Whether the USA every adopts its own version of Europe’s GDPR remains to be seen, but post-Snowden, post-Cambridge-Analytica, and post-election-interference-scandal, there’s a definite awareness that privacy is now an important thing for brands to emphasize – which explains Apple’s recent grand-standing. CEO Tim Cook threw punches at much of the technology industry, complaining about the amount of data collection, tracking, profiling, and targeted advertising, as well as the influence of social media on people. Using the term ‘the data-industrial complex,’ his argument goes as far as saying this practice threatens privacy and democracy. Of course, Cook’s speech was good PR for Apple, a company that makes a pretty sizeable deal out of its track-record for protecting its customers’ privacy, as…