(ThyBlackMan.com) The Apple vs Facebook drama has taught us one thing, there are good reasons for the public to be vigilant about hypocrisy. With its full-page newspaper ad campaign, Facebook tried to project itself as the protector of small businesses. On the other hand, Apple is trying its best to make Facebook understand that its new security update gives Apple device users more control over privacy.
It’s not that Facebook doesn’t understand a simple thing about app privacy settings, it’s just trying to make an issue for business gains. To understand what’s happening, here’s a bit of background.
With the new iOS 14 update, Apple is adding a privacy feature that allows its customers to prevent apps from tracking them. Once the update is installed, anybody who downloads apps like Facebook will see a notification pop-up asking them if they want the app to track them or not. According to Apple, this will create more transparency and will let users choose which app they find trustworthy enough to share their data with.
With these privacy updates coming to iOS devices, Facebook is starting to get desperate. For a long time, the company has collected data from billions of people and used questionable methods to track people and invade their privacy. Now when Apple is making efforts to increase transparency, Facebook has unleashed a war of words with newspaper ads and social media campaigns.
Facebook has even designed a website page that offers a toolkit to advertisers to create videos and publish them on its platform. Facebook then promotes such videos of its customers through different channels. The core idea behind all this is to stop Apple from releasing such updates so that Facebook can continue to track users and use their data for its ad platform.
Facebook’s desperate attempt at fooling tech handicapped audiences is working to some extent. Apple was planning to release the update in 2020 but soon after the backlash from Facebook, the company delayed the update saying that it wants to allow more time for developers to comply. Through its campaign against Apple’s privacy update, Facebook is literally telling people that all the efforts by Apple to increase privacy and transparency are bad.
The hidden agenda behind this massive campaign is simple – Facebook will lose ad revenue. For those who never explored Facebook beyond their timeline, here’s something that needs to be understood well.
Facebook is a free-to-use service as you don’t pay any fees for using it. From creating an account to posting updates, everything is free. But Facebook has also turned itself into an advertising platform for businesses. Small or big, any business or individual can pay money to Facebook to run ad campaigns. Facebook allows businesses to target audiences based on their interests, age, sex, lifestyle, and other personal information.
In simple terms, each Facebook user is a product whose data is being sold indirectly to advertisers to run personalized ad campaigns.
You may be using Facebook for socializing but your data is being served to advertisers. More data means more advertising opportunities for Facebook which translates to more ad revenue for the company. Apple’s iOS privacy update hits Facebook where it hurts the most. By allowing users to control their privacy settings, Apple is empowering its customers which will eventually result in revenue loss for Facebook.
Facebook is completely ignoring its core users and focusing only on businesses that advertise on its platform. Apple, however, has been responding to the allegations made by Facebook in a decent manner and not aggressively like how Facebook has been doing through ad campaigns. Facebook knows that small businesses and its own ad platform won’t survive if its core users start quitting Facebook if the company continues to treat them like a product. But the company chooses to stay quiet because Facebook has come to a point where it is not in a position to ask people to pay to use it. Even if it starts charging $5 or $10 a month, it will lose a massive chunk of users instantly.
It’s not like Facebook didn’t see this coming. The company was already worried about such changes from smartphone makers. Facebook Phone was an attempt to create its own software ecosystem, but the project failed. So, in order to grow as a social media platform and continue to generate revenue, small businesses are its only hope. And Facebook is shamelessly using business owners to save itself from such privacy updates.
For Apple or any other smartphone maker, privacy must be one of the top priorities to stay ahead in business. People are now becoming more informed about privacy and data security. And for small businesses, there’s only one thing that they need to understand. If a user’s choice about privacy upsets a company, then there’s something that’s not right. Fighting for internet freedom is not about prioritizing the interests of a certain group of users and ignoring the others.
Staff Writer; Jack Bell
Cell Phone Guru & Video Games Junkie… With that, like my articles, feel free to hit me up at; JackBell@ThyBlackMan.com.