Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg says Apple’s privacy changes are self-service and distortions of competition

Facebook today shared its fourth quarter 2020 earnings, and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s opening speech focused on Apple’s upcoming anti-tracking privacy changes that will impact the ad industry and companies like Facebook who are depend on online advertisements.

As emphasized by The Washington Post, Zuckerberg claimed that Apple is changing its privacy policy, not to help people, but to promote its own interests.

“Apple has every incentive to use their dominant platform position to interfere with the way our apps and other apps work, which they do on a regular basis,” said Zuckerberg. “They say they are doing this to help people, but the moves are clearly following their competitive interests.”

Zuckerberg said Facebook sees Apple as one of its biggest competitors and claims the privacy changes will help Apple services such as iMessage and FaceTime compete with Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp.

“iMessage is an important linchpin in their ecosystem,” says Zuckerberg. “It comes pre-installed on every iPhone and they prefer it with private APIs and permissions, which is why iMessage is the most used messaging service in the US”

Zuckerberg also said again that Apple’s changes will affect small businesses, which is a claim Facebook is leaning on as it campaigns against Apple’s planned changes. Facebook has previously published newspaper ads and shared blog posts explaining how Apple’s changes to ad tracking in iOS 14 “will adversely affect many small businesses struggling to survive.”

Facebook has previously claimed that Apple’s move is “about profit” and that it will leave apps and websites no choice but to charge a subscription fee or add in-app purchases to make ends meet, leading to increased revenue from the App Store.

Apple is not withdrawing despite Facebook’s complaints and has plans to implement the new tracking rules in the near future. If required, apps that track usage through a random ad ID should ask users to share their ad tracking information.

Advertisers use the Random Advertising ID to serve personalized ads and track ad campaigns, but the ad industry expects many people to choose not to share this information.

Apple says users should be aware of when their data is being collected and shared with other apps and websites, and that they should be given a choice to opt in or out. “We believe this is a matter of standing up for our users,” Apple said in response to Facebook’s claims.