Facebook: “We’re standing up to Apple for small businesses everywhere”

The Verge:

Facebook is publicly criticizing Apple’s upcoming iOS privacy changes in full-page newspaper ads today. “We’re standing up to Apple for small businesses everywhere,” reads the headline on an ad inside the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Wall Street Journal today. Bloomberg News reports that the ads are related to Apple’s iOS 14 privacy changes that will make it more difficult for companies like Facebook to target users with ads.

Anyone buying this stance from Facebook? That Facebook is standing up for small business owners and not actually (and only) concerned about an existential threat to their ad revenue stream?

Developers will need to ask iOS 14 users for permission to gather data and track them across mobile apps and websites on an iPhone and iPad soon. Apple had planned to implement these changes with the initial iOS 14 release in September, but delayed enforcing them until early next year. These changes will impact Facebook’s ad business, and in particular its ad network for developers and businesses, as end users are more likely to opt out of tracking prompts.

Transparency is a good business model. If you have a problem with people knowing that you are using their data and giving them the option to opt out, there’s something wrong with your business model.