Apple vs. Facebook | The Privacy Wars

Apple just pounced on Facebook’s attack against the upcoming IDFA changes. Facebook believed they had the upper hand when they said the upcoming changes would hurt small businesses, especially during the pandemic.

But Apple wasn’t having it, and Tim Cook decided to pull out his trump card and continued to press the issue that Apple is on the consumer’s side and that while not every consumer is a small business owner, every small business is a consumer, and should have the option to decide who tracks their activity across apps and websites, along with their location and other metadata.

While Facebook does have a point that these changes will make it harder for SMB’s to effectively use their ad targeting system, we side with Apple on this one. Privacy should be in the hands of each consumer and not determined by big tech. While Facebook and Google have developed true monopolies in Search and Social by giving away free products in return for consumers effectively becoming products to monetize, Apple has erred on the side of caution and is taking another route in giving their customers the option to share their data.

But Tim Cook made sure to point out here that Apple isn’t simply cutting off the ability for these companies to track your data, they are just making it more clear to users what is going on to display their ads. This completely shut down Facebook’s argument from a positive to a negative one. Sure, this will give Facebook’s advertising customers a disadvantage because they will have fewer data to collect about what their users are doing and where they are doing it. But we believe privacy is a right, and this will allow for decentralized and organic advertising and marketing channels to thrive as the current paid models become less effective.

Apple has shifted the battleground here with a single tweet. And this isn’t the first time Apple steered the marketplace in favor of their views. Remember HTML Web Apps vs. Mobile Apps? Facebook thought they were bringing out the big guns but “Tim Apple” shot back with a single tweet.