Oversharing the super safe stuff: “Privacy-washing” in Apple iPhone and Google Pixel commercials

Abstract

Inspired by the ever-evolving concerns surrounding data privacy, this study analyzes Apple’s and Google’s ads for their iPhone and Android devices, respectively, as well as each company’s privacy policies. Findings via critical discourse analysis reveal that the ads conflate privacy with security, relying on powerful imageries that depict the phones as safes from which data cannot travel. These depictions, however, do not align with the policies that provide separate sections for privacy and security. With these findings in mind, I propose a widespread adoption of “privacy-washing” to promote a newfound literacy of granular data types.