Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg speaks at the 56th Munich Security Conference in Munich, southern Germany, on February 15, 2020.
Christof Stache | AFP | Getty Images
On Monday, Facebook will begin urging some iPhone and iPad users to let the company keep track of their activity so the social media giant can show them more personalized ads.
The move is accompanied by the privacy update planned by Apple to iOS 14, which will inform users about this type of tracking and ask them if they want to allow it.
The two companies have been at odds for a decade and have recently entered into a fierce war of words over these privacy changes. Last week, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg called Apple one of its biggest competitors and said the privacy changes would hurt the growth of “millions of businesses worldwide.” The next day, Apple CEO Tim Cook alluded to Facebook in a speech at a data privacy conference in Brussels, saying: “If a company relies on misleading users, in the data mining, in options that have no choice, does not “deserves our praise. He deserves contempt. “
The battle centers on a unique device identifier on each iPhone and iPad called IDFA. Companies that sell mobile ads, including Facebook, use this identifier to help target ads and estimate their effectiveness.
With an upcoming update to iOS 14, every app that wants to use these IDs will ask users to choose to track when the app is first launched. Disabling users will make these ads much less effective. Facebook has warned investors that these impending changes could hurt their advertising business as early as this quarter.
Facebook is now testing the effects of this update, before Apple makes it mandatory for all apps in early spring.
As part of this test, Facebook will start showing some users its own messages starting Monday, explaining why it wants to track this activity and asking users to activate it. These messages will appear on Apple users’ screens immediately before the Apple pop-up window appears.
A trial version of the Facebook application has a bold header that asks “Do you want to allow Facebook to use the app and website activity?” and states that Facebook uses this information to “provide a better advertising experience.” It will then offer users the option to choose between “Do not allow” and “Allow”. (The exact language and appearance of your Facebook application may vary.)
Regardless of the selection made by users in the Facebook application, if they decide not to allow tracking in Apple’s pop-up window, this option will be final and Facebook will respect it.
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