Facebook Attacks Apple's Plan to Give Users a Privacy Choice

Last month Bloomberg reported that Facebook ran full page ads in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and Washington Post, with the headline 'We’re standing up to Apple for small businesses everywhere followed by what some twitter users described as more "manifesto" than advertisement.

The "ad" was critical of Apple’s changes to iOS 14 due out early next year. Their purpose is to "make it more difficult for companies like Facebook to target users with ads" by requiring developers to ask iOS 14 users for permission to gather data and track them across mobile apps and websites on an iPhone and iPad.

Obviously this change will effect many small businesses and impact Facebook’s ad business, specifically its ad network for developers and businesses as most end users will likely opt out.

And, although Facebook claims Apple’s changes will be "devastating to small businesses" that rely on its ad network to generate sales, the manifesto ad reads more true if the term "small business" is replaced with "user-data-ad-money" as in...

• 'At Facebook, user-data-ad-money is at the core of our business'
• 'Many in the user-data-ad-money community have shared concerns'
• 'user-data-ad-money stands to see a cut of over 60%'

So there was no surprise when CNBC Real-Time reported that Facebook warned "its revenue would take a hit in the coming year if it does lose personalized advertising." Yeah, duh!

To be fair, small businesses do in fact reap ample rewards by targeting ads through Facebook. But the question remains how much surveillance is too much? The fact that people are choosing to opt-out when gi...