Apple vs. Facebook is personal now

SUMMARY: As the battle between Facebook and Apple intensifies, The Wall Street Journal is out with a new report detailing Facebook’s anger at Apple. The report explains that one of the turning points in the battle was an interview Tim Cook did in 2018 amid Facebook’s Cambridge Analytics scandal. In private, the report says that Zuckerberg has been even harsher. “We need to inflict pain,” he has reportedly told his team at Facebook.

Apple has positioned itself as the protector of digital privacy, upholding a greater good, while often leveling criticisms at Facebook’s business model—without naming the company. They should hammer Facebook.

Here is just a partial list of Facebook’s arrogant behavior, and it shows no sign of leveling off. The amount of damage that Facebook and Zuckerberg have done to us is largely unknown, but it’s huge.

According to a study reported by the watchdog website Popular Information, during the first 10 months of 2019, “politically relevant disinformation was found to have reached over 158 million estimated views on Facebook, enough to reach every reported registered voter in the US at least once.” That pace was accelerating, and guess what: “Most negative misinformation (62%) was about Democrats or liberals.” The incitement of violence remains on Facebook and on the company’s other apps as well. Just recently, BuzzFeed News reported that an ad on Instagram, which is owned by Facebook, showed clips from action movies of cops being killed and invited people to “join the militia, fight the state,” to a soundtrack of “We ain’t scared of no police / We got guns too.”

What really has to mean angry is that brands, at least some, are still advertising on Facebook. They could care less about Facebook’s indiscretions; to them, it’s about sales and eyes.

Earlier this month our groups did some quantitative research on social media advertising and what we found, compared to just five years ago, was a huge wake-up call.

First, we heard that people don’t believe most social media posts anymore. The lowest-ranked, in terms of trustworthiness, was Facebook. I was also surprised to see that people said: “they wouldn’t buy any advertised product on Facebook.” This finding needed more probing, so we offered a gift card for social media users to attend a virtual market research session(s).

Our findings indicated that on Facebook/Instagram, too many people were disappointed that many advertised products were made and shipped from China. Shipping times of over 4 weeks was a common complaint.

When they saw other ads from brands they didn’t recognize, they often went to sites like Amazon.com to read reviews and purchase, usually a lower price.

Now let’s get back to the Facebook battle with Apple. Facebook is going to lose that battle. Apple is not a company with a spotless record, but they sure as hell have a lot better record than Facebook.

The whole privacy issue comes down to this; if your app provides users with a high degree of utility, they will use it unless you sell the data to pornography sites. However, when your door lock app wants to know what sites you visited, there is a huge problem.

Facebook has way too much power over users and content. Call someone an idiot and you’re banned for bullying but post a riot-wing conspiracy story and it will be seen by millions before getting pulled.

Until social media users realize that Facebook has lied and abused their trust and leave the site, Facebook has zero incentive to change its ways.