Facebook’s right, Apple is too powerful

And so is Facebook.

On the one hand, Facebook’s comments to the NTIA on Apple’s market power are supremely ironic. Facebook, complaining about excessive market power?

https://downloads.regulations.gov/NTIA-2022-0001-0145/attachment_1.pdf

Even worse is what Facebook is complaining about: Apple’s App Tracking Transparency update to Ios devices like the Iphone, which allowed users to comprehensively and easily block all the apps on their phones from spying on them. When Apple gave users this choice, nearly all of them chose privacy.

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/05/96-of-us-users-opt-out-of-app-tracking-in-ios-14-5-analytics-find/

Facebook says this cost them $10b (no wonder they’re mad). Nothing Facebook did — neither deceptive messages about why users should choose to be spied on, nor astroturf campaigns from small businesses extolling the value of submitting to surveillance — worked:

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/02/facebook-makes-the-case-for-activity-tracking-to-ios-14-users-in-new-pop-ups/

So on the one hand, Facebook’s motivations here are straightforward. Facebook profited from depriving its users of the right to decide how they used its service. Apple gave users more control. Facebook lost…