Leave No Trace

Uncanny Valley | WIRED

WIRED

Technology

4.1 • 570 Ratings

🗓️ 30 April 2021

⏱️ 39 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Facebook, Apple, and Google may have very different approaches to user privacy, but they do have something in common: All three companies are currently being investigated for antitrust violations.

Facebook is being accused of allowing its market dominance to erode its data privacy protections. Apple and Google are being investigated, in part, for enforcing their own privacy safeguards at the expense of competitors—Apple because of the changes in iOS 14.5, and Google because of coming updates to its Chrome browser. It's a messy, complicated tangle of events. The situation also reveals the sphere of incredible power these companies operate in, where even tiny software changes can affect the data of billions of users.

This week on Gadget Lab, WIRED cybersecurity writer Lily Hay Newman and WIRED politics writer Gilad Edelman join us to talk about how giant tech companies handle your privacy.

Show Notes:

Read Lily’s story about ad tracking in iOS 14.5 here. Read Gilad’s story about how privacy and antitrust are on a collision course here. Read the New York Times story about the beef between Mark Zuckerburg and Tim Cook here.

Recommendations:

Lily recommends hugs. Gilad recommends unbuttoning one more button on your shirt than you normally do. Lauren recommends the show Call My Agent. Mike recommends crushed calabrian chilis.

Lily Hay Newman can be found on Twitter @lilyhnewman. Gilad Edelman is @GiladEdelman. Lauren Goode is @LaurenGoode. Michael Calore is @snackfight. Bling the main hotline at @GadgetLab. The show is produced by Boone Ashworth (@booneashworth). Our theme music is by Solar Keys.

If you have feedback about the show, or just want to enter to win a $50 gift card, take our brief listener survey here.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Lauren.
0:00.6	Mike.
0:01.1	Lauren, have you updated your iPhone to iOS 14.5 yet? I have a very tech reporter answer to that, which is that I do have an iPhone here that is running 14.5, but then I also have an older iPhone that is not, and I have an Android phone that, of course, is not. And so yes and no. I'd hate to break it to you, but you're not exactly the model of anti-tracking software then.
0:22.9	Yeah.
0:23.6	Don't I know it?
0:31.7	Hi, everyone.
0:32.7	Welcome to Gadget Lab.
0:33.7	I'm Michael Collory, a senior editor here at Wired.
0:36.3	And I'm Lauren Good, a senior writer at Wired, whose information is just apparently all over the internet. We're also joined by Wired Senior Writer, Lily Newman, from New York. Hello. We are also joined this week again by Wired Senior Politics writer Galad, Edelman from Washington, D.C. Hi, Galad. Thanks for having me, guys. This is the first time that you've been back on since you threatened to replace me as host, so this is a privilege for you. Well, you got the last laugh by icing me out of the 500th anniversary extravaganza. Lauren, did you guys get any fan mail about that? I did. I got a DM. Someone slid into my Instagram DMs. Note, listeners, do not do this,
1:13.5	and said, WTF, you guys did not invite GLOD, misspelled your name on for the 500th episode.
1:19.5	So you have at least one fan who is clamoring for you to participate in our anniversary episode.
1:24.2	And I'm sorry that we left you out. I forgive you. Thank you. Well, it's fitting that you bring up your Instagram DMs, Lauren, because this week we are talking about user
1:31.0	privacy. Not about Instagram, though. So this week, Apple released a software update for iPhones and iPads.
1:37.9	One key feature of the new iOS 14.5 gives users more control over how ads track them while they're using mobile apps.
1:46.7	With this software, all apps are required to notify a user if the app will be tracking their
1:51.3	activity. Apps are also required to let the user opt out of being tracked. The move has been
1:57.2	supported by privacy advocates, but it's also upset companies that rely on user
2:01.9	data to sell ads.
2:04.1	Apple's move has particularly cheesed off Facebook.
2:07.3	After all, Facebook's primary business model involves harvesting user data to improve ad targeting.
2:13.1	If Facebook knows you look at a lot of running shoes and Danish furniture while you're
2:16.9	plunking around on your phone.
	...

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