Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg reportedly told Facebook employees that, "We need to inflict pain" on Apple for treating the social media giant so poorly, the Wall Street Journal reports.
Zuckerberg supposedly made the comment in 2018 after Apple and Facebook's chief execs butted heads over the Cambridge Analytica scandal, in which the personal data of millions of Facebook users was accessed without their consent for political advertising.
Apple vs. Facebook
At the time, Apple CEO Tim Cook was quizzed in an interview about how he would respond if he was in Zuckerberg's situation, facing the crisis. "I wouldn't be in this situation," Cook said.
The Wall Street Journal claims that, while Zuckerberg commented that Cook's words were "extremely glib" and "not at all aligned with the truth," behind the scenes he was considerably harsher in his assessment.
Since then, the relationship between the two tech companies hasn't gotten any better. Apple has doubled down on its privacy oriented stance, with Cook proclaiming privacy to be one of the world's most pressing concerns. iOS 14 contains multiple privacy related features, which Facebook has taken issue with, claiming that they have the potential to hurt small businesses.
During Facebook's latest quarterly investor call, Zuckerberg labeled Apple "one of [Facebook's] biggest competitors" as a result of these new privacy protection measures. "Apple may say they're doing this to help people, but the moves clearly track with their competitive interests," Zuckerberg said.
Facebook is supposedly readying an antitrust case against Apple that would turn the sniping between the two Silicon Valley titans into a full-on legal battle. The Wall Street Journal report notes that, "The potential regulatory settlements and legal decisions are likely to affect hundreds of millions of consumers' phones in coming years."
Different Approaches
Facebook spokesperson, Dani Lever, told the Wall Street Journal that, "Apple claims this is about privacy, but it's about profit, and we're joining others to point out their self-preferencing, anticompetitive behavior." She said that Facebook is "deliberately standing up to Apple" on behalf of smaller businesses and developers who are hurt by Apple's App Privacy feature.
While Lever denied that the battle between the two companies is personal, it absolutely goes beyond just a few points of contention between two large tech companies. The ad-funded business model Facebook operates on is extremely different to the hardware-funded model that powers Apple. Neither of the two companies---or their leaders---are likely to back down on their core beliefs about how to build the future of tech.
The fact that Apple CEO Tim Cook discusses privacy in moral terms shows just how personal, on one level, this truly is.
Image Credit: Wikipedia/Anthony Quintano CC
