Scott Rosenberg for Axios writes:

Apple, Facebook, and Google are all firmly on the record now: they agree that privacy is a good thing, that government should protect it, and that you can trust them to respect it.

The catch: Each company defines privacy differently and emphasizes different trade-offs in delivering it.

This isn’t the first article I have seen that lumps Apple in with the likes of Google and Facebook with regards to privacy. While Apple isn’t perfect by any means, it’s comical to liken “provide [backups] to law enforcement with a court order” with “Facebook itself knows and shares [user information]“. Hell, the piece even frames “it’s also promising to limit advertisers’ use of sensor data from Google’s growing hardware lineup“ as good for privacy!

Even the structure of the article is misleading. Each company is given an overview, a bulleted summary of how each company is claiming to be good for privacy, and then a “yes, but” section with bulleted counter-arguments detailing why readers should be skeptical of those claims. Below I’ve tallied the claims and counter-arguments presented for each company.

Apple — 2 privacy claims, 2 counter-arguments

Facebook — 2 privacy claims, 1 counter-argument

Google — 3 privacy claims, 0 counter-arguments

The use and presentation of this bulleted structure would have a glancing reader coming away with the impression that Apple merits the most skepticism and that Google is doing the most for their privacy. Even close readers could easily come away thinking that the companies are effectively no different when it comes to their privacy.

Whether you trust these companies in the long run or not, the false equivalency rewards the worst privacy offenses happening right now.