▷Facebook Battles: Apple Sieves Its Practices (Part 2) [Updated] 🥇

Update March 2021

Refresh at the end to follow the chronological order

It seems that much of the activity in 2021 will take place in the corridors of courts and public administrations, if we take into account the legislation approved by the European Union to promote competition, the proposed European law to protect creators of audiovisual content, and of the various attempts to put limits on big tech companies or, at least, to make them pay taxes on their profits in every country.

In the first part we talked about the cause of the FTC and the states against Facebook, in what we might call "the past". But if we look to the future, its business model (understood as collecting user data to create profiles and trade with them) is about to take a hit.

Apple's privacy defense puts Facebook's business model at risk

Facebook Battles: Apple Sieves Its Practices (Part 2) [Updated]

Here we have often addressed the immorality of Facebook, assuming, as users of its platform, that it always lies and without any remorse, and that even if we tick the boxes that deny our permission to collect information or record our movements, it will continue to do so. ..

Apple, which almost everything has its own agenda, decided many years ago that user privacy - perhaps even distilled from the same personality as Steve Jobs - was a fundamental pillar of its strategy and that its business was to sell products, not trade. your customer data or sell advertising.

Year after year, Apple has accentuated its message of protecting user privacy by developing technologies that could be developed on the device itself, Secure Enclave, etc.

Finally, in the last WWDC it was the turn to limit the transmission of data and the recording of user activity between apps and web pages, and announced its decision to make it mandatory to ask the user for consent to do so.

Although most developers and web pages have no problem with this, because we do not trade with this data (even if we are carriers, including Google advertising on the page).

In Europe, as we have said on other occasions, the impact is less, because Android has the majority market share, and that field - owned by Google - will continue to be largely wild territory for data collection.

But in the US, the iPhone holds the majority of the mobile device market - and most of the high and very high purchasing power market anyway - so restricting control and recording on the iPhone is a major blow to the mobile device. consumers. business of big data merchants: Facebook and Google.

A few months ago, Apple announced a brief moratorium on the entry into force of its new policies, delaying them until early 2021, so that Facebook / and the rest / have time to adapt their applications (and indirectly, the their strategies, business plans, expectations, etc.) in the face of the tsunami that the exercise of Apple's power will bring.

In ‌‌iOS 14‌‌, Apple made the “Identifier for Advertisers” (used by Facebook and its ad personalization partners) something the user can select, offering greater transparency to those users who would prefer not to be tracked. web pages. The update simply asks users if they agree to allow tracking or deny tracking between apps and web pages.

‌‌IOS 14‌‌ also incorporates a very visible section in the Privacy section, within the Settings, where users can disable the option for apps to track them.

Even with this option disabled, apps must ask users if they allow them to track their movements through other companies 'apps and websites, which undoubtedly exposes the secret practice of tracking, taking advantage of users' ignorance.

Since its announcement, Facebook has shown its disagreement with this new user empowerment policy, instead of continuing to exploit their ignorance. The maxim "what the eye does not see, the heart does not repent" has become a way of doing things on the internet.

Facebook thinks that simply because it has done it all its life, it has the right to do so. It is not that users have the right to control what is known about them. The point is that Facebook has the right to record as much data as it can about its users and trade with them. And Apple is taking it away, arbitrarily. And what's worse, it's taking him away, not because he wants to take advantage of it, but because he's taking him away for nothing! In a perverted (or perverted) mind like the one that has Facebook, this must be a behavior close to madness: killing a company without getting anything in return! Where was it seen!

Facebook knows Apple, and certainly in telephone conversations, personal and commission, in Cupertino they have made it clear that this will happen, whether Mark Zuckerberg likes it or not.

What option does Facebook have?

When millions of dollars enter your bank account without you having to do anything, simply because people are walking down the street, it's hard to think of another way to make a living. You have assembled a structure designed to track people's movements (in the real world it is called espionage) and you will not take it apart because some crazy people say they no longer allow your spies to enter their buildings.

In all these months, what has happened to Facebook is… paying a whole page in the big newspapers to accuse Apple of wanting to harm small businesses!

Of all the tech companies in the world, Facebook says it needs to defend small businesses. It would be funny if it weren't for crying.

Not that we made it up, in a show of naive honesty, Facebook itself acknowledged that Apple's decision would affect its bottom line.

What does Facebook want with a full page in the newspapers?

The ads ran in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post and are headlined "We're Resisting Apple for Small Businesses Everywhere."

Clearly, they will not organize user demonstrations in the streets demanding that Apple allow Facebook to continue recording their movements at will.

Nor do I think the overwhelming majority of those "small businesses" understand the implications or why it will affect their effectiveness when selling through Facebook. They simply buy Facebook campaigns or have the Facebook shop.

So, from a communicative point of view, one wonders: apart from a (pathetic) attempt to present oneself as a self-sacrificing, self-sacrificing and empathetic representative of the weak, spending money to demonize Apple's privacy policy, what does that mean?

According to the Facebook ad page, this action by Apple could make it unprofitable to advertise on Facebook, as - according to the ad itself - sales can drop by as much as 60% for every dollar spent. Translation: Facebook advertising will be expensive relative to the amount of sales you get. Consequence: Facebook fails without advertisers.

All of this poses an extremely tense politically tense 2021, and while Apple seems to have the upper hand in this case, it's not without its dangers, as we'll discuss in later articles.

Updated December 18, 2020

For the second day in a row, Facebook has taken over an entire page in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, and The Washington Post claiming that the tracking changes Apple is about to introduce will harm not just small businesses, but the world of Internet as a whole. Facebook says that due to Apple's new policy, many apps and web pages will have to start charging for subscriptions or add more in-app purchases to maintain revenue, making the Internet "much more expensive."

The complete text of the translated ad:

Apple against the Internet for free

Apple plans to roll out a forced software update that will change the Internet as we know it… for the worse.

Think about your favorite sports or your cooking page. Most are free because they display ads.

Apple's change will limit its ability to display personalized ads. To maintain their level of income they will have to start charging a subscription fee or add more purchases within the app, making the internet much more expensive and reducing free high-quality content.

In addition to damaging apps and web pages, many small businesses say this will be dramatic for them too, at a time when they face massive changes. They need to be able to effectively reach the people most interested in their products and services to grow.

According to a new Deloitte study, 44% of small and medium-sized businesses started or increased the use of personalized ads on social media during the pandemic. Without personalized ads, Facebook data shows that the average small advertiser will see a 60% reduction in sales for every dollar spent.

Small businesses deserve to be heard. We're holding up to Apple for our small business customers and our communities.

Facebook's announcement concludes with a link to its new Speak Up For Small Business page where small business owners voice their concerns about the change Apple is about to make.

Full-page concern trolling from Facebook in the newspaper this morning. I don't find it terribly persuasive: Facebook's ad sales talk is that Facebook advertising works because it allows you to target people based on the data they * already share on Facebook. * Pic.twitter.com/eYVMOYiVcc

- Rob Pegoraro (@robpegoraro) December 17, 2020

Comment

That Facebook feels representative of "free Internet" is almost the last thing I had to hear. To say that you are defending small businesses, when all you are doing is claiming your right to track users without their knowledge, is a blatant demagogic lie.

And all those small, medium or large business owners who think that their ability to generate sales and acquire new customers depends on the fact that the data they obtain without the user's knowledge are not only taking a cynically immoral position, but they deserve close for your lack of imagination. That they dedicate themselves to getting to know their customers, to cultivate their brand image, and to stop working with non-transparent tactics and will build a healthy business, capable of growing on its own merits, without anyone doing their dirty work.

All this when Facebook suffered campaign cancellations from its large advertisers due to their reluctance to act on content moderation.

Absolutely disinterested, of course.

Update March 2021

Zuckerberg says Facebook "will be strengthened" when Apple increases its privacy measures

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said Thursday he is confident the company "will be able to manage" the transition of the privacy changes that will make Apple's App Tracking Transparency effective.

Zuckerberg explained that the change could benefit Facebook if more companies decide to sell their products directly through Facebook and Instagram.

"We will be in a good position," Zuckerberg said in Josh Constine's PressClub room at the Clubhouse.

The privacy changes introduced by Apple will inform users about device ID tracking and will ask them whether or not to allow such tracking.

According to Zuckerberg, “We may be in an even better position if Apple's changes encourage more companies to trade more on our platform, making it harder for them to use their data to find customers who may want to use their products outside of the market. our business. ".

Source: Salvador Rodriguez on CNBC

Comment

I do not know if I am more afraid that he is right (it means that they already know how to keep doing what they are doing and that the user still does not know they are doing it) or that it is another megalomanic illusion of a person unable to assume that the recreation is over and that from now on (at least as far as iOS users are concerned) he will have to step forward when he wants to use our data.

I guess we'll find out soon.