Facebook and Apple Are Beefing Over the Future of the Internet

Apple CEO Tim Cook gave a speech explaining his company’s upcoming privacy changes, which will ban apps from sharing iPhone user behavior with third parties unless users give explicit consent. And he made plain that these new policies were designed at least in part with Facebook in mind. Speaking as part of a conference convened for International Data Privacy Day, Cook excoriated the social media business model, which is based on monitoring people’s behavior in order to target ads to them. Apple’s new App Tracking Transparency framework, which was first announced summer 2020, takes direct aim at any company that makes money by following users across the internet. Beginning sometime this spring, every iOS app that wants to “track” a user—that is, share their behavior and data with other apps, websites, or data brokers—has to first get their express permission. That would be bad news for Facebook, who track users to provide advertisers "lookalike audiences". Facebook has complained that Apple is using its dominant position in the mobile phone market to unilaterally impose a major change to how user data is tracked and shared online.