> If they were moved to plain old icloud.com, I could absolutely see a bunch of companies starting to filter out all icloud.com email addresses to avoid private relay.

I couldn't. "Uses Apple products" is one of the more reliable signals of willingness and ability to spend money on stuff online.

Apple is luxury big tech.

In this day and age, privacy is luxury, so that's what they sell.

I don't think there are any ethical motivations for them (or any other large corporation - none of them have morals so they cannot act morally). It's just that there's a market niche, so it will be filled by someone.

It’s an additional layer of wall for their walled garden to keep the technically proficient users that are more likely to hop walls.

Technically proficient users can figure out their own solutions for throwaway emails e.g. aforementioned Fastmail.

Many systems out there have specific exceptions from their VPN policy for iCloud emails and iCloud private relay. Places that would immediately block fastmail because of its alias feature will not block iCloud because too many people use it. Market share is real power. You can ban 0.1% of your customers, you can't ban 30% of your customers.

Sure, but technically proficient users often have other things they want to spend their time on, outside of exercising technical proficiency on every single thing.

Heck, I don’t even do my own oil changes anymore despite it being easy. Life gets busy, you know?

Privacy is the niche they know Google can never follow.

Apple sells hardware, Google is an ad company.

money from advertising basically dwarf user lifetime purchase of privacy tax you mentioned

The ad business has a lot of people chasing after the same ad spend.

Superbowl ads, TV ads, radio ads, print ads, billboard ads, public transit ads, youtube ads, podcast ads, search ads, e-mail ads, social media ads, in-app ads, in-store ads, sports team sponsorship, individual athlete sponsorship, stadium naming, product placement ads, elevator ads, cinema ads, bathroom ads.

And Coca-Cola doesn't increase their advertising budget just because someone finds a new place to slap ads on - they just re-allocate their spending.

Sure, Google and Facebook make a good chunk of money from ads. But it's a very, very competitive business.

yet and they still dwarf

if any, Apple user are the most expensive ads money industry willing to pay for

New technology has always benefitted first and foremost those in power, simply because people who get to extract wealth from the rest of society can then direct that wealth to acquire new tech first. This was equally true in pre-capitalist societies, or in USSR for that matter.

Being cynical about the tech itself is a bridge to nowhere, though, because it does not preclude its existence or usage, it just cuts you away from any benefits that you can personally get out of it - but you're still affected by all the downsides.

Don't be cynical about tech. Be angry at the people who want to own it all and use it to exploit you.

It's not an either-or. Some of us are genuinely excited about what AI can do (or has already done for specific personal projects etc), while also being dismayed about what it's used to do on the internet at large.

The irony, or perhaps cognitive dissonance, inherent in this position is staggering to me.

We have viable green technologies for power generation. We just don't penalize the polluters properly.

All those companies are sitting on literally hundreds of billions of dollars in cash. If they need this so badly, let them build the connection and other infrastructure.

Cash doesn't buy time machines.

They want to build the data centres right now, but the power companies and other energy suppliers are booked solid for 5+ years out.

Money or not, you can't just click your fingers and instantly get regulatory approval, or spin up a facility to build parts that only a handful of places have ever figured out how to mass-manufacture.

Gas turbine blades are especially difficult, but batteries and panels are not far behind. There are a surprisingly small number of shops capable of making power switching gear and transformers too.

> They want to build the data centres right now,

And I want them to behave in a decent way, but universe does not ensure we get what we want.

They should be forced to build a grid in a way that does not speeds up global warming. What they want should be irrelevant.

"Fast enough" for what?

This is not a "these days" thing. Most rights essentially being abrogated at the border is a thing we've had for many decades now. In particular, no non-citizen has the absolute right of entry, and border agents have discretion bordering on insane when it comes to not admitting people or temporarily detaining them. Worse yet, this being the case, the job attracts the kind of people who relish the petty power trip. I've seen this many times back in 2010-2011 when I was traveling regularly as a non-citizen between US and Canada.

I don't think denying entry to non-citizens abrogates anyone's rights.

What gives US americans the right to deny anyone access to the land they stole from the indigenous they genocided? Why do people think they are entitled to take other peoples land and then prevent others from coming too?

What gives the Turks the right to land they stole from the Tatars? What gives the Greeks the right to land they stole from the Creteans? What gives the Chinese the right to land they stole from the other Chinese?

At some point, we have to accept that the world has irrevocably changed, that people have lived where they live for generations, that resettling them all is impractical, inhumane and just not a good idea in general, and just move on and build the best world for the people currently here.

During WW1 and then again during WW2, the world has agreed to the right of self-determination. If people feel they're a certain nationality separate from what their government imposes on them, then they have a right to become their own country with their own laws and their own border enforcement. If you are literally asking what gives Americans the right to prevent others from coming, this is it.

I'm not saying to remove all americans but why the fuck would you have the right to exclude others from a certain piece of the earth?

Because that's how the world works everywhere.

> Law is effectively a weak gentleman’s agreement we tolerate

Not all of us do. To be honest, the older I am, the less sense many laws make to me, and the more I'm willing to help people break them.

It's not respect unless it goes both ways.