Apple Defends Delay of Privacy Feature, Slams Facebook

Facebook responded with a long statement accusing Apple of trying to distract users from its own privacy issues.

By Mark Gurman and Kurt Wagner, Bloomberg | Updated: 20 November 2020 11:21 IST

Apple Defends Delay of Privacy Feature, Slams Facebook

Facebook accused Apple of using its size to block competitors from running their advertising business

Highlights

Apple’s letter defended the decision to delay an iPhone feature
The enhancement was added as part of Apple’s iOS 14 operating system
Human rights organisations criticised the delay in a letter to Apple

Apple on Thursday slammed Facebook and other Internet giants for their advertisement-targeting practices in response to a letter questioning a decision by the iPhone maker to delay a new privacy feature.

The Cupertino, California-based technology company criticised Facebook's approach to advertising and user tracking, according to a written reply sent to several human rights and privacy organisations, including the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Human Rights Watch:

By contrast, Facebook and others have a very different approach to targeting. Not only do they allow the grouping of users into smaller segments, they use detailed data about online browsing activity to target ads. Facebook executives have made clear their intent is to collect as much data as possible across both first and third party products to develop and monetise detailed profiles of their users, and this disregard for user privacy continues to expand to include more of their products.

[Sponsored] Samsung Galaxy S24: The Ultimate Camera Phone With Smarter On-Device AI

Apple's letter, reviewed by Bloomberg News, defended the company's decision to delay an iPhone feature that requires users to give explicit permission before letting apps track them for advertising purposes. The enhancement was added as part of the company's iOS 14 operating system in September, but a requirement that all apps use it was delayed until early 2021 after several developers, including Facebook, said the change would hurt their businesses.

The human rights and privacy organisations criticised the delay in a letter earlier this year to Apple. “This means that these privacy protections will not be available during the critical weeks leading up to and following the 2020 US elections, when people's data can be used to target them with personalised political ads,” they wrote.

Jane Horvath, Apple's global head of privacy, said the company delayed the requirement to “give developers the time they indicated they needed to properly update their systems and data practices.” Apple remains “fully committed” to the feature, she added.

Apple Hits Back at Activist Max Schrems’ Complaints Against Tracking Tool

Facebook responded Thursday afternoon with a long statement accusing Apple of trying to distract users from its own privacy issues. The social network also accused Apple of using its size to block competitors, like Facebook, from running their advertising business.

“They are using their dominant market position to self-preference their own data collection while making it nearly impossible for their competitors to use the same data,” Facebook said in the statement. “They claim it's about privacy, but it's about profit.”

iOS 14: How to Stop Apps From Spying On You With These 10 Simple Settings

Will Apple Silicon Lead to Affordable MacBooks in India? We discussed this on Orbital, our weekly technology podcast, which you can subscribe to via Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, or RSS, download the episode, or just hit the play button below.

Affiliate links may be automatically generated - see our ethics statement for details.

Comments

For the latest tech news and reviews, follow Gadgets 360 on X, Facebook, WhatsApp, Threads and Google News. For the latest videos on gadgets and tech, subscribe to our YouTube channel. If you want to know everything about top influencers, follow our in-house Who'sThat360 on Instagram and YouTube.