Feb 26th, 2021 - Category: Apple
How much “spin” can the world take? Well Facebook is doing its best to find out with its recent spin on their argument that “Apple’s changes are aimed at benefiting iMessage and harm small businesses.” What terrible changes are they referring to? Brace yourself because Apple will soon require iPhone and iPad apps that sell users’ personal data to ask the user for permission first. This personal data includes information like what websites we visit, our location, and much more.
This is a major issue for Facebook since they make around $85 billion a year using and selling their users’ personal information. In response to Apple’s changes, Facebook has gone on the offensive and the recent NPR article “Why Is Facebook Launching An All-Out War On Apple’s Upcoming iPhone Update?” provides a good summary, breaking down the conflict into:
- What will happen?
- Why does Facebook oppose Apple’s update?
- It is personal between Cook and Zuckerberg
- Facebook and Apple: Opposite ways of making money
Facebook is running ads to protect their interests and they are incredible: full pages with headlines like “We’re standing up to Apple for small businesses everywhere,” in the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Wall Street Journal. At this point some of you might be saying, “I stopped using Facebook, why should I be concerned about this?” Facebook doesn’t make 98% of its revenue just from ads in its own apps, it goes much deeper. Personally I browse mostly techical websites and in the last six months 65% of the websites I visited had trackers, 34% of which are from Facebook. Every time you see that little “f” icon, Facebook gets a bit of information on you. According to Apple’s fascinating document “A Day in the Life of Your Data,” on average every app we use has six trackers embedded in it. The document goes on to explain in plain English how companies collect, sell, buy, and combine data from different sources to create advertising “profiles” without our permission.
So what about Facebook’s claim that Apple is hurting small businesses with these changes? In Mark Zuckerberg’s own words, “many small businesses will no longer be able to reach their customers with targeted ads.” Credible sources like the nonprofit Electronic Frontier Foundation call claims like this “laughable” specifically commenting that “Facebook has locked them [small businesses] into a situation in which they are forced to be sneaky and adverse to their own customers.”
Other Facebook claims such as wanting to “help people understand how the personalized ads they see help them discover new things they love, and support businesses in their community” are similarly rooted in Facebook’s desire to normalize their practice of serving creepy ads. You know the ones, you talked to your friend about a certain product yesterday and today you’re seeing ads for that product all over the sites you regularly visit. People used to think Facebook and Google were listening in, but that is technically much more difficult than using profiling to create “personalized” ads.
It doesn’t have to be this way. The search engine DuckDuckGo makes their money without tracking their users. It’s a long story, but they’re almost as good as Google (better in some ways) and their revenue model is simply based on showing you advertising related to what you search for, nothing else. This is refreshing in a world where Facebook intentionally cripples their own Facebook Messenger service so people can’t read messages in a mobile browser, only through their Messenger app (that also includes trackers). And who wants to support a company whose CEO feels like he has to “inflict pain” to further his company’s questionable business practices.
If you’d like to dive a little deeper into this issue, here are two more good articles.
- A CNET article “Facebook vs. Apple: Here’s what you need to know about their privacy feud”
- The Reddit thread “Insultingly, Facebook continues to try to convince users that privacy-violating targeted ads are good”
Finally, while privacy is an important issue, it seems secondary in comparison with the other major issues the world is facing so maybe it’s time to dust off my old article Privacy: Doing ‘Enough’ Is Probably Enough. And if you’re still tied to Facebook because of family, friends, or work requirements, just remember to click “Ask App Not to Track” when the feature becomes available with the next version of iOS. Privacy for the win!