IMO, Apple didn’t do anything that went against its privacy policies. And as I’m sure everyone knows Siri goes to the servers. A slogan though is not a statement of fact.
What I am annoyed about was that this wasn’t being handled by employees.
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Apple Suspends Program That Lets Employees Listen to Siri Recordings for Quality Control, Opt Out Option Coming
- Thread starter MacRumors
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
What I am annoyed about was that this wasn’t being handled by employees.
Siri has pretty good voice recognition, so its flaws have little to do with its ability to understand the human voice. It’s what it does (or doesn’t do) with that interpreted language that’s the problem. In other words, the programming, data and intelligence behind Siri’s capabilities just aren’t there. You don’t have to listen to voices en-masse to improve that, and I doubt the employees who were listening in were providing the information required to help either, or wouldn’t it be a lot better by now?
I’m personally not interested in intelligent assistants because of the usage data harvesting that’s either required or (more commonly) gathered anyway in order to use them. In fact, I argue very few people need or want capabilities in a voice assistant (or elsewhere) that requires usage data harvesting and storage beyond current contextual use. The only reason that would be required is if you want to predict future actions based on past actions. At best I find such behaviours in software annoying, and at worst I find them downright creepy and “stalkery”; and when I put it to others, most tend to agree. It should be clear to a user what is saved and when, but from the very beginning computers weren’t really designed that way, and now few people have a grasp on just how much is recorded and stored on our devices, and remotely, beyond what is clear to the end user.
With Siri, Apple is deliberately blurring the lines between a local-only or basic search tool and a smart (or not so smart) assistant; just like Microsoft did with Cortana before they backtracked a little due to public outcry. Notice how everything is always enabled for maximum harvesting out of the box? It’s always “opt-out” to this data collection, not “opt-in”. If these companies were really concerned with user privacy, that wouldn’t be the case. Not even the basic “Ask websites not to track me” (which has arguably little effect anyway since it’s only a kind request) was enabled by default.
I was pretty surprised (and more than a little creeped out) by how much they’re collecting for the purpose of providing suggestions in the Shortcuts app now. Shortcuts made recommendations for things like places, directions, contacts and alarms (among many other things) based on past use only as the details weren’t saved in any individual app (not even in that app’s Recents list if it has one); and as of the latest beta there’s no option to turn this off globally; you have to do this individually for Every. Single. App. At least in my testing it looked to be stored locally on the device only, and was deleted upon deleting each individual suggesting app in question. But I had previously turned off letting Shortcuts (and most other apps) store data in iCloud, so whether it actually would have synced that harvested usage information for the purpose of providing Shortcuts suggestions on other devices I don’t know. I can only guess that is the sort of thing Apple would want to do.
At the end of the day, and especially in the case of Shortcuts, it comes down to these devices trying to predict what you want to do rather than just being open and clear about what they can and can’t do and how to execute those commands effectively. I call it the “Clippy Mentality”. Clippy was almost universally hated, and for good reason. In most cases you don’t need to harvest usage information or try to predict what the user wants in order to make our devices better or even smarter. And for certain, when they get it wrong it makes them feel a whole lot dumber.
Last edited:
So you admit the ad or slogan is a lie, correct? It's not a vague statement. It can't be misconstrued. Why would Apple have huge ads about it on billboards if it isn't true? That's considered false advertisement. Pretty deceiving and shady in my opinion and many on here feel the same way.
https://techcrunch.com/2019/08/02/g...LxNN81O-Dr2dzg-oKZuQQrHEJkz5sZvDnlk8AIDye4ROA
Google Ordered to halt human reviews
Google Ordered to halt human reviews
Now you see one of the reasons why I refuse to use cloud-based speech recognition.
No, it’s a slogan and it’s not a lie as I believe these activities are in the TOS. I want these handled by Apple employees.
A slogan isn’t a literal statement of fact. With Apple having north of 500 million customers I wouldn’t expect all to have the same opinion about anything, let alone on a tech site.
[doublepost=1564846892][/doublepost]
Man, manual reviews are one thing, sabotage quite another.
We're not blindly defending Apple. We're just trying to put it in perspective. If you think Apple is "spying" on you then turn Siri off. Or give up "smart" tech altogether. Personally, I don't worry about this at all. I don't believe Apple has ulterior motives and is secretly doing something bad with my information.
So what your saying is Apple says one thing on an ad but does the opposite in the ToS? Because nowhere on the ToS states what happens on your iPhone, stays on your iPhone. To me, that's false advertisement.
By your measure, if the slogan was true you wouldn't be able to make phone calls, send texts, or send email. Snarky but the truth is that your phone is talking all the time into the aether Siri is just "one more thing". It's kind of like expecting the Big Mac in the ad to look exactly like what one would get in the restaurant.
But....I'm not complaining about it or defending Apple as my post said.
My post was bringing to light how many here have no problem with Apple collecting our data as you said.
But the hypocrisy comes into play when they complain about other tech companies doing the same thing.
Then my post was replying to someone else wasn't it?
Apple complains when they think other companies are doing bad things with your data. They think they've put enough effort into anonymizing the data that it is effectively sealed off from the baddies. It's not hypocrisy, maybe just a hint of bull****. It is marketing, after all. And Apple publishes their techniques for people who want to go read them.
There is no evidence that Apple is using your data outside of the stated TOS. Consumer protection and privacy is not an endpoint but a process and there is nothing that invalidates apple’s stated slogan.
There’s a difference between making “blindly defending” Apple a yes or no situation and realizing there are grey areas that need to be dealt with.
Well...they said what happens on your iphone stays on your iphone...that was a lie...not marketing.
Then they said they anonymize your data...maybe a lie maybe the truth.
But my whole point is how people are ok with Apple collecting their data...but vilanize other companies that do the exact same thing.
Then I was replying to another poster but I guess you identified with it enough to reply to my statement about him blindly defending Apple....
[doublepost=1564851853][/doublepost]
hmmmm...this looks pretty black and white to me....not grey.
I think your reply speaks exactly to what I was saying the whole time.
People blindly defend the Apple brand...even after caught doing what they said they were not doing....
Yes, I was addressing your post to another poster.
GE has the slogan "We bring good things to life" yet they build nuclear weapons (as well as CAT scanners). Are they lying?
And if Apple says they anonymize the data I tend to believe them because their policies are pretty upfront.
I just think people are getting really excited about something that has been known for a while.
I agree that we have known that behind the curtain Apple collects and uses our data...much the same way Google and Facebook does.
But it is ok to call them out on their hypocrisy for pretending to have the high ground.
I'm not going to stop using Siri...much the same way I haven't stopped using Google or Facebook.
There’s two sides to all of this, without any grey areas there is only blind defending and blind criticism. If it’s not 100% true it’s false, doesn’t go along with a lot of what happens in life.
Every reply...you reinforce what I said about blindly defending Apple..even when caught doing what they said they were not....
This is right, but the book 1984 is just a fictional story that doesn't make much sense and takes you right into conspiracy theorist territory.
So if that's what I do, what is it that you do? That dovetails into what one believes about that billboard and whether one wants to be pedantic about those words that were written. There was never a secret that Siri requests were sent to servers and the TOS makes mention about saving requests and using them to improve Siri. I'm unclear as to whether the TOS explicitly stated about human intervention, but it was certainly no secret about where Siri requests were interpreted.
Which leads back to if one believes that wording on the billboard is a statement of fact or slogan.
(slogan is a: "a short and striking or memorable phrase used in advertising")
Last edited:
Great post, I particularly liked the quoted parts above. The "Clippy Mentality" is spot-on!
I think we are still in an age where AI is in its infancy which is both exciting and slightly scary. But more than either of those two emotions right now the one I feel is irritated by the constant barrage of almost unavoidable algorithmic predictions that I don't want, need or even find very accurate when they are given.
If they could really predict what I actually wanted they'd possibly remark 'how rude!', before vanishing altogether.
I'm sure one day interacting with computers will be like asking a really intelligent person a question and they will have already guessed you would ask the question, and have amazing answers and resources available (and it'll probably be thought-based, not speech or typing). I hope in the future we will have resolved privacy and data harvesting issues and nearly everything will be on-device anyway.
Right now though, I'd love it if 'suggestions'-this, 'recommended'-that and 'targeted'-this-that-and-the-other would kindly leave me and my devices alone, thanks. Apple's whole 'For you' thing sends a shiver down my spine every time I read it, it's cringeworthy, not clever, IMHO.
('Now get off my lawn!'
)again...you are apologising for Apple......
False advertising is the use of false, misleading, or unproven information to advertise products to consumers.
Hypocrisy
the practice of claiming to have moral standards or beliefs to which one's own behavior does not conform.
A slogan is not necessarily false as said above in the example of GE. But I’m not blindly criticizing them or being pedantic about some slogan wording either.