Facebook today shared its earnings for the fourth quarter of 2020 and initial statements by Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg have focused on Apple’s upcoming privacy changes that will affect the advertising industry and companies like Facebook that depend on great extent of online advertising.
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As he pointed out The Washington Post, Zuckerberg claimed that Apple is changing its privacy policy not to help people, but to further their own interests.
“Apple has every incentive to use its dominant platform position to interfere with the operation of our apps and other apps, which they usually do,” Zuckerberg said. “They say they do it to help people, but the movements clearly follow their competitive interests.”
Zuckerberg said Facebook considers Apple to be one of its biggest competitors, saying the privacy changes will help Apple services like iMessage and FaceTime that compete with Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp.
“iMessage is a key part of your ecosystem,” Zuckerberg said. “It comes pre-installed on all iPhones and they prefer it with private APIs and permissions, which is why iMessage is the most used messaging service in the United States.”
Zuckerberg also said once again that Apple’s changes will affect small businesses, which is a claim that Facebook has been supporting while campaigning against the changes planned by Apple. Facebook has previously posted newspaper ads and shared blog posts explaining how Apple’s changes to iOS 14 ad tracking will have a “harmful impact on many small businesses struggling to stay afloat.”
Facebook previously stated that Apple’s measure “has up to profits” and that it will leave apps and websites with no choice but to charge subscription fees or add purchases from the app to get to the end, which leads to an increase in App Store revenue.
Apple is not backing down despite Facebook’s complaints and plans to implement the new tracking rules in the near future. When a requirement is met, applications that track usage using a random ad identifier will need to ask users if they want to share their information for ad tracking purposes.
Advertisers use the random ad identifier to run personalized ads and track ad campaigns, but the advertising industry expects many people to choose not to share this information.
Apple says users should be aware of when their data is being collected and shared among other apps and websites, and that they should be able to choose whether or not to opt out. “We believe it’s about defending our users,” Apple said in response to Facebook’s claims.