Apple vs. Facebook Isn’t a Matter of Privacy but Opposing Business Philosophies
In the never-ending spat, both are leveraging privacy for their own good
By now, we all know what personalized advertisements are. Thanks to Facebook and Apple’s ongoing data privacy war, users across the world are a lot more aware of how advertisers collect data across apps.
For those who don’t, over 100k apps on the App Store today have Facebook or Google’s SDK integrated. Be it in simple ad banners that you see or via deep links which you’d click to install a new app from ads, advertising agencies can track an individual’s movement across the smartphone and build profiles.
Apple, whose been doubling down on privacy measures in recent years had introduced a new opt-in ad tracking feature in iOS 14 during its WWDC 2020 event last year. The privacy feature strives to restrict third-party trackers from snooping over you across apps by asking upfront if you wish to be tracked.
The new App Tracking Transparency framework that brings anonymous ad tracking has stirred the entire advertisement industry and threatened to upheave Facebook’s empire.
While it’s a huge win for the customers, Apple was drawn to some heavy criticism with Facebook rolling out full-page newspaper ads to highlight Apple’s move as one that will hurt small businesses and kill the free internet.
Apple hit back in fashion by calling out Facebook for its hypocrisy by citing how the social media king is misleading small businesses and users alike.
Now, it isn’t a mystery that Facebook and Apple have always been at loggerheads. They share contrasting views about the web, user privacy and miss no chance at taking shots at one another.
Mark Zuckerberg is often heard taking digs at Apple. Sometimes, by calling the iPhone, just an expensive smartphone whilst also blasting their App Store policies. At the same time, Tim Cook hasn’t shied away from criticizing Facebook’s whole business model that relies on targeted advertisements.
Such has been the feud between the two tech titans that there was a time when Apple revoked Facebook’s developer certificate after the latter was caught collecting data they were supposed to.
So, to say that the ongoing squabble between Apple and Facebook is just a matter of data privacy would be an overstatement.
In fact, the way their latest fallout has been shaping out, it’s becoming increasingly apparent that both Apple and Facebook aren’t doing this for preserving user’s privacy or to support small businesses. Instead, privacy is just a narrative they’re using to protect their own conflicting business interests.
Facebook is misleading small businesses and users about personalized ads since the company is about to stare at huge advertisement losses in 2021
Since the time Apple first unveiled its new opt-in ad tracking permissions for iOS 14 and beyond, Facebook has left no stone unturned in trying to delay the release of the new software update.
Besides launching a laughable marketing campaign against Apple, Facebook also filed anti-trust lawsuits and forced WhatsApp users towards a new privacy policy that required “either sending their user data or risk losing the account”.
Though the WhatsApp move clearly backfired as users across the world threatened to quit the platform yet Facebook still had a few tricks up their sleeve to oppose the iOS 14 privacy changes.
Very quietly, they launched a Facebook page in a bid to position themselves as the Robinhood of small businesses. To rub more salt to the injury, they began displaying pre-emptive onboarding screens on their iOS app to convince iPhone users that personalized ads aren’t bad at all.
Now, it’s worth noting that Facebook’s move to put small businesses in front of the battle isn’t because it cares for those owners. Instead, the social media giant is just trying to leverage the situation to protect its own business interests.
For starters, when small businesses look to target a customer through ad campaigns, they pay Facebook a good chunk of money from their marketing budget. But now that iOS 14 will start asking users to opt-in for personalized ads, Facebook’s Audience network would no longer be as effective. This in turn would cause a drop in advertisement revenue per iOS user.
It should come as no surprise that advertising publishers would now look to invest in other means of marketing thereby moving away from Facebook, which until now had established itself as the kingpin of the advertisement industry. No wonder, the social media king is worried and using strange tactics to evade the privacy measures.
Besides, Facebook’s move to encourage iPhone owners into enabling personalized ads by portraying them as relevant wasn’t just laughable but also misleading. For one, personalized ads despite seeming as an enrichment tool for the user’s overall experience aren’t all glitter and gold.
Unlike contextual ads, targeted ads gather a lot more data than what is actually needed. Very few people know the amount of sensitive information and behavioral data that gets monetized by Facebook to build matching profiles just to lure a certain customer into clicking an ad that they’re more than likely to buy from.
Facebook can still display relevant advertisements without microtargeting customers. It’s just the company doesn’t want to lose out on profits they were churning from personalized ads.
Apple is no saint either as privacy is just a move to bolster their own walled garden of services
To say that Facebook is simply using users and small businesses to enrich themselves won’t be completely wrong. However, to assume that Apple is doing this only for the betterment of customer privacy is like painting a rosy picture.
Mark Zuckerberg actually put forth a rare rationale remark about the iPhone maker when he stated: “Apple has every incentive to use their dominant platform position to interfere with how our apps and other apps work, which they regularly do to preference their own”.
If one looks at Apple’s journey over the past decade, the Facebook CEO’s remark actually makes sense. The Cupertino tech giant after having failed to generate any buzz in their very few social media platforms attempts is now using privacy to sustain their walled garden of services. So, when Apple decides to bring in a feature that’ll cripple the entire mobile advertisement industry, it’s hard to ignore the possible business interests they’ll have.
We all know Apple doesn’t monetize user data. Instead, it’s been pushing subscription-based services over the past few years. An end to personalized ads would open the door for more freemium apps which is a win-win for Apple given they charge a hefty commission for App Store purchases.
OK, even if one keeps App Store monopoly aside for a while, Apple’s methodology to roll out their iOS 14 opt-in ad tracking feature is rather amusing.
The new popup permission would show up with two buttons: “Allow” and “Ask the App Not to Track”. From the looks of it, it may seem that “Ask the App Not to Track” would prohibit apps from tracking the ads, but that isn’t really the case. When a user denies tracking, apps can still track them via the new AppTrackingTransparency
framework, albeit any sensitive user device-specific information. So, Apple isn’t really stopping advertisers from ad tracking as it may seem from the way they’ve worded it.
One can’t help but wonder if Apple could have tweaked the way the permission is displayed. A message such as “Ask the App To Track Anonymously” would’ve been better from a UX perspective as it gives out a more clear picture of how the feature works.
Besides, Tim Cook’s recent response: “We believe users should have the choice over the data that is being collected about them and how it’s used” despite being a strong response to Facebook’s criticism doesn’t feel convincing as it isn’t always consistent.
We all know how the tech giant doesn’t believe in giving user’s a choice when it comes to sideloading apps from the App Store or installing games from other cloud services like Microsoft or Google just in the name of privacy. Yet, they have failed to safeguard App Store purchases or crackdown on scam apps that keep raking in millions of dollars per year. Besides, Apple’s $8 Billion deal with Google paints a completely different picture altogether — thereby making their criticism of Facebook quite strange to make sense of.
So, to think that Apple is bolstering user’s privacy selflessly and believes in giving them a chance would be rather naive to assume. They’ve vetted their moves and privacy just seems to be the ongoing hype that sticks well to their walled garden.
In the end, it’s becoming increasingly clear that the showdown between Facebook and Apple isn’t about privacy. Both perceive and leverage the web differently. While the former still thinks it's the landlord of the internet and has the right to harvest user data to any extent, the latter looks to build products and services that only help enhance its closed ecosystem.