Facebook has attacked Apple in a series of newspaper ads, claiming that the privacy changes in iOS 14 will damage small businesses that rely on targeted advertising.
Facebook said Apple’s plans will limit the ability of apps to gather data from phones that could be used for targeted advertising.
The social media giant noted in a blog post that Apple’s own personalized ad platform would be exempt from the new prompt requirement the iPhone maker is planning to impose on other companies.
“Apple is behaving anticompetitively by using their control of the App Store to benefit their bottom line at the expense of creators and small businesses. Full stop,” a Facebook vice president for ads and business products, Dan Levy, told reporters.
Apple’s senior developer of global privacy, Jane Horvath, said the upcoming anti-tracking feature is not designed to prevent advertising, but is way of encouraging advertising that respects user privacy on the same level as does Apple.
“Some companies that would prefer [app tracking transparency] is never implemented have said that this policy uniquely burdens small businesses by restricting advertising options, but in fact, the current data arms race primarily benefits big businesses with big data sets,” Horvath noted in November.
Facebook and Apple have also clashed over commission fees the iPhone maker charges apps listed on iOS devices, with Facebook again suggesting that its policies align itself with those small developers most affected by the policy.
Social media users have taken issue with Facebook's claim to be protecting small business.
Defending a market of behavioral predictions to "protect small businesses" is like defending human trafficking to protect slave-owning families.
— José Hernández (@JoseHdzMX) December 16, 2020
Others said they were happy to see privacy better protected.
Perhaps it’s time for advertisers to consider other tools to reach their customers, tools that don’t rely on data capture, sale and use without consumer’s informed and active consent
— Belindasmilne (@belindasmilne) December 16, 2020
I, for one, don’t like being stalked across the Internet
Others seemed surprised at the many ways they could be tracked online.
Apple exposing all the ways Facebook tracks you with it iOS app is really quite something pic.twitter.com/hDhB85qk1L
— Tom Warren (@tomwarren) December 16, 2020
