Apple, the Cupertino-based technology conglomerate on Thursday officially launched a television advertising campaign with the primary aim of basically promoting its opinions on the issue of online privacy, especially on your mobile devices, as reported by Reuters. The ad shows how it's working is entirely different from most of the other technology companies around the world such as Google, Facebook, and Reddit among various others. In regards to privacy, many technology companies have become the unfortunate victims of scrutinization from the regulatory bodies in today's internet age where the concept of privacy appears to be merely a myth.
Apple's take on privacy issues
The privacy-oriented television advertising campaign by Apple will start broadcasting on TV stations in the United States on Thursday. In order to pull millions of eyeballs to this advertisement which is approximately 45 seconds long, Apple has decided to run the TV spot throughout the entire famous basketball tournament known as March Madness, organized by National Collegiate Athletic Association. Aside from the United States, the television advertisement will be broadcast in several other countries as well. However, the Cupertino-based tech giant refused to answer whether this commercial will air in China or even how much money they spent on producing this commercial.
Apple has shown various sorts of settings in the TV advert such as people closing their shower curtains, window blinds, door, and many other scenes in order to get privacy from the outside world. At the end of the spot, Apple goes on to say that if privacy is something that really matters to you the most in your life, then you should also be equally concerned about privacy on your mobile device on which your life depends.
Therefore, people should choose an iPhone.
The Chief Executive Officer of Apple, Tim Cook has mostly been quite active and public in terms of where the company stands regarding the widely carried out practices of collecting users extremely personal data. He has stated on multiple occasions that Apple does not encourage the unethical practice of accumulating personal data of its customers.
The Apple CEO has also strongly criticized the way many of the world's biggest companies such as Google and the social networking giant Facebook make the majority of their revenue which is by collecting information about its users for advertising purposes.
This is the very first time when Apple has talked about the subject of online privacy in a nationwide advertisement campaign. Its only ad campaign regarding the privacy issue was at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas around January this year when the company had put up a billboard referring to the celebrated Las Vegas slogan but in the context of your mobile device.
Data privacy practices
Apple's television advertising campaign comes during a time when the major technology companies are being inspected by government organizations around the world for their data privacy practices.
Both Facebook and Google have already faced an endless number of lawsuits and inquiries from lawmakers. As a result, both of these companies are at present working towards changing their platforms in order to enhance user privacy. Around last week, the billionaire founder of the social media giant Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg announced that the company is planning to encrypt most of the conversations taking place on its messaging platforms.
Apple's arch-rival at the moment is Google, which generates the bulk of its money from making Android operating system on which most of the world's mobile devices operate. An announcement was made by Google this week, saying that they are planning to create some privacy-oriented changes to its Android operating system. Even though Apple devices also collect data on its customers, they have stated that it cannot access the data as it remains fully encrypted with a personal postcode on the user's Apple product.