The Hated One

MKBHD's Wallpaper App Is A Privacy Disaster

Added 2024-09-30 18:32:49 +0000 UTC

Marques Keith Brownlee is a YouTube star behind the massively popular MKBHD channel. Over the span of his 15-year-old content creator career, Marques Brownlee grew to 20 million subscribers surpassing 4 billion total views and that only vaguely illustrates the true heights of his success.

Marques started making content in 2009, when he was still in high school and in a few years, he became the face of technology videos on YouTube. In 2013, a senior vice president of Google called him “the best technology reviewer on the planet right now”. In 2019, he won “Creator of the Decade”. MKBHD’s fame was acknowledged also by his interviews with big tech CEOs as well as Kobe Bryant and Bill Gates. Marques is also a star of the Retro Tech YouTube Originals series produced by Vox Media Studios and he recently became a board member of Ridge, a super popular sponsor of YouTube channels.

His success, fame and wealth is out of this world. Especially at his young age. Marques is barely 30 now and he’s been on the top stop before he even graduated college. But it seems that not even that amount of success is enough, if you think you have a loyal audience of millions of people who will consume anything you have to sell them.

Marques Brownlee decided to embark on another endeavor to attain even more wealth by making an app. Now Marques has a degree in business and IT so you’d think his app must be a total banger. Something humble but with great value.

So what did Marques make? A wallpaper app. And not just any wallpaper app. MKBHD’s wallpaper app that is a privacy nightmare and a shameless cash grab disaster.

The revenue split between artist and the Panels app is 50/50, with the Panels cut further split in half between Brownlee and the Panels developer.

MKBHD is committed to fixing his wallpaper app, but not its $50 price tag

https://www.androidauthority.com/mkbhd-to-fix-wallpaper-app-3484751/

Panels on Play Store

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=art.panels.wallpapers.playstore

Panels on App Store

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/panels-wallpapers/id6474455074

MKBHD's response to criticism: https://x.com/MKBHD/status/1838582554749755438

Apple data collection tied to device identifiers (DSID)

https://www.engadget.com/apple-phone-usage-data-not-anonymous-researchers-185334975.html

https://gizmodo.com/apple-iphone-privacy-dsid-analytics-personal-data-test-1849807619

https://gizmodo.com/apple-iphone-analytics-tracking-even-when-off-app-store-1849757558