The Apple-Facebook beef over user tracking is getting serious.
On Monday, Apple launched iOS 14.3, giving users the ability to see the myriad ways in which apps track you (and for Facebook, that’s a lot of ways). Facebook responded with a newspaper ad that claims the company is “standing up to Apple for small businesses everywhere.”
Now, Apple is hitting back. In a statement to 9to5Mac, the company said it’s merely “a simple matter of standing up for our users.”
“Users should know when their data is being collected and shared across other apps and websites — and they should have the choice to allow that or not. App Tracking Transparency in iOS 14 does not require Facebook to change its approach to tracking users and creating targeted advertising, it simply requires they give users a choice,” the statement reads.
This is far from over, of course. According to BuzzFeed’s John Paczkowski, Facebook is planning to run another anti-Apple ad today, with even more serious wording.
“Apple plans to roll out a forced software update that would change the internet as we know it for the worse,” the alleged draft text of the ad reads.
What Facebook is reportedly referring to is a planned update that will require App Store apps to ask for user permission before tracking, which should launch next year (the feature was originally supposed to launch with iOS 14, but it was delayed). According to the new ad’s draft text, as reported by Paczkowski, Facebook’s ad claims that “Apple’s change will limit [businesses’] ability to run personalized ads,” forcing businesses to “start charging you subscription fees or adding in app purchases.”
This clash will only get more heated as the actual launch of new App Store rules nears, so stay tuned for more strongly-worded statements and newspaper ads from the two companies in the near future.