As we all know, the uplifting heat between Facebook and Apple is quite complicated.
Apple is a company who are into Product related such as iPhone, MacBook & iPad whereas Facebook is a Service related (Social networking) company. Two big entrepreneurs with different business model’s & with different visions on how the technology and the future of internet should work for us.
You may ask why the slug fest? My simple answer is, Differing view of our privacy & it’s playing out big time in the Apple’s new IOS 14.5. But This is just the first round. This is a fight that could shape the future of internet & certainly, The next wave of computing.
Let’s start from the bottom, In the latest operating system of apple IOS 14.5, Apple has added a new feature called App Tracking Transparency. For years, all iPhone’s has had a secret string of numbers inside it. It’s called the IDFA, Identifier for Advertisers. Or we can call it your very own Ad tracking number & it’s used to help apps identify you & know what you’re up to on your phone. All the Apps on your phone is linked with this number.
Let’s say you’re using a meditation app every day for quite some time now, Facebook knows that you use the meditation app every day. Therefore, Facebook display’s an Ad with a subscription model for the same meditation app. Vice versa the mediation app can display the same ad with the help of Facebook. This is how the ads are highly personalized. These numbers are good for social networking companies who wants to know what we are doing on our phones & they are good for business who wants customers to buy their product. But now, With the IOS 14.5 Apple turns off that Ad tracker by default. If an app wants to track that number on your phone, it will have to ask. If you say no, the app won’t be able to track your number on the phone.
You can do this on your iPhone by going to setting, Privacy, Tracking & turning off Allow Apps to request to track. All in all this is Apple’s big play to give people a choice whether they wanna be tracked. Most of the people will say the app not to track. So, now you know who isn’t happy about that all?
Facebook business model is built on personalized Advertising, Facebook charges companies to advertise their product on all platforms of Facebook, where Facebook doesn’t charge for the people who sign up.
Ads are targeted to you based on everything Facebook knows about you.
Facebook is concerned about the small business with the latest update from apple. These small businesses won’t be able to reach their targeted customers from IOS 14.5.
Apple said they won’t completely stop tracking third party data of their users but, they will give them a “say” that your data has been used by this company by asking them every time.
I would say the controversy on IOS 14.5 Is just start of the fight. Going forward it will not be Android vs IOS or Windows vs MacBook. Both the tech giants have been investing colossal amount of money in the AR (Augmented Reality) category. Going forward both of the companies are not winners. I would say the users are the winners with their go on sharing the data with the company’s.