Apples VS Facebook
Recently two Tech Titans, aka Facebook and Apple, were at loggerheads with each other. Facebook published full-page ads in news dailies like The Washington Post, Newyork Times, and Wall Street Journal criticizing/attacking Apple for its new security feature in ios14. This garnered a reply from Tim Cook himself. Lets us, deep dive into the situation
“Data is the new oil,” with everyone moving towards an “e-society,” data has become the new quest for every company. Companies do collect data about the users with and without their consent. To increase transparency to its users, Apple has launched a new security feature in ios14, to be rolled out next year. This feature shows a pop up on the user’s screen and asks them if they want to give the application to track them on other platforms too.
It seems a pretty useful feature, right? But why is Facebook annoyed with this? To understand this, we need to look at Facebook’s revenue model. All of us are aware that Facebook directly doesn’t levy any fee on its users, so how does Facebook make money. The answer is advertising. Around 99% of the revenue comes from advertising. Facebook collects data in four ways from its users through your actions on Facebook, Whatsapp, Instagram, through data provided by either known or unknown sources, through your activity on the internet, and finally through its “know your location feature.” All this helps Facebook provide targeted ads and even monitor when and how many people visit brick and mortar stores. All this sounds straight out of a sci-fi movie, right? It is not; it is how Facebook works every day.
From this, it is pretty much clear that Facebook will take a massive hit because of this new feature. But lets us look into the claims that Facebook is making. Its press statements have stated that small businesses would be affected and the internet will not be the same as before. It says this will affect the small businesses by not letting them have targeted ads; a close inspection of this statement shows that Facebook will not be permitted to have targeted ads, which affect its revenue. By far and large, Facebook is the biggest online advertising platform out there. This new security feature of Apple restricts the amount of data it receives from its user, thereby decreasing targeted ads’ efficiency.
Facebook is going behind the name of small businesses and is trying to combat Apple. But what does Apple have in it? Tim Cook had been very vocal about users’ data privacy and criticized Facebook’s stand on users’ privacy and data collection. This feud has left people siding up with Apple. The strife has strengthened its case that it cares for users and their data and privacy and cements its position as a fair player. This adds to increased brand loyalty for Apple.Facebook faces numerous allegations on data comprise antitrust laws and illegal monopolization. Facebook directly attacked Apple through full-page ads, and this is met with a reply not from Apple but by Tim Cook himself. Unlike other things, the ios14 update directly affects Facebook’s core, which is why Facebook f on Apple. Throughout its evolution, facebook moved fast and broke many things; let’s see how it will break this.
