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#252/ June 13, 2021
APPLE GOES ALL-IN ON PRIVACY
In an indication that disgust with online surveillance might be finally nearing a tipping point, last week the world's largest company doubled down on privacy.
At their developers' conference on Monday, Apple announced a number of enhancements to its operating systems that will build new privacy features into the normal operations of its devices. According to CNBC, "It’s not just a corporate ideal or a marketing point anymore. It’s now a major initiative across Apple distinguishing its products from Android and Windows competition."
Apple's new privacy features include enhancements to email; privacy reports on who's tracking you and who they're sharing it with; Siri requests that are handled inside your device so they don't go out over the internet; "burner" email accounts; a feature called "Private Relay" which acts something like a VPN. Find more details here.
Some saw this as a ploy to build another "walled garden" in anticipation of expanding their advertising capabilities. Who knows?
Many of us have been screaming about privacy abuse for years and were told by the adtech geniuses that "no one cares about privacy." We'll see. My bet is the surveillance vampires are gonna have a couple of tough years. Not only are real people getting fed up with surveillance, it's a no-lose issue for fake people - politicians.
The key point here is that after way too long privacy is becoming a mainstream issue.
Just as important as their software updates, Apple is shining a spotlight on the issue in their advertising. Here's a good spot they've been running lately.
Meanwhile, China Goes All-In On Surveillance
When the history of this era is written, one of the touchstones of good versus bad government may well turn out to be how they handled privacy, and whether they appropriated data collected by the marketing industry for surveillance of their citizens.
According to a lead story in The Wall Street Journal this week, "Beijing is calling on tech giants to share their information—and asserting its authority over data held by U.S. companies in China as well."
The story reports that Chinese leader Xi Jinping is putting all kinds of pressure on Chinese companies to share their "vast troves of data" with the Chinese government. What ought to scare the living shit out of us is that "Beijing is also intensifying the pressure on foreign firms operating in China to keep records gathered from local customers inside the country, so the government has more authority over the records."
Weak-kneed western companies are already caving. According to the Journal, "Tesla...pledged in late May to build more data centers in China and to keep information...within Chinese borders ...Tesla said it was “honored” to participate in an industry discussion on the matter." Honored.
"You Can't Make This Shit Up" Award of the Week
On the comedy side of the privacy issue, we have the clown show at the ANA. After years of opposing every regulatory initiative ever introduced to protect us from adtech creeps, this week they had the balls to run a piece in their online publication entitled "Advertisers Must Get on the Right Side of Privacy." It talks about how advertisers need to respect consumer privacy. Someone shoot me.
I would like to suggest to whomever decides what awards to give out at Cannes that the ANA should be given a Lifetime Achievement Award for Horseshit and Hypocrisy. I'll be glad to pay for whatever one of those gold lion things costs.
Facebook Loses Last Likeable Person
Carolyn Everson, Facebook's head of ad sales, gave Z-bag the big foam finger this week and announced she was leaving in the fall.
According to AdAge, Everson was the one who cleaned up the messes Zuckerberg and Sandberg left all over the floor for years, and was the reliable, stable face of Facebook to most of its big advertising clients.
If you think losing an ad sales person isn't all that important to a company as big as FB, think again. Ad sales provide 98.5% of Facebook's revenue. From a financial standpoint all Facebook is is an ad sales company.
Apparently Everson was pissed that she didn't get promoted to a job she should have gotten. I suspect this will not sit well with some of Facebook's biggest clients. If there's one thing I learned in the agency business it was that clients hate instability.
Joke of the Week
The French competition watchdog has fined Google €220 million for their monopolistic practices. Specifically they're accused of giving preferential treatment to their own stuff (which, btw, I wrote about in BadMen five years ago.)
Google spends €220 million a year on pizza. This fine is about as likely to change them as telling your 16-year-old that if he doesn't stop throwing his clothes on the floor you won't let him read Tolstoy anymore.
Memo to UFOs
Dear UFO Beings,
Hope you are doing well during these difficult times. We have been reading about you a lot here on Earth recently. Even the Pentagon is talking about you and those guys don't talk about nuthin'!
Well, anyway, here's the thing. We have a couple of Billionaire Space Invaders heading your way soon. We just want you to know that if you need them for anything, or if you want to study them, or keep 'em around for fun or something, it's fine with us.
You don't have to fill out an application, or send us your 3-digit credit card code or anything. You can just have 'em, no questions asked. If you like these two we have another Billionaire Space Invader we'd be "honored" to send you.
Think of it as a token of friendship from your pals here on Earth. Namaste and Nanu Nanu.
Blogweasels in Space
It looks like marketing and advertising conferences are coming back to life, if only in cyberspace. I'll be doing a few talks this summer and am starting to accept proposals for talks in the fall, both virtual and live.
So if you're planning the usual dull-as-doody marketing conference and you need someone to harangue and insult your audience, I'm here for you.
And while I'm patting myself on the back, Skeptics climbed back up to the #1 spot in the Amazon ad book charts last week. Direct quote from LinkedIn "It's an AMAZING book!"
Take that, Tolstoy.
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