Facebook reported its fourth-quarter 2020 earnings today, and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg's early remarks focused on Apple's upcoming privacy changes that will impact the advertising industry and companies like Facebook that rely heavily on online ads.
As pointed out by The Washington Post, Zuckerberg claimed that Apple is changing its privacy policy not to help people, but to advance its own interests.
“Apple has every incentive to use its platform dominance to interfere with how our apps and other apps work, as it has done in the past,” Zuckerberg said. “They say they’re doing this to help people, but the moves clearly serve their competitive interests.”
Zuckerberg said Facebook sees Apple as one of its biggest competitors , claiming the privacy changes will help Apple services like iMessage and FaceTime that compete with Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp.
“iMessage is a core part of their ecosystem,” Zuckerberg said. “It comes pre-installed on every iPhone, which is why iMessage is the most commonly used messaging service in the US.”
Zuckerberg also said once again that Apple's changes will affect small businesses. Facebook has previously said that the way we control the ads we see will have "harmful effects on many small businesses struggling to stay afloat."
Facebook had previously claimed that Apple's move is about "profit" and that it would leave apps and websites with no choice but to pay subscription fees or add in-app purchases to meet their needs, leading to an increase in App Store.
Apple is not backing down despite Facebook's complaints and plans to implement new tracking rules in the near future. Apps that track usage via a random advertising identifier will have to ask users if they want to share information for ad tracking purposes.
Advertisers use the random advertising identifier to serve personalized ads and track ad campaigns, but the advertising industry expects that many people will choose not to share this information.
Apple says users should know when data with other apps and websites, and should have the option to opt out. “We believe this is a matter of protecting our users,” Apple said in response to Facebook’s claims.
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