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Facebook Businesses

Facebook Wades Into 'Fortnite' Maker's Dispute With Apple (wsj.com) 46

Posted by msmash from the avengers-assemble dept.
Facebook said it would assist the company behind popular videogame "Fortnite" in its high-profile legal battle with Apple, as the social-media giant ramps up its own counterattack against what it says are the iPhone maker's self-serving measures cloaked in the interest of privacy. From a report: Facebook has been feuding with Apple for months on issues ranging from prices for paid apps to privacy rule changes. As part of a pledge to assist challenges to what it called Apple's anticompetitive behavior, Facebook plans to provide supporting materials and documents to Epic Games Inc. The "Fortnite" parent sued Apple earlier this year, claiming the tech giant's App Store operates like a monopoly. Facebook said it isn't joining the lawsuit but helping with discovery as the case heads to trial next year.
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Facebook Wades Into 'Fortnite' Maker's Dispute With Apple More

Facebook Wades Into 'Fortnite' Maker's Dispute With Apple

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  • lmao (Score:5, Insightful)

    by SkonkersBeDonkers ( 6780818 ) on Wednesday December 16, 2020 @02:59PM (#60838390)

    Leading candidate for least self-aware statement by an entity prize for 2020 "...it says are the iPhone maker's self-serving measures cloaked in the interest of privacy"

    • Sure, but on the other hand, when Facebook can claim the moral high ground that is thin ice for Apple; a company whose fortunes rest on their image.

      • Re:lmao (Score:4, Insightful)

        by jellomizer ( 103300 ) on Wednesday December 16, 2020 @03:14PM (#60838452)

        Or Facebook is just lying about the problem of Apples security claims.

        It isn't like having an person or organization just make stuff up, and often reflect what you are doing onto another group is unprecedented.

        • Sure, everyone but apple is lying.

          Or, stop being a fucking lame assed fan boy that cant even come up with something even remotely rational about apple to still believe in as the facts start pouring in.

          • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

            by Anonymous Coward

            Sure, everyone but apple is lying.

            Sure, Facebook isn't trying to maneuver into a position where they can weaken Apple's security guidelines so they can harvest more data for their advertisers. If you think that, you're just an apple fanboi.

          • Re: (Score:3)

            by jythie ( 914043 )
            Well, consider each company's motivations and what behavior they benefit from. For Apple, their product is hardware, services, and content sold in its marketplace. For Facebook, their product is consumers and their data. Apple's claims align with its interests, Facebook on the other hand has an incentive for painting Apple as being dishonest regarding its motivations. At the end of the day, Apple owes nothing to Facebook's customers, while Facebook wants access to Apple's customers to sell to its own.

          • Who said, Apple isn't Lying. It is just that Facebook is lying more.

            Being Apple products haven't had major security issues, like we have seen from Microsoft, or from Android systems, or Facebook. Apple seems to be on a better stance on saying that their security policies are better.

            I doubt they are perfect, or ideal. but they are better than their competition. But to the point saying Apple Position is so weak because Facebook can take the moral high ground, isn't a good analogy, because Facebook could j

      • Re:lmao (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Richard_at_work ( 517087 ) on Wednesday December 16, 2020 @04:30PM (#60838744)

        Facebook can claim anything they like, but it doesn't make it so.

        I've never had reason to distrust Apple with my privacy.

        I've never had reason to trust Facebook with my privacy.

        That is why Facebook don't have the moral high ground here.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by ranton ( 36917 )

        Sure, but on the other hand, when Facebook can claim the moral high ground that is thin ice for Apple

        You don't need to be able to claim moral high ground to win a court case. Facebook could be guilty of far worse privacy violations than Apple and still win a lawsuit against Apple's privacy violations.

        IANAL, but I don't think "the plaintiff is being hypocritical" is a valid legal defense.

        • Better than that, Facebook could use their experience in privacy violations to serve as expert testimony for why Apple's anticompetitive behavior is not related to privacy.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by jythie ( 914043 )
        Well, they can claim anything the like, but at the end of the day Apple's customers are the people who buy its devices and use its market for buying content.. while Facebook's customers are advertisers. Their fortunes are backed by very different interests.

        • Well, they can claim anything the like

          Highly unlikely, you may find they're not heavenly creatures but a horrible corporation, which was my point.

          And you think I didn't understand you, because I'm responding to what you said in the context of what I said. And the claiming of ground means you succeeded in capturing, not merely that you voiced an opinion that you were deserving of it.

    • Well, yes and know. I, and I bet you too, remember the news here on Slashdot, showing how Apple didn't actually care about users' privacy at all, but only to *appear so*. Actually, they cared about control and domination. And it was merely an artifact of that.
      Of course, this, coming from Facebook, of all sources, is indeed grand. :)

    • Hey..My pussy gets so wet, look at ....Wanna come inside? >> http://gg.gg/niztl [gg.gg]

  • Half of Fortnite's PR strategy here is that they are going up against a megacorp. That makes people want to root for Fortnite.

    Turning this into Facebook vs Apple doesn't help Fortnite. Apple should have quietly provided the documents and said nothing publicly.

    Consider this. A large company, one of the world's largest web sites, knows that they are using WAY too much bandwidth. Their business model can't possibly pay for all the bandwidth they are using. The only way they can continue to take in the dough i

    • Re:Bad strategy. Be quiet and it's David vs Goliat (Score:5, Insightful)

      by tlhIngan ( 30335 ) <[ten.frow] [ta] [todhsals]> on Wednesday December 16, 2020 @04:02PM (#60838616)

      But by framing it as a David vs Goliath battle, Netflix was able to get most consumers on their side, demanding that Netflix shouldn't pay their own bills, but that ISPs should be forced to host their site for free.

      Netflix was paying their own bills just fine - I believe Netflix has a rather good agreement with L3 for direct backbone access which Netflix pays for

      What people objected to was Comcast, et al. charging Netflix for access to their customers - as if being a Comcast customer made you special. Netflix was paying their fair share for their connection, Comcast etc just wanted to be greedy and make Netflix/YouTube/etc pay to get more profit.

      Verizon deliberately routed Netflix traffic to an overloaded network node - which is why a VPN worked rather well since it bypassed the routing.

      What happened was Comcast and such were making it so sites had to pay for access - if you wanted to use Google, but Microsoft paid Comcast more, Comcast would ensure Google sucked for Comcast users. Likewise, if YouTube paid more than Netflix, Neteflix would suck and YouTube would be good.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by ezdiy ( 2717051 )
        It's still Netflix strong arming favorable peering settlements no matter how you look at it. Add to this that they've used peering offensively - good ole "it will be as we say, or we'll see your prefix only from Telia/L3 monthly bill" - on multiple occasions at european IXes, so it's really just about good ole who has the bigger stick. The twisting of this into a narrative of net neutrality (along with Google) is novel and somewhat cute - largest oligopolies convincing public that strong arming every last m

      • Re: Bad strategy. Be quiet and it's David vs Golia (Score:4, Informative)

        by ArmoredDragon ( 3450605 ) on Wednesday December 16, 2020 @04:49PM (#60838818)

        Basically the ISPs want to double dip: They already charge you for the bandwidth that gives you internet access, and then charge the content providers again for that same bandwidth. And no, they're not going to lower your price, they're perfectly happy to keep raising it while double dipping. In the end, you the consumer end up paying twice for your own bandwidth.

      • The way peering is priced is by traffic. If you send a little traffic to your peer / upstream (and they don't send any back), you pay a little. If you send a lot of traffic, you pay a lot.

        If both sides send equal traffic, they pay each other equal money, it balances out. That's called "settlement free peering". I owe you for 10 Gbps, you owe me for 10 Gbps, it balances out and neither of us needs to pay the other.

        Cogent had peering arrangement with Level 3. That arrangement, like any other peering arrang

    • Uum, if you provide a service that I can't get anywhere else and is worth the price, and I actually need it, and can afford it, then hell yes am I paying for it!

      If your thing is abundantly available or literally not worth the bandwith it's using? Then no, you haven't got a business, go away and die quietly, please. :)

    • what the fuck are you talking about (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Netflix was paying its ISP. Netflix's customers, who were their own ISPs' customers, were paying for bandwidth too. The customers should be able to get to any website without facing ISP bandwidth limitations. That is what the customers are paying for. They may be using the web to watch porn, check e-mail or watch Netflix, it is entirely the customers' choice. Yes there could be limitations in transit, yes the website's own bandwidth might be limited; I am not talking about that.

      • A large company, one of the

    • How about this: Nobody pays for facebook's bandwidth at all, and they die like the bottom feeding cockroaches that they are.

    • I disagree. The lawsuit has ten claims, all of them are about monopoly abuse. Although there is the court of public opinion, that's a different battle than the lawsuit.

      Any evidence that helps break up the monopoly abuse is good. Even when it comes from other predatory or abusive sources, shutting down the monopoly abuses is a good thing here.

    • Half of Fortnite's PR strategy here is that they are going up against a megacorp. That makes people want to root for Fortnite.

      Maybe, but the other half of their strategy is that they accuse Apple of tying [wikipedia.org]. Apple is in fact tying, but whether it rises to the level of illegality is a question for the judge, not a question of popularity.

  • Great, we have two tech giants, both notorious over violating user privacy, fighting over user privacy. It's like watching Hitler and Stalin fighting over who rules the world.

  • Comment removed (Score:3)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Wednesday December 16, 2020 @03:11PM (#60838442)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Of course. FB rolled out a limp dick barrel-bursting squib round digital currency, so they're BizX's enemy now, so we get a countless barrage of news about them until BizX sees a different squirrel. :)

  • Enemy of my enemy and all that..... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by plate_o_shrimp ( 948271 ) on Wednesday December 16, 2020 @03:16PM (#60838458)
    "[Apple's] self-serving measures cloaked in the interest of privacy."

    Even if Apple benefits itself by benefiting me, I'm being benefited.

    • The Slashdot writeup is pretty sad. Even the WSJ article gets it right, the 10 claims in the lawsuit are entirely about anticompetitive practices.

      This lawsuit is entirely about illegally tying services together. If you use service A, Apple mandates that developers must also purchase services B and C. They must pay for them even if they already have service B, and even if the company already distributes its own service C, the developers must still pay for both B and C in order to receive A.

      (The services are

      • Epic didn't even challenge the 30% payment rate in the lawsuit.)

        How could they?

        Everybody else charges the same.

        And now, Apple halved its commission for little guys, and has never charged a cent for Freeware; even âoeFreewareâ like Fortnite, that is absolutely nothing more than an evil money-grab.

  • Conflict of Business Models (Score:4, Insightful)

    by kopecn ( 1962014 ) on Wednesday December 16, 2020 @03:17PM (#60838468)
    Facebook = make money on private user data. Apple = sell privacy centric user hardware. Claim all the fake news you want. The quarterly filings tell us where the revenue comes from.

  • A strange game this is... (Score:3)

    by BAReFO0t ( 6240524 ) on Wednesday December 16, 2020 @04:04PM (#60838626)

    The only losing move for me is if they don't play and don't bash each others' heads in. :D

  • Even a snake knows not to fuck with that hand that feeds it.

    End result: Facebook banned from Apple platforms. Apple fans won't care.

  • It's such a blast to find myself on Apple's side. Doesn't happen enough.

    • It's such a blast to find myself on Apple's side. Doesn't happen enough.

      I'm not sure if you understand the actual lawsuit, or if that's because you like having costs artificially inflated by 30%. Either way, that seems an odd thing to say.

      The actual lawsuit is about illegally tying services, including restraint of trade, illegal tying of monopoly powers to distribution, and illegal tying of monopoly powers to payment processing. It isn't about protecting privacy, nor about quality of service.

      In short form, Apple is using it's role as the software developer to artificially serv

  • 'F' (Score:2)

    by dohzer ( 867770 )

    Why is Fortnite in both single and double quotation marks? Or quotation marks at all?

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