Ben Thompson and Eric Seufert on the future of privacy and your data

How Apple and Google are reshaping the entire mobile computing ecosystem


Following my piece on The future of (ads) privacy, I did a Twitter Spaces with the indispensable Ben Thompson of Stratechery and the savvy Eric Seufert of Mobile Dev Memo. Both have been writing prolifically about the impact of recent changes to the mobile ecosystem (e.g. the disappearance of Apple’s unique user ID) and how they’re leading to an on-device, privacy-first world that’ll do strange things to privacy, antitrust, and competitiveness.

If that sounds too wonky and insiderish, I’ll self-quote and say:

Like porn, advertising is a ruthlessly pragmatic (and quantitative) business willing to adopt any technology that yields a minor edge. The same way that porn pioneered online payment and video-streaming when Amazon and Netflix weren’t even glimmers on the horizon yet, ads will be the first industry to undertake this complete refactoring of how your data is used.

We’re on the edge of a once-in-a-generation change of how humans relate to their data and the huge software and cloud Borg that’s eating everything. This conversation tries to tease out an inkling of what’s coming.