Facebook Inc. and Apple Inc. stands dangerously close to total legal war, and the social media giant is strongly considering instituting a lawsuit that could eventually lead to the investigation into antitrust.
The fire is on Apple’s AAPL,
new iOS 14 policy, which is available this spring. It includes new privacy features that require programs for the first time to ask users’ permission to find it on the Internet. Such a feature, Facebook FB,
claims, would severely curtail online advertising and kill small businesses in the process.
Tensions between the companies have increased for years to the point where Facebook is considering suing Apple for giving preferential treatment to its own apps while imposing restrictive rules on Facebook and other third-party apps, according to reports.
“As we have repeatedly said, we believe that Apple is acting competitively by exercising its control over the App Store at the expense of app developers and small businesses,” a Facebook spokesman said in a statement to MarketWatch.
Apple did not comment.
Facebook, which launched a series of print and digital ads in December to put an end to it, unveiled its animus during an earnings call with analysts on Wednesday.
“We also see that Apple’s business is increasingly dependent on the share of applications and services against us and other developers,” Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said during the call. “Apple therefore has every incentive to use their dominant platform position to interfere with how our apps and other apps work, which they regularly do to give their own preference.”
Apple CEO Tim Cook downplayed the hostility Thursday without naming Facebook by name.
“If a business is built on deceptive users, on data mining, on choices that are not choices at all, it does not deserve our praise. It deserves reform, ”Cook said at the online computer, privacy and data protection conference on Thursday. “Too many still ask the question: ‘How much can we get away with?’ when they have to ask, “What are the consequences?”
‘What are the consequences of prioritizing conspiracy theories and violent incitement simply because of their high involvement? What are the consequences of not only tolerating content but also being rewarding that undermines public confidence in life-saving vaccinations? What are the consequences of thousands of users joining extremist groups, and then an algorithm still exists that recommends even more? ”
The provocative conflict highlights contrasting business approaches: Apple slavishly pursues the philosophy of consumer privacy, in which the customer pays for their Internet experience. Facebook, on the other hand, relies on data about its members to boost its digital advertising business.
Read more: Facebook and Apple Embody New Tech Divide
Ironically, a legal showdown between tech titans could hurt them on the antitrust front, as both are investigated over the things they accuse each other of, says Elizabeth Renieris, founder of the Notre Dame-IBM Technology Ethics Lab at the University of Notre Dame.
“What demonstrates this dispute more than anything is that Facebook and Apple have tremendous powers to preserve the market,” she told MarketWatch.
“It shows how much Facebook controls access to customers or audiences through its advertising ecosystem,” Renieris said. “At the same time, the dispute reveals how much power Apple has to mediate access to our personal data through its engineering choices and policy decisions.”