According to The Information, via MacRumors, Facebook is preparing to launch an antitrust lawsuit against Apple for alleged anticompetitive behavior, particularly regarding App Tracking Transparency and iMessage.
The antitrust lawsuit would contend that Apple has abused its power in the smartphone industry by enforcing App Store rules that Apple itself supposedly does not have to follow. Within this, the case would argue rules such as the requirement that developers use Apple’s own in-app payment service, make it harder to compete in areas such as gaming, messaging, and shopping.
iOS 14’s App Tracking Transparency feature, which allows users to opt-out of being tracked via an on-screen prompt, is believed to be central to Facebook’s case. Facebook alleges that the prompts are unfair because they do not appear for Apple’s own apps, offering it a competitive advantage.
In addition to App Tracking Transparency, Facebook is expected to focus on Apple’s refusal to allow third-party messaging apps to be installed as the default option on iPhones and iPads. The company lobbied Apple to allow users to choose Facebook’s Messenger app as the default on iOS instead of iMessage in September last year, and it now claims that Apple disallows other messaging apps to be set as default in an effort to prevent people from switching to competing smartphone brands.
MacDailyNews Take: Uh, Facebook, Apple’s apps do not track users or share data for advertising purposes which seems like a weak, as in nonexistent, foundation for an antitrust lawsuit against Apple.
Suing Apple for allowing users to protect their privacy seems like a losing position – to anyone not named Mark Zuckerberg, it seems.
By the way, all of these “social media” platforms – Twitter, Parler, Facebook – are cancers on society. They are clearly eating society from the inside out. There’s something unsavory within human nature that “digital distance” amplifies to the point of disgust.
If you quit these cancers you will quickly realize what they are and what they do. You will be happier and healthier to have excised them from your life.
We haven’t had personal Twitter or Facebook accounts for many years now. And very happily so. — MacDailyNews, January 9, 2021
The bottom line: Mark Zuckerberg was smart enough to steal the idea for Facebook, but isn’t smart enough to run Facebook without trampling his users’ privacy.