Sometimes I fucking love The Reg:
Facebook has apologized to its users and advertisers for being forced
to respect people’s privacy in an upcoming update to Apple’s mobile
operating system – and promised it will do its best to invade their
privacy on other platforms.
The antisocial network that makes almost all of
its revenue from building a vast, constantly updated database of
netizens that it then sells access to, is upset that iOS 14, due out
next month, will require apps to ask users for permission before
Facebook grabs data from their phones.
“This is not a change we want to make, but unfortunately Apple’s updates to iOS14 have forced this decision,” the behemoth bemoans before thinking the unthinkable: that it may have to end its most intrusive analytics engine for iPhone and iPad users.
“We know this may severely impact publishers’ ability to monetize
through Audience Network on iOS 14, and, despite our best efforts, may
render Audience Network so ineffective on iOS 14 that it may not make
sense to offer it on iOS 14 in the future.”
Amazingly, despite Facebook pointing out to Apple
that it is tearing away people’s right to have their privacy invaded in
order to receive ads for products they might want, Cupertino continues
to push ahead anyway.
The result is potentially horrifying. “While it’s difficult to quantify
the impact to publishers and developers at this point with so many
unknowns, in testing we’ve seen more than a 50 per cent drop in Audience
Network publisher revenue when personalization was removed from mobile
app ad install campaigns,” Facebook warns.
Kieran McCarthy, you San Francisco savage. I love you.
Seriously, though, the fact that Apple is trying to mobilize public sentiment against Apple for blocking their own attempts to violate users' privacy is about as fucking rich as it gets. Epic, at least, have adoring Fortnite fans to mobilize; nobody is going to ghost Apple for protecting them from Facebook's intrusive data collection.
And it's not like Facebook can leverage antitrust sentiment against Apple, either, since Facebook are also in Congress' crosshairs. Especially not in a week when Facebook just announced that Oculus users will need to login with Facebook accounts or lose their access to the games they'd bought for the platform, specifically on the strength of Facebook's promise to not do that. I mean... for fuck's sake, Zuck, what are you thinking?
I don't really have anything else to add, here; this whole post was basically written because McCarthy's piece was too juicy not to share. The whole piece goes on in this same sarcastic vein another couple of hundred words, and is totally worth reading, so go give them the click.
And fuck Facebook.