Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg used the opening remarks of the company’s fourth-quarter earnings call to blow up Apple about its upcoming privacy changes and to say that Facebook is increasingly seeing Apple as one of its biggest competitors.
Apple is preparing for a software change that will better ask iPhone and iPad users if they want to share their information for ad tracking purposes. The online advertising industry is expected to be affected, as a certain percentage of users choose not to share this information.
Facebook, which earns almost all of its online advertising revenue, has been open about the changes, running newspaper ads, publishing a website and posting a blog post, presenting its arguments against Apple about the change that “It threatens the personalized ads that millions of companies rely on to find and reach customers. ”
Zuckerberg, in his comments, suggested that Apple uses its position to help its own services, especially the iMessage service, which competes with Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp services.
“iMessage is a key element of their ecosystem,” he said. “Comes pre-installed on every iPhone and prefers it with APIs and private permissions, which is why iMessage is the most used messaging service in the US”
He said that Apple’s business now depends more and more on gaining shares in applications and services.
“Apple has every incentive to use its dominant position on the platform to interfere with the way our applications and other applications work, which we do regularly for their preference,” he said. “This is affecting the growth of millions of companies around the world, including future changes to iOS 14.”
Zuckerberg also reiterated Facebook’s argument that Apple’s privacy changes will make it harder for small businesses to reach their customers with targeted ads.
“Apple might say they are doing this to help people, but the moves are clearly in the interests of their competitors,” he said. “We and others will fight against this for the foreseeable future.”
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