SAN FRANCISCO: Social networking giant Facebook opened fire on Apple Wednesday, accusing the iPhone maker of cutting merchants off from desperately needed customers with new transparency measures on user data collection.
A war between the internet giants started over the latest version of the iOS operating software powering Apple’s mobile devices that comes with a tracking transparency feature which Facebook contends will cripple the ability to serve up targeted ads.
“This is about control of the entire internet and how they attempt to control personalized advertising,” Facebook vice president of business products Dan Levy said in a conference call.
Apple declined to comment on the Facebook onslaught, which included newspaper ads and the launch of a “Speak up for small businesses” web page.
At a data privacy conference in Brussels last week, Apple senior vice president of software engineering Craig Federighi contended that some tech companies would make “outlandish claims” about the new tracking transparency feature in iOS.
“It’s already clear that some companies are going to do everything they can to stop the App Tracking Transparency feature I described earlier — or any innovation like it — and to maintain their unfettered access to people’s data,” Federighi said at the conference. “We need the world to see those arguments for what they are: a brazen attempt to maintain the privacy-invasive status quo.”