It’s no secret that Apple and Facebook don’t really like each other. Apple has always stood for user privacy and made decisions that have involuntarily hurt Facebook. Facebook, on the other hand, believes that Apple cares only about profits and the whole privacy ‘angle’ is meant to kill competition. Now, a report by The Wall Street Journal suggests that Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has told his team that “we need to inflict pain” on Apple.
The stand-off between Apple and Facebook has gotten more intense in the last few months. Apple is set to roll out its App Transparency Tracking feature soon and it hasn’t gone down well at all with Apple.
As per the report, Dani Lever, a Facebook spokeswoman said that “the choice between personalized services and privacy was a “false trade-off,” and that Facebook provides both. “This is not about two companies. This is about the future of the free internet,” she said. Facebook is adamant that under Apple’s new rules consumers, app developers and small businesses will lose out massively. “Apple claims this is about privacy, but it’s about profit, and we’re joining others to point out their self-preferencing, anticompetitive behavior.”
Zuckerberg may have said that he wants to inflict pain on Apple but Lever denied that this isn’t personal. Facebook, she said, is “deliberately standing up to Apple” on behalf of businesses and developers hurt by the new policy.
In the aftermath of the Cambridge Analytica scandal in 2018, Apple CEO Tim Cook had said that the Cupertino-based tech giant would never be in a position Facebook had found itself in where it ‘leaked’ data of millions of users. Zuckerberg had responded angrily and called Cook’s comments false and “glib.”
The report further says that advisers, law firms and lobbyists are all worried about the tension between the two tech giants. They are reportedly so concerned that “they won’t be able to work for both,” the report says.