Facebook Inc. and Apple Inc. approaching the outbreak of the legal war, with the social media giant vigorously considering a lawsuit that investigators could eventually trust.
Apple has the collection centers on AAPL,
new iOS 14 policy, coming in the spring. It includes new privacy features that for the first time require apps to ask users for permission to monitor them around the web. Such a feature, Facebook FB,
claims, which would severely ban online advertising and kill small businesses in the process.
Tensions between the companies have escalated for years to the point where Facebook is considering suing Apple for giving its own apps favorable treatment while they imposes restricted rules on third-party apps from Facebook and others, according to reports.
“As we have said over and over again, we believe that Apple is behaving against competition by using its control over the App Store to take advantage of their bottom line at a cost app developers and small businesses, ”a Facebook spokesperson said in a statement to MarketWatch.
Apple had no idea.
Facebook, which launched a series of print and digital ads in December to make its point, was drilling home its vibrancy during an employment call by analysts Wednesday.
“We are also seeing Apple’s business increasingly rely on getting a stake in apps and services against us and other developers,” Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said during the call. “So Apple has every incentive to use the top position in their platform to disrupt the functionality of our apps and other apps, which they constantly do for the better. “
Apple CEO Tim Cook confirmed the hostility Thursday without mentioning Facebook by name.
“If a business is built on misleading consumers, on the use of data, on choices that are not options at all, it does not deserve our praise. It deserves to be reformed, ”Cook said at the Computers, Confidentiality and Data Protection online direct conference on Thursday. “Too many are still asking the question, ‘How far can we get away? when they have to ask, ‘What is the effect?
“What is the impact of prioritizing conspiracy theories and violent incitement simply because of their high levels of communication? What is the impact not only on tolerable but beneficial content that weakens public confidence in life-saving vaccines? What is the impact of seeing thousands of users join opposing groups, and then maintain an algorithm that suggests even more? ”
The simmering conflict reveals a different approach: Apple is slowly undermining the consumer privacy philosophy in which the customer pays for their internet experience. Facebook, by contrast, relies on data about its members to drive its digital advertising business.
Read more: Facebook and Apple Embody New Tech Divide
Ironically, a legal feud between the tech titans could hurt their faces against trust, as the two are under investigation for the very things they accuse each other of, says Elizabeth Renieris, founding director of Notre Dame -IBM Technology Ethics Lab at the University of Notre Dame.
“What this controversy reveals more than anything is that Facebook and Apple have tremendous gateway powers over the market,” she told MarketWatch.
“It shows just how much Facebook controls access to customers or listeners through their advertising ecosystem,” Renieris said. “At the same time, the controversy highlights Apple’s power to centralize access to our personal data through its engineering choices and policy decisions.”