I like this idea of privacy not as something we work towards but something we move away from.

Privacy is thus a wu wei feature: you make your system better simply by not doing what you don’t need to do.

Thanks to my immersion in digital marketing, it makes me think of Apple, Google, and Facebook.

Google and Facebook have to continually work towards privacy for users because it is the opposite of what their empires were built on.

Apple, on the other hand, has made some privacy-focused adjustments (like ATT (at least they are positioned as privacy-first changes)) but business can continue on relatively unchanged after most privacy-first adjustments.

Of course, many of these changes foreshadowed their pivot to a more advertising-heavy monetization model as market saturation is reached for the devices they peddle. This is where their We’re The Champions of Privacy positioning will be tested.

Apple doesn’t need any user data to deliver App Store ads because it’s the only place to get apps. They don’t have to provide a better experience than competitors, they are the only ones providing the audience.

How different would Apple Podcasts be if it had been viewed as a potential income stream early on? Now it has to play catchup in the medium it helped create.

Defaults are powerful.