.

they got a deal to push google by defaut in safari and spotlight web engine.

they don't give a flying **** about freedom, ecology, and arguably privacy and advertising. yet, perhaps in some sort of cognitive dissonance, the vast majority of the userbase seems to believe that apple is nice and trustworthy. I would admit they're probably the least worst of the devils, though it seems to be more of a demeanor they're showing thanks to heavy marketing tactics , nay brainwashing. go figure

I was giong to say, if you ask anyone on these forums they go above and beyond to scream from the mountain tops that Apple isn't doing what the competitors are with privacy etc....it's asinine to think they wouldn't, even if it isn't as extreme. "I'll never use Google blah blah blah" as their iPhone sits 3 feet from them listening to every word.

Two prime examples of the virulent lazy cynicism that is as smug as it is wrong (and, obviously, intellectually lazy). Apple is very different from Google, Meta et al. Doesn‘t mean they don‘t make mistakes, but their DNA is worlds apart.