Mark Zuckerberg talks about Apple's upcoming privacy changes

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, during a discussion on Clubhouse on Thursday, March 18 said that Apple’s upcoming privacy changes could strengthen Facebook. This comes after fighting Apple over the changes. Zuckerberg said, “Apple takes a much bigger cut of that than anything that we take out of the money that these creators are getting . . . I'm still optimistic about the future. I just think it would be a lot better for a lot of folks if there were a little bit less of a tax there.”

Zuckerberg was accompanied by Spotify CEO Daniel Ek, and Shopify CEO Tobi Lütke. The theme of the show revolved around why creators are crucial to the economy, how Apple’s policies could hurt developers and small businesses, and why audio apps are blowing up. Zuckerberg said that he believed that the changes will encourage sellers to go directly via Facebook's commerce products, as targeted advertising on the platform was deemed less effective. 

Zuckerberg said, “Apple's changes encourage more businesses to conduct commerce on our platforms, by making it harder for them to basically use their data in order to find the customers that would want to use their products outside of our platforms”. He added, “But the thing that I've been mostly focused on is that a lot of these changes are going to make it harder for small businesses and developers. And I think the situation is going to be challenging for them to navigate”.

All that you need to know 

Earlier, Apple CEO Tim Cook lambasted social media companies and accused them of promoting disinformation and violence. This happened when Facebook was preparing an antitrust lawsuit against Apple. The social media website Facebook had accused Apple of abusing control of its App Store by requiring outside app developers to abide by rules not applied to its own apps. Apple CEO Tim Cook, on the other hand, blasted on online platforms with “disinformation and conspiracy theories juiced by algorithms”. 

Zuckerberg had said that Apple was becoming one of his company’s biggest competitors. While speaking at a conference call with investors, Zuckerberg said that Apple has every incentive to use their dominant platform position to interfere with how other apps work, which they regularly do to the preference of their own. He added that Apple may say that they’re doing this to help people but the moves clearly track their competitive interests. 

The clash was related to changes in the latest version of Apple’s iOS, which includes a tracking transparency feature that Facebook claims will cripple its ability to serve up to targeted ads. Apple is set to roll out the new privacy control in the early spring to prevent iPhone apps from secretly shadowing people. It is worth mentioning that under Apple’s upcoming App Tracking Transparency (ATT) update for iOS 14, iPhone users who download apps with IDFA will be prompted with a notification informing them and asking for consent.