On February 1, Facebook announced that Apple’s required tracking permission prompt would be accompanied by one from Facebook that “will provide more information” about how and why Facebook uses targeted ads. Apple shrugged and continued with its ATT rollout plans. In a PR campaign last December, Facebook said that non-personalized ads would generate 60 percent fewer sales than personalized ones - while these businesses were struggling to stay afloat during a pandemic, no less. It has responded by framing Apple’s move as an attack on the small businesses that use Facebook ads to target potential customers. Facebook certainly isn’t the only company to balk at Apple’s new rules, but it is one of the biggest. So you can imagine that the social media giant/data vacuum was somewhat alarmed to find out that potentially millions of iPhones would soon have a way to cut off some of those data streams. Its trackers are buried in tons of mobile apps and on websites, and Facebook uses the data they collect for ads on its platforms and its Audience Network mobile app ad service. So Apple’s move could significantly harm the very mobile app ecosystem its iPhone helped to create.įacebook, a company that has not historically been a major proponent of user privacy, is one of the biggest data collectors of all. If users say no - and it’s likely that most of them will, given that people generally don’t like being tracked - companies that use targeted advertising will lose a major source of data, and, therefore, revenue. Some of these features are already live, including the so-called privacy nutrition labels, which are supposed to tell users if their data is being collected, how, and why (though, as the Washington Post points out, the labels appear to be operating on the honor system).Ī potentially bigger deal, for users and developers alike, is the upcoming App Tracking Transparency (ATT) feature, which will require apps to get users’ permission to track them across other apps and websites. In iOS 14, apps will have to tell users what information they collect and get their permission to do it. The iPhone maker has incorporated several privacy protections into its products and services over the years. ![]() The reform Cook is talking about would look like a mobile operating system that prevents companies from accumulating said vast troves of personal data, and Apple’s latest efforts bring its own mobile operating system, iOS, pretty close to that ideal. If a business is built on misleading users, on data exploitation, on choices that are no choices at all, then it does not deserve our praise. And we’re here today because the path of least resistance is rarely the path of wisdom. “Advertising existed and thrived for decades without it. “Technology does not need vast troves of personal data, stitched together across dozens of websites and apps, in order to succeed,” Cook said. In his keynote address, Cook never mentioned Facebook by name, but the target of his pointed remarks about data and advertising was obvious. The day after Facebook’s earnings call, CEO Tim Cook spoke at the Computers, Privacy and Data Protection conference. ![]() The following morning, the Information reported that Facebook was preparing an antitrust suit against Apple over its App Store rules (which, if filed, will join several others).Īpple is not backing down. Zuck added that Apple may frame this as a privacy service to its customers, but it’s really only in Apple’s own best anti-competitive interests. On January 27, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a quarterly earnings call that “we increasingly see Apple as one of our biggest competitors,” accusing Apple of using its “dominant platform position” to push its own apps while interfering with Facebook’s. Late January saw the latest exchange of words between the two companies in a standoff that’s been going on for months. ![]() Now Facebook is considering suing Apple, and Apple is digging in its heels. Facebook - which makes the vast majority of its money from data collected through those trackers - really doesn’t like Apple’s new features. Apple’s tracking-optional mobile operating system update is coming to iPhones this spring, and the new privacy-preserving features will give users the ability to opt out of being followed around the internet via trackers in their apps. Facebook and Apple’s fight over your data is heating up.
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