Mark Zuckerberg clapped back on Apple’s upcoming data privacy changes against Facebook, going to the extent of telling his team privately, “We need to inflict pain” on Apple for treating Facebook so poorly.
Facebook CEO Zuckerberg was reacting to comments by Apple CEO, Tim Cook, who said on a CNBC interview that his company would never have been caught in a controversy such as the Cambridge Analytica scandal, which exposed Facebook’s loose privacy policy.
U.K. firm Cambridge Analytica harvested the data of up to 87 million Facebook profiles without the owners’ consent and used the data to help Donald Trump and Ted Cruz win their 2016 campaigns. Facebook was fined $5 billion by the Federal Trade Commission for its privacy violations.
Sometime in the next few months, iPhone users will get a message from Apple, asking them if they will allow the Facebook app to collect their data. If users refuse, Apple will prevent Facebook from doing so, the Guardian reported.
Apple will also send users the same pop-up about any app that collects data on users for advertising purposes. Facebook said it plans to preempt the change with a pop-up screen in the coming weeks and months begging users to stay opted in. Doing so “doesn’t result in Facebook collecting new types of data; it just means that Facebook can continue to give people better experiences,” a Facebook spokeswoman said.
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Zuckerberg described Cook’s assessment that Apple has a sounder business model because it sells products to users, rather than selling users to advertisers, as “extremely glib, and not at all aligned with the truth.”
“I think it’s important that we don’t all get Stockholm syndrome and let the companies that work hard to charge you more convince you that they actually care more about you,” Zuckerberg told Vox co-founder Ezra Klein on his podcast. “Because that sounds ridiculous to me.”
Apple and Facebook have been embroiled in a tussle for nearly a decade and the recent war of words was sparked by the planned privacy update by Apple to iOS 14.
Zuckerberg said Apple is one of Facebook’s biggest competitors. He said Apple’s privacy changes will hurt the growth of “millions of businesses around the world.”
The upcoming Apple iOS 14 changes are likely to not only affect Facebook but also other media buyers.
“Either they didn’t even think of the impact it would have on millions of advertisers and businesses… or they did, and decided they didn’t care as long as it hurt Facebook,” said Gil David, Founder of Run DMG – a Facebook Marketing Partner, on his Twitter handle @Gil_RunDMG.
