Zuckerberg calls out Apple’s hold on app industry
Speaking at the New York Times’ DealBook Conference, Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta, said he believes Apple’s power as a gatekeeper for the apps marketplace was problematic.
“If you look at all the major competing platforms that have existed — iOS, Android, Windows — Apple stands out,” he said Wednesday. “It is the only one where one company can control what apps get on the device. I don’t think it’s sustainable or good.”
App stores can exert pressure on companies like Facebook and Twitter because of their ability to remove apps that don’t meet their guidelines, which would make it more difficult for billions of potential users to download and gain access to the services.
Yael Roth, former head of trust and safety at Twitter, wrote in an opinion piece for the Times this month that if Apple or Google were to remove Twitter from its app store, it would be “catastrophic,” and suggested the app stores played a role in governing content moderation in the app.
Last week, Elon Musk complained on Twitter that Apple had “threatened to withhold Twitter from its App Store but won’t tell us why.”
Zuckerberg contrasted the Apple App Store with the Google Play Store. “Google might control what goes in the Play Store, but they have always made it so you can side-load and have other app stores and work directly with phone manufacturers.”
Apple also made changes to its privacy policy last year that made it more difficult for social media apps like Facebook to target their users with ads. The changes have contributed to a drop in the revenues for Facebook and other companies reliant upon digital advertising. Meta’s profits slid by more than 50 percent in the third quarter compared with the same period the year before.
Zuckerberg said unlike a government, “Apple obviously has their own interests” and that “the fact that companies have to deliver their apps exclusively from platforms controlled by competitors — there is a conflict of interest there.”