It is clear that Mark Zuckerberg is dissatisfied following a difficult year for Meta. At The New York Times DealBook summit on Wednesday, Zuckerberg looked to be siding with Elon Musk in his criticism of Apple’s dominance of the App Store.
“Apple has sort of singled themselves out as the sole business attempting to impose its own unilateral controls on which apps are downloaded to a device.
That, in my opinion, is not a good nor a sustainable situation.”
Zuckerberg continued by saying that one of their main rivals is Apple.
“There is a conflict of interest there, which prevents them from acting as a governor just looking out for the best interests of the people. It’s quite difficult because, in my opinion, they also have a lot of their own strategic interests.”
Contrarily, Zuckerberg applauded Google’s strategy, which enabled users to sideload an application if they so choose, despite the fact that Google has since made the procedure a little more challenging.
“They’ve always enabled sideloading, other app marketplaces, and direct communication with phone manufacturers. That dedication also guides how we developed our VR system and how we want to use our AR headsets.”
Elon Musk also voiced his reservations about the App Store last week. Since Apple requires that app developers pay 15 to 30 percent fees on all in-app sales, including subscriptions like Twitter Blue, he wasn’t happy about it either.
Elon Musk’s strategy for battling over App Store policies, according to Zuckerberg, is rather intriguing.
“It will be fascinating to observe how this develops in terms of the strategies he employs. Though I believe certain things might work, I would expect that not everything will.”
The CEO of Meta thinks that their company or they themselves do not wish to have the primary decision-making authority for content moderation.
“We established an oversight board for our content judgments because, in my opinion, I don’t want one individual or one business to make those choices. Others are able to appeal to people outside of us.”
The App Store Tracking Transparency by Apple has already reduced Facebook advertising revenue by up to 50%. The policy, which came with iOS 14, gave users the ability to prevent Identifier for Advertisers (IDFA), Facebook’s main revenue stream, from tracking personal data for advertising purposes.
Source: New York Times
