Facebook will continue its campaign against Apple’s planned privacy feature in 2021, but said in an email to businesses that they have ‘no choice’ but to comply with the iOS 14 change.
The feature in question makes a type of advertiser tracking explicitly selectable for users. Facebook has launched a full campaign against the feature, including full-page newspaper ads claiming it could harm small and medium-sized businesses.
In an email sent by Facebook business users iMore, the social media giant continued the campaign, saying the opt-in prompt “will have difficult implications for targeting, optimizing and measuring the effectiveness of campaigns for businesses advertising on mobile devices and on the Internet.”
“Apple’s changes will benefit them while harming the industry and the ability of businesses of all sizes to market themselves effectively and grow through personalized advertising,” Facebook continued. “We believe that personalized advertising and privacy can exist by users.”
While Facebook says it does not agree with the privacy feature, it has told business users that it has “no choice” but to accept the request. It added that if it did not comply, it could risk deleting the App Store.
In the coming weeks, Facebook says it will provide more guidance and advice to prepare businesses for the coming change. Failure to monitor the advertiser’s users, Facebook said, could lead to ‘potentially reduced advertising effectiveness and metrics’.
Previously, Facebook estimated that the ad’s revenue could drop by as much as 60%.
Apple was initially scheduled for a launch in iOS 14 and delayed the implementation of the anti-tracking prompt until 2021 to give businesses and advertisers more time to prepare for the feature.
Although some ad-dependent businesses, including Facebook, are opposed to the feature, some privacy groups and organizations have praised Apple for implementing it.
Mozilla, the maker of Firefox, has launched a campaign to thank Apple for protecting privacy. The digital civil rights group, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, praised Apple for implementing the feature and called Facebook’s campaign against it “ridiculous”.
A December report also indicated that there was some internal disagreement over the anti-Apple campaign within Facebook. Some employees believe that Facebook’s attacks are unjustified and that it could backfire on the social media giant.
The anti-detection transparency feature will be launched in early 2021, although an exact date is not currently clear.