Why I'm rooting for Apple

Opt-outs are hurting Facebook's business. Good. You should opt out too

Back in 2017, when Snap was preparing to go public, my WSJ colleague Jack Marshall and were looking through the Risk Factors listed in the company’s SI, and I remember our eyes being opened by this paragraph.

Because Snapchat is used primarily on mobile devices, the application must remain interoperable with popular mobile operating systems, Android and iOS…We have no control over these operating systems or hardware, and any changes to these systems or hardware that degrade our products’ functionality, or give preferential treatment to competitive products, could seriously harm Snapchat usage on mobile devices.

What should have been obvious at the time struck me - they are building their business in someone else’s kingdom. At the time we were so fixated on what the tech giants can and were doing to companies that build their businesses on their platforms -what if YouTube changes the cut it gives creators, what if Facebook makes it harder to find media content in its feed - that I lost sight of the fact that these titans could get whacked in the back of the head too. They are living and dying on someone else’s device.

This reminds me of my similar level of naivete when Facebook was trying to launch its own phone about a decade ago. Why the f do you want in on that business? Dealing with faulty networks, and customer service and trying to beat hardware companies on hardware - what are you guys thinking?

Now I get it. The operating system is everything.

Earlier this year, Apple changed the rules on how data can be passed among apps for ad targeting purposes. Consumers now need to say yes when apps ask them if they are ok with sharing their information elsewhere - and no surprise, most people don’t like the sound of that.

Some of the fallout was immediate, and some harder to see. Facebook kept warning investors that a hit was coming, and then announced killer earnings.

Now things have changed. Not only is Facebook once again warning that its ability to provide clear attribution to advertisers is taking a serious hit, but advertisers are starting to talk more openly about how serious a data shortfall they are seeing -and some are moving money out of Facebook. In Alex Kantrowitz’s must-read piece on this in Big Technology, one performance agency said that it has recently shifted from moved from spending millions on a daily basis on Facebook to a few hundred grand.

Good.

If you can put aside all the harm Facebook is at least partially responsible for (vaccine hesitancy, teen depression, societal divisiveness, anger, genocide, and just constantly lying) just think of all the times Facebook yanked the rug out from under publishers, advertisers, creators and others when it dangled potential riches - in the form of fans readers, dollars - through one test program or another (Facebook Live, in-stream video, Facebook Watch shows, Zynga) only to say ‘sorry, we changed our mind. hope this doesn’t destroy your business. My bad.’

Now Apple is just doing the same thing. There’s an old Irish or Yiddish expression that fits here: “It sucks to be you.”

I for one, am glad. I’m opting out of this kind of tracking on my phone, and so should you. Yes, it sucks for small businesses that rely on Facebook. But there are lots of other options out there, from Pinterest to TikTok to YouTube.

For all the bluster from regulators and threats and fines and Congressional hearings, the only company that can actually hit Facebook where it hurts is Apple, and I for one am cheering. Is Apple really the noble privacy good guy? Come on. This is the company that does all it can to keep you inside their sometimes lousy apps. This is the company that kicked Fortnite to the curb, and forced a bad U2 album on millions of people.

Still, they are doing the right thing here, and Facebook is getting just a little bit of what it deserves.

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On a side note, the move to install Andrew Bosworth as Facebook’s new CTO. Boz is the guy that is said to be championing Facebook’s push to build a metaverse, or an entirely new computing platform that seems to include some VR but isn’t solely about VR.
I realize some of the early reviews of Facebook’s experiments in this realm are said to be impressive. And Facebook has practically endless resources.

However, why are we so certain they will be able to build a new platform/metaverse?

I realize it’s early even in our conception of what a metaverse will be, but the examples typically given to illustrate the metaverses potential are Fortnite and Roblox.

Here’s the thing with those two platforms: they exist, and people like them, primarily because they are fun. What is Facebook’s metaverse platform going to be and why are we going to use it? Are they going to ‘convert’ the existing social network and its billions of users to a virtual one over time? Is this going to be a new platform that is launched via Occulus that we all glom onto eventually?

Also, why should we be confident that Facebook can build a platform that is centered on fun, instead of generating dopamine/raged/shame-fueled engagement? That’s a monumental task in itself. Plus, when was the last time Facebook built something new, versus buying or ripping somebody’s idea off.

Anyway, these might be dumb questions. Best of luck Boz.