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Facebook Businesses IOS Privacy

Apple's Privacy Rules to Blame For Facebook's Lower Than Expected Quarterly Growth, Says Zuckerberg (macrumors.com) 46

Posted by BeauHD from the finger-pointing dept.
Apple's privacy rules are "negatively affecting" Facebook, and its business, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg claimed during its most recent earnings call. MacRumors reports: As a quick refresher, starting with iOS 14.5 and all newer versions of iOS and iPadOS, Apple requires that apps ask for users' permission to track them across other apps and websites. Under the App Tracking Transparency (ATT) framework, the latest change gives users a choice on whether they wish to be tracked for ads or other purposes. [...] Continuing on its anti-Apple's privacy rules campaign, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg was quick to blame Apple for his company's lower than expected growth in the third quarter of the year. Kicking off the earnings call, Zuckerberg said Apple is "negatively affecting" Facebook but that he believes the company will be able to "navigate" the challenges Apple is presenting thanks to its long-term investments.

"As expected, we did experience revenue headwinds this quarter, including from Apple's changes that are not only negatively affecting our business, but millions of small businesses in what is already a difficult time for them in the economy. Sheryl and Dave will talk about this more later, but the bottom line is we expect we'll be able to navigate these headwinds over time with investments that we're already making today." While Zuckerberg and the Facebook executive team hold Apple's changes accountable for this quarter's performance, it may also be an asset. Zuckerberg has in the past stated that ATT could ultimately help Facebook, and it's a sentiment he again repeated during the earning's call. Apple's changes, according to Zuckerberg, are making "e-commerce and customer acquisition less effective on the web." Still, Facebook could benefit from the lessened effectiveness as "solutions that allow businesses to set up shop right inside our apps will become increasingly attractive," Zuckerberg added.

Facebook's chief operating officer, Sheryl Sandberg, also criticized Apple and its privacy rules, going as far as to claim that the new rules are negatively impacting Facebook while benefiting Apple's own advertising business: "We've been open about the fact that there were headwinds coming -- and we've experienced that in Q3. The biggest is the impact of Apple's iOS14 changes, which have created headwinds for others in the industry as well, major challenges for small businesses, and advantaged Apple's own advertising business." Despite Facebook facing an avalanche of pressure amid leaked internal documents and scrutiny, Sandberg pointed the finger at Apple for Facebook's lackluster performance this quarter. "Overall, if it wasn't for Apple's iOS 14 changes, we would have seen positive quarter-over-quarter revenue growth," Sandberg said.
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Apple's Privacy Rules to Blame For Facebook's Lower Than Expected Quarterly Growth, Says Zuckerberg More

Apple's Privacy Rules to Blame For Facebook's Lower Than Expected Quarterly Growth, Says Zuckerberg

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  • Lets hope macOS 12 ... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by drnb ( 2434720 ) on Tuesday October 26, 2021 @07:27PM (#61930339)

    Apple's privacy rules are "negatively affecting" Facebook, and its business, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg claimed during its most recent earnings call.

    Lets hope macOS 12 and the additional masking it offers is similarly effective with respect to inhibiting tracking

  • Excellent (Score:3)

    by bmimatt ( 1021295 ) on Tuesday October 26, 2021 @07:30PM (#61930351)

    The less Zuckerface makes, the better. It should at least slow them down a little (even if stock market prices do not reflect it).

  • I know they are ruffled at FB HQ. They are running TV ads telling us how they are great & protecting our privacy and safety as their number one goal.

  • "Small businesses... small businesses..." (Score:5, Funny)

    by clawsoon ( 748629 ) on Tuesday October 26, 2021 @07:52PM (#61930379)
    Facebook talking about how much it cares about small businesses is like a Medici pope talking about how much he cares about the eternal souls of Romanian peasants.

  • Privacy thieves (Score:5, Insightful)

    by khchung ( 462899 ) on Tuesday October 26, 2021 @08:01PM (#61930397) Journal

    If a company said that "people tightening their security system is to blame for lower earnings", one would reasonably assume that company's business is to steal from people.

    FB is indirectly admitting that their business runs on stealing people's private data.

    I look forward to Apple completely stopping FB from earning a cent from Apple users.

    • I suspect piracy has demonstrated one can't "steal" one's and zeroes. Why change the definition just because it's ones "personal" data?

      • The definition didn't change. If you pirate a movie there's nothing preventing you from paying for it. If Facebook learns something about you they cannot unlearn it.

        • The definition didn't change. If you pirate a movie there's nothing preventing you from paying for it. If Facebook learns something about you they cannot unlearn it.

          They certainly could , but...

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by mark-t ( 151149 )
          Where the hell did you get that idea from? The conventional definition of "steal" that is typically used to suggest that media or software piracy is not actually stealing is that if one generally steals something, then the original person no longer possesses it.

      • I suspect piracy has demonstrated one can't "steal" one's and zeroes. Why change the definition just because it's ones "personal" data? It's not that it's data. Data, as you say, can be any stream of 1s and zeroes. Fecebook is stealing tiny quanta of people's souls. Do you want YOUR soul slowly but irrecoverably stripped away such that trillions of soul points from yourself and every other person in the world can be quantised, analysed and sold to downstream purveyors of soul scum?

    • When a trillion dollar company does it, its not "stealing". Their business consists of providing a personalized service to users. Its only stealing if an organization worth less than a few billion does it.
    • They will find an alternative, they always do.

    • Re: Privacy thieves (Score:5, Funny)

      by MysteriousPreacher ( 702266 ) on Wednesday October 27, 2021 @01:24AM (#61930885) Journal

      Us burglars are certainly impacted by the rise of home security systems that can be monitored over the Internet. In my last earnings report I was overall flat, quarter-on-quarter, with a notable decline in Blu-Ray players and jewellery. Small businesses that'd ordinarily see business from replacing things I steal are certainly suffering.

    • First, I love that Facebook's earnings have gone down because of this.

      But let's be clear here, Facebook isn't 'stealing' anything. Nor are they 'selling your data'. They're doing something which is much more insidious: they're learning about you in ways that are honestly impossible to quantify. They just want to target ads to you based on what they know about you--and people in general--and that's deeply worrisome. Not because selling you things is horrible, but because part of the business model is to *pro

      • They're doing something which is much more insidious: they're learning about you in ways that are honestly impossible to quantify. They just want to target ads to you based on what they know about you--and people in general--and that's deeply worrisome. Not because selling you things is horrible, but because part of the business model is to *provoke* you. It's not just that engagement keeps you on the site so they can sell more things to you, but people reveal their true selves when provoked. They feed you

        • As has been documented many times, they'll still make a dark profile of you and sell ads against that--you might not see those ads, but you end up in a demographic pool, and your actions will have a statistical effect on how ads are targeted to people who are like you. But beyond that, no, it's not 'easy-peasy'. Because of their social clout, there are times when some people can't avoid using Facebook. Some businesses do a lot of their dealing through Facebook and have no other online presence. Some countri

  • Boo fucking hoo (Score:5, Funny)

    by plate_o_shrimp ( 948271 ) on Tuesday October 26, 2021 @08:06PM (#61930405)
    N/m

  • Another detail (Score:5, Interesting)

    by DontBeAMoran ( 4843879 ) on Tuesday October 26, 2021 @08:40PM (#61930471)

    Let's not forget this:
    https://www.theregister.com/20... [theregister.com]

    Facebook wants nothing more than to be the Web and whatever the future will be. They bought Oculus for a reason and it's also low-cost for a reason. You're not the users, you are the products and you're paying to be one on top of that.

    No matter what you think, Google is first and foremost an advertising company, so all Google services including the Android and ChromeOS systems are not valid options either.

    Microsoft puts ads directly into the Windows UI, so while they're not as terrible as Facebook or Google, they're still not a valid option. They do seem to play it cool these days on other fronts though (open-source projects, Xbox cross-play with Nintendo and others, etc) but I'm old enough to remember all the bullshit they've done in the past.

    That leaves you with only three valid choices: macOS, BSD or Linux. And which one of these three do you think has enough cash in the bank to be able to fight all of the above companies at the same time?

    I'm sick and tired of seeing that shitpost of a text wall from that "The Internet has become a nightmare to use" guy, but for Facebook and Google, the war to own everyone has only begun and I'm scared to think about what the future holds for the Internet.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Powercntrl ( 458442 )

      I'm sick and tired of seeing that shitpost of a text wall from that "The Internet has become a nightmare to use" guy

      It's annoying because it's off-topic, but he's not wrong. The internet has become a mess of obnoxious captchas (take your blurry bus pictures and shove them where the sun don't shine, Google), paywalls (nearly every news site), and anti-adblock walls. And fucking forget it if you're browsing on a mobile device. You'll be served a completely useless watered down version of the site, and thanks to badly coded "responsive design" being the norm, requesting the desktop version will usually do absolutely noth

      • Re:Another detail (Score:4, Informative)

        by DontBeAMoran ( 4843879 ) on Wednesday October 27, 2021 @07:57AM (#61931529)

        If a website is build correctly using responsive design, there is no "desktop version" to request, it's supposed to be a single website version, just presented differently to fit the size of your display.

        What I hate is the opposite: responsive design websites that assumes mobile first and automatically hides the navigation interface in a stupid hamburger button while I'm using an ultra-wide display with my computer.

  • tl;dr (Score:5, Insightful)

    by fibonacci8 ( 260615 ) on Tuesday October 26, 2021 @09:19PM (#61930539)
    We couldn't get away with as much incremental identity theft as we had planned to.

  • Stop talking about small businesses (Score:3)

    by ayesnymous ( 3665205 ) on Tuesday October 26, 2021 @10:13PM (#61930593)
    You don't give a shit about small businesses.
    • Are there really that many small user-tracking-and-data-harvesting companies? Or do you think they could be suggesting that it's bad for small businesses if Facebook's ad service isn't as valuable?

  • "while benefiting Apple's own advertising business (Score:3)

    by ayesnymous ( 3665205 ) on Tuesday October 26, 2021 @10:14PM (#61930595)
    I am shocked that Apple would do something that benefits their own business.

  • First, they whined. Then, they said it wouldn't be a big deal at all, because they could work around it. This was a lie. Now that their metrics have dropped, they're back to whining. In the words of Dear Leader: Sad!

  • Them being sleazebags and people slowly catching on has nothing to do with it.

  • PRIVACY INVASION CORPORATION SAYS PRIVACY MEASURES SLIGHTLY HURT EARNINGS Privacy Invasion Corporation told investors that another corporations measures to improve privacy had slightly hurt earnings. The lead cyborg indicated that small business, that they made dependent on Privacy Invasion Corporation, are hurting because privacy cannot be invaded as well as it was. It also said it had measures to overcome peoples expectations of privacy that it will enact soon. "Their monopoly is hurting our monopoly a

  • Ohh Facebook (Score:3)

    by JKanoock ( 6228864 ) on Wednesday October 27, 2021 @07:18AM (#61931369)
    Looking forward to the day that Facebook is only a memory.
  • ... so he seems to be trying to blame Apple for his own failing.
  • Apple's privacy policies are hurting your business model? Maybe the real problem is your business model.

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