Facebook Inc. and Apple Inc. are dangerously close to total legal war, with the social media giant strongly considering a lawsuit that could end up influencing antitrust investigators.
The conflagration revolves around Apple’s AAPL,
new iOS 14 policy, expected this spring. It includes new privacy features that, for the first time, will require applications to request permission from users to track them on the web. This feature, Facebook FB,
claims, severely limit online advertising and kill small businesses in the process.
The tension between companies has increased for years to the point that Facebook is considering suing Apple for giving preferential treatment to its own applications, while imposing restrictive rules on Facebook’s third-party applications and others, according to reports.
“As we have said repeatedly, we believe that Apple is behaving in an anti-competitive way by using its App Store control to benefit its results at the expense of application developers and small businesses,” said a Facebook spokeswoman in a statement to MarketWatch.
Apple did not comment.
Facebook, which launched a series of print and digital ads in December to show its point of view, trained its spirits during a conference call with analysts on Wednesday.
“We are also seeing Apple’s business increasingly dependent on gaining participation in applications and services against us and other developers,” said Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg during the call. “Therefore, Apple has every incentive to use its dominant position on the platform to interfere with the way our apps and other apps work, which they do regularly to give preference to theirs.”
Apple CEO Tim Cook increased hostility on Thursday without mentioning Facebook’s name.
“If a company is based on misleading users, on data exploitation, on choices that are not choices at all, then it does not deserve our praise. It deserves reform, ”Cook said at the Computers, Privacy and Data Protection online conference on Thursday. “Many are still asking themselves, ‘How much can we earn?’ when they need to ask, ‘What are the consequences?’
“What are the consequences of prioritizing conspiracy theories and violent incitement simply because of their high rates of engagement? What are the consequences of not only tolerating, but rewarding content that undermines public confidence in life-saving vaccines? What are the consequences of seeing thousands of users join extremist groups and then perpetuate an algorithm that further recommends? “
The latent conflict highlights contrasting business approaches: Apple slavishly criticizes the consumer privacy philosophy in which the customer pays for their Internet experience. Facebook, on the other hand, relies on data about its members to fuel its digital advertising business.
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Ironically, a legal confrontation between the tech titans could hurt them on the antitrust front, since both are under investigation for the same things they accuse each other of, says Elizabeth Renieris, founding director of the Notre Dame Technology Ethics Laboratory – IBM at the University of Notre Dame.
“What this rivalry demonstrates more than anything is that Facebook and Apple have tremendous control over the market,” she told MarketWatch.
“It shows how much Facebook controls access to customers or audiences through its ad ecosystem,” said Renieris. “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.”