Apple will pay $95 million to settle a proposed class action lawsuit involving Siri spying accusations, reports Reuters. The lawsuit alleges that Apple recorded conversations captured with accidental Siri activations, and then shared information from those conversations with third-party advertisers.
Not saying they’re telling the truth, but even if the allegations are false I’m sure 95 million is well worth it for them to just make this go away as fast as possible. They heavily market themselves as the privacy company and this story staying out there undermines that messaging significantly.
It’s also just a huge pain for them: not only the millions they will spend on legal but also the information they will have to put into the public record about how iOS and the Apple business work. Clearly they found this case credible enough to be a bother, but that doesn’t automatically mean they are guilty.
This. Also lawyers are expensive, and hiring a team of experienced lawyers is even more so. A bean counter probably crunched the numbers and found it would be more cost effective to settle now than to fight it out/ run the risk of losing (in which case they may also have to pay for the plantiff’s legal fees)
being on retainer isn’t a loophole for free lawyers. deploying those lawyers on a big class action lawsuit will absolutely cost them money one way or another.
and it’s not a matter of being “too expensive” for apple. It’s simply more expensive than settling. this isn’t rocket science.
any number of reasons, like avoiding discovery for any semi-related information they don’t want public.
Plaintiffs in the lawsuit claimed that they were shown ads for Air Jordan shoes and Olive Garden after Siri recorded them speaking privately about those companies.
so basically this is just confirmation bias or frequency illusion with no actual evidence whatsoever. What are the odds that someone who talks about Jordans or Olive Garden is shown a targeted ad from literally any other data from their online presence? or even a complete coincidence entirely? Of course that’s going to happen amongst the millions and millions of iPhone users on a day to day basis.
They settled for the other part of the lawsuit that was true: Siri recordings that it did not understand were being sent to a human QA team for review. There was originally no way for the customer to opt out of this.
The customers who filed the lawsuit claimed that they were “regularly recorded without consent” and that they would not have purchased their iPhones had they known about this Siri feature. A judge initially threw out the lawsuit because the plaintiffs did not provide evidence of Apple recording their conversations, so it was refiled with the accusation that Siri data collected had been used for targeted advertising.
Because Apple has fuck you levels of money and 95 million is a drop in the bucket to make a problem disappear. That’s basically only 5 days of Apple’s annual gross profit.
Then why did they settle?
Not saying they’re telling the truth, but even if the allegations are false I’m sure 95 million is well worth it for them to just make this go away as fast as possible. They heavily market themselves as the privacy company and this story staying out there undermines that messaging significantly.
It’s also just a huge pain for them: not only the millions they will spend on legal but also the information they will have to put into the public record about how iOS and the Apple business work. Clearly they found this case credible enough to be a bother, but that doesn’t automatically mean they are guilty.
This. Also lawyers are expensive, and hiring a team of experienced lawyers is even more so. A bean counter probably crunched the numbers and found it would be more cost effective to settle now than to fight it out/ run the risk of losing (in which case they may also have to pay for the plantiff’s legal fees)
Uhhh, they have lawyers on retainer, lol. Which is it? They have so much money that they can throw at it or it’s too expensive to hire lawyers for.
being on retainer isn’t a loophole for free lawyers. deploying those lawyers on a big class action lawsuit will absolutely cost them money one way or another.
and it’s not a matter of being “too expensive” for apple. It’s simply more expensive than settling. this isn’t rocket science.
I should sue Apple
any number of reasons, like avoiding discovery for any semi-related information they don’t want public.
so basically this is just confirmation bias or frequency illusion with no actual evidence whatsoever. What are the odds that someone who talks about Jordans or Olive Garden is shown a targeted ad from literally any other data from their online presence? or even a complete coincidence entirely? Of course that’s going to happen amongst the millions and millions of iPhone users on a day to day basis.
They settled for the other part of the lawsuit that was true: Siri recordings that it did not understand were being sent to a human QA team for review. There was originally no way for the customer to opt out of this.
not according to the article:
Because Apple has fuck you levels of money and 95 million is a drop in the bucket to make a problem disappear. That’s basically only 5 days of Apple’s annual gross profit.