Facebook vs Apple privacy features
App Tracking Transparency is Meta’s public enemy number one
Ever since Apple introduced App Tracking Transparency (ATT) to give users more control over how they were tracked by apps, Facebook owner Meta has complained about the policy. The impact ATT has had on Meta’s revenues is not pretty.
In February 2022, Meta reported it expected to lose $10 billion in revenue over the next year thanks to ATT, showing the impact Apple’s feature has had. Meta also reported a fall in daily active users for the first time in its history, while its share price tumbled 26% in its largest one-day drop ever.
In an earnings call, Mark Zuckerberg explained that
Facebook was working on rebuilding its advertising infrastructure so that it could “continue to grow and deliver high-quality personalised ads”. It was doing this in the face of iOS changes and new data privacy laws in Europe, Zuckerberg said, which mean there is “less data available to deliver personalised ads”.
Meta accused Apple of not holding web browsers to the same privacy standards as apps, though Safari already blocks third-party cookies by default and hides your IP address if you use iCloud+.