Every vendor tripped over the third party affiliate human review issue.
While consumers remain surprised by affiliate clauses, the QC problem is considerably different from marketing against those recordings.
The linked article veers into Alexa for the ads part and says, roughly, must not be tin foil hats if everyone believes it – then explains the psychology misleading people in most cases. The "I'm noticing a pattern" thing…
Are there sources where Apple either acknowledges or even settles claims of advertising against secret Siri recordings?
> Are there sources where Apple either acknowledges or even settles claims of advertising against secret Siri recordings?
Yes, advertising and selling data to third parties.
> In January 2025, Apple settled a class action lawsuit brought on behalf of current or former owners or purchasers of a Siri-enabled device, specifically: iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, MacBook, iMac, HomePod, iPod touch or Apple TV, whose confidential or private communications were allegedly obtained by Apple and/or shared with third parties as a result of an unintended Siri activation. (https://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/apple-settlement-95-million-...)
They've allowed third party contractors to listen to apple customers fucking (and who know what they did with those recordings). Apple's privacy policy says that they'll share (which includes selling) your data with "Apple-affiliated companies" and "our partners" without disclosing any of them.
I've seen claims that they've sold user data to facebook, but I haven't seen any details except the existence of "user-data sharing agreements" between apple and facebook and of course they take millions in cash to hand apple user's data over to google through their search engine.
Apple has been careless about handing data over in response to legal requests (https://www.cnet.com/tech/services-and-software/apple-facebo...) and gives a ton of user data to governments in the US and china. According to Snowden Apple partnered with the NSA as a data provider. Apple denied that. They've also denied working with the US government on DROPOUTJEEP.
They honestly don't have a very good track record when it comes to privacy, they're just quieter and less overtly evil about it than Google, MS, and facebook.
Sheesh, I'm starting to notice a pattern...