Tim Cook, CEO of Apple hasn’t been timid about his criticism of Facebook, which has made Meta CEO & Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg to perfectly return the favor.
Source: Business Insider
At the New York Times DealBook summit on Wednesday, Zuckerberg expressed his criticism for Apple, the most valuable American company, and how the iPhone maker enforces control over its App Store.
At the summit, Zuckerberg said, “Apple has sort of singled themselves out as the only company that is trying to control unilaterally what apps get on a device. I don’t think that’s a sustainable or good place to be.”
Zuckerberg even drew a comparison between Apple and Google. The latter enables users to download apps to their Android smartphones without relying on only the Google Play store.
“They’ve always made it so you can sideload and have other app stores and work directly with phone manufacturers. That’s also been our commitment in how we built up our VR and what we plan to do with our AR headsets”, added the Meta CEO.
Meta’s online ad business has been severely affected this year by Apple’s policies regarding third-party tracking. Apple’s 2021 iOS privacy update makes it much more difficult for Facebook and other ad-supported applications to target users with advertisements.
Along with prevailing macroeconomic challenges, Apple’s amendments have resulted in consecutive quarters of declining revenue for Meta. This year, the company has lost two-thirds of its value.
For long, Apple CEO Tim Cook has been critical of Facebook’s business, which depends on user data, and even linked the company’s algorithmic model to violent action taken by extremist groups due to the way the app would recommend content.
On Wednesday, Zuckerberg said that “there is a conflict of interest” with companies that “deliver their apps exclusively through platforms that are controlled by competitors.” According to him, the platform operators, are not neutral actors but also have a lot of their own “strategic interests.”
Zuckerberg’s voice heats up an emerging conflict between Twitter and Apple. On Monday, Twitter’s new owner Elon Musk claimed in a series of tweets that Apple had threatened to remove the Twitter app from it’s App Store as part of its app review moderation process.
Regarding Twitter and it’s now chief Elon Musk, Zuckerberg said “it’s going to be very interesting to see how this plays out in terms of the approaches he’s taking.”
“I would guess that not everything is going to work, but I think some things might work,” Zuckerberg added.
He suggested that Musk’s rapid decisions on Twitter’s content moderation policy could result in challenges.
“I tend to think that I don’t want one person or one company making those decisions, which is why we pioneered this oversight board for our content decisions,” Zuckerberg said. “People have a vehicle that they can appeal to outside of us.”