Many internet privacy proposals circulating today are in direct conflict with those to increase market competition, as they would further entrench big platforms
The consumer internet industry spent two decades building a huge, complex, chaotic pile of tools and systems to track and analyse … Tweets: @matthew_d_green , @cnbctechcheck , @sgtholly , @privacymatters , @dwellington , @neil_neilzone , @matthew_d_green , @safepress , @jason_kint , @sub8u , @benedictevans , and @benedictevans Tweets: Matthew Green / @matthew_d_green : At some point in the next few weeks I'm going to have to switch to a non-Apple OS, and I cannot convey how unhappy I am that Apple has put me here through their ineptitude. TechCheck / @cnbctechcheck : “They're in a really tough spot because they legitimately have to deal with two demands from society. One is for privacy and safety and the other is for open competition,” says @lessin on Apple's challenges amid its tense standoff with app developers. https://twitter.com/... Holly Schilling / @sgtholly : @matthew_d_green I know I'm late to the party, but if you're upset about CSAM checking, why not just disable iCloud? It disables a lot of functionality, but it's functionality you don't have on other devices already. Privacy Matters / @privacymatters : Matthew is not alone in these considerations and feelings about Apple. I've been using Apple products and services for decades. But I too am now seriously considering alternatives - but those must be easy for family too. https://twitter.com/... Dominic / @dwellington : Ads, privacy and confusion https://www.ben-evans.com/... < A very important point from @benedictevans about why exactly the intersection of adtech & privacy is so contentious: at least in part, it's because we don't even agree on what the question is, let alone the answer. Neil Brown / @neil_neilzone : I'm moved pretty much everything from macOS to Debian, but I'm finding moving my mobile device considerably harder than moving my computers. I'm giving @e_mydata a good go, but struggling without NFC payments and Canary Mail. https://twitter.com/... Matthew Green / @matthew_d_green : @sgtholly Because it's about trust. I've spent years advocating for Apple products and telling people it was better to trust the company to do right by users, rather than promoting safer alternatives. That trust was a mistake, and I can't tell people to switch if I don't do it too. @safepress : I'm amazed it's taken Matt so long. Not that other vendors are so trustworthy, but that using Apple has always been even more expensive, suffocating and manipulative, while security and privacy benefits (on mobile) always seemed overstated, and have proven worthless. https://twitter.com/... Jason Kint / @jason_kint : Sigh. I guess this is where I remind everyone Lessin isn't just a “former employee” and his name is all over FB antitrust evidence. Also, it's entirely a bad SV meme to try to turn Facebook probs on Apple to argue competition and privacy are at odds. @carlquintanilla @JBoorstin https://twitter.com/... Subrahmanyam Kvj / @sub8u : This is a good thought-provoking piece from @benedictevans on ads, our ideas on privacy & how steps that regulators are taking for ‘privacy’ might end up making the big, bigger. The big qn, at this point is indeed - are we debating the right questions? https://www.ben-evans.com/... https://twitter.com/... Benedict Evans / @benedictevans : It's tough to build private systems when we don't agree on what makes something private. Apple, the privacy company, thought it built a private CSAM scanning system. Is ‘on device’ private or not? What's the rule? Benedict Evans / @benedictevans : Can we achieve the economic aims of online ads in a private way? Probably - advertisers don't really want to know who you are - they want to show diaper ads to people who have babies, not to show them to people who don't, and to have some sense of which ads works. But...
Context & Ripple Effects
Evans' argument lands at the end of a two-year arc the corpus has been tracing: Stratechery's warning that privacy fundamentalism gets policy wrong by ignoring inherent trade-offs, followed by concrete cases of that trade-off playing out. Apple's on-device CSAM scanning plan drew criticism precisely because it moved surveillance onto devices where users expect privacy — a reminder that 'privacy-protecting' architecture can concentrate power in the platform that designs it.
The competitive entrenchment mechanism is already documented rather than hypothetical: Apple's app tracking transparency pushed publishers like Zynga into building first-party ad tech they control but Apple doesn't touch, while Facebook locked SMBs into its own surveillance-powered advertising model and ran an anti-Apple campaign over it. Evans' point is that regulators writing privacy rules are choosing sides in this fight whether they mean to or not.
First-order effects
- Regulators pursuing privacy mandates effectively raise the compliance bar that only platforms like Apple and Facebook can afford to meet, while smaller trackers, publishers, and adtech intermediaries bear the cost of rebuilding their tooling.
Second-order effects
- Publishers respond by consolidating data inside their own walls — Zynga-style first-party ad tech stacks and Facebook's bundled SMB advertising both convert privacy pressure into larger walled gardens, shrinking the independent adtech middle.
Third-order effects
- If privacy and competition policy keep being written separately, antitrust enforcement ends up fighting the very consolidation privacy mandates accelerate — forcing regulators to choose between tracking-based open markets and private closed ones, with platform gatekeepers holding the design authority either way.
The trend: Privacy regulation is functioning as an accelerant of platform consolidation, forcing competition policy and privacy policy into a direct conflict that neither regime currently resolves.