Welcome to the luxury internet, where privacy is available — for a price.

By Xische Editorial, November 15, 2019

Have you noticed the privacy war unfolding on the internet? From data hacks to better web security standards, we are in the midst of a battle over how data is used, collected, stored, and analysed in the internet age. At the forefront of these debates are companies such as  Facebook and Google, which express a commitment to user privacy while collecting ample amounts of information about users to feed their advertising business. The tension over business models hasn’t stopped Google from recently announcing a slew of new features giving users the power to erase old browsing history and other data points. 

The internet giant even announced that it would limit advertisers’ access to personal data to address user privacy concerns. On the other end of the fight are companies such as Apple that have positioned their brands as privacy focused. If you have the money to spend on Apple products, you can essentially buy privacy. Are we heading towards a vision of the internet where users dictate their privacy based on the amount of money they can spend for services? The “luxury internet” has, in fact, arrived. 

Apple can offer privacy as a marketing feature because it’s a hardware company. It doesn’t need to track your behaviour online to serve you advertisements. Rather, it just needs to sell new iPhones and services related to its ecosystem. Highlighting it’s “privacy as a feature” campaign, Apple recently updated its terms and conditions page. The fine print of privacy terms and conditions isn’t the most fun reading but Apple demonstrates how easy privacy can be. This clean approach, which informs the reader with straightforward language, is a beautiful reflection of their thinking. It should be noted that Apple doesn’t have a completely spotless record when it comes to privacy and recently had to apologize for snooping on with its Siri assistant protocols. Other companies might not be able to copy Apple’s approach but they should try to emulate it and that is good news for consumers. 

This debate belies a bigger trend in global technology. Consumers around the world are growing tired of Silicon Valley and its flagrant mishandling of data. Every week there is a new data scandal. This month, the Wall Street Journal reported that Google was collecting the health records of millions of Americans without their consent or knowledge. Many of us understand that our data is lost but feel like there is nothing we can do about it. Apple is trying to capitalise on this fatigue. Its positioning gambit could be just the jolt to the industry that is needed to get other companies to follow suit. 

The New York Times Magazine just devoted a whole issue to these questions and the future of the internet. In the issue’s opening piece, which reads like a manifesto, writer Bill Wisek gives us vital perspective on how the internet began as a dream and is slowly becoming a nightmare. 

“Perhaps the most profound force at work upon the internet right now is the simple passage of time,” he writes.  “Everyone raised in a pre-internet era continues to age and disappear, while new generations grow up not merely as “digital natives” but as lifelong witnesses to the internet’s best and worst effects. In the naïve dreams of earlier days, many people joined [Facebook CEO Mark] Zuckerberg in imagining that connecting the world could bring about new social virtues at no social cost.” 

“But it’s now clear that interconnection by its very nature also brings about confounding new social situations, whether it’s the problem of disinformation seeded and spread by organized propagandists or the mind-bendingly obsessive culture of online fandom. For teenagers today, the internet is both a stage onto which to step boldly and a minefield through which to step gingerly — a double bind that has given rise to whole new habits of living online, in which self-expression and self-protection are inextricably linked.”

The outlines of corrosive social effects that too much “connection” can have in the internet age are on display in this quote. Not only have we lost our privacy to advertising companies but we have created a landscape where disinformation can run wild. It might seem like a leap to go from data rights to disinformation campaigns but they are really two sides of the same coin. Apple’s new privacy campaign might be a drop in the bucket but it’s a first step in the right direction of better consumer thinking online.

If we are able to regain control over our data and better understand how our data is used by internet companies, then we can begin the longer process of combating the negative social effects of too much “connection”. Apple’s positioning has more to do with the company’s bottom line than saving the world but their commitment to privacy might just be what the internet needs in this pivotal moment. The debate is reminiscent of a famous quote by tech investor Marc Andreessen, who said that in the future, there will be two types of people: “people who tell computers what to do, and people who are told by computers what to do.” The privacy debate will inform what type we choose to be.