A controversial new update for Apple has been announced for release in “early spring” of this year. According to a statement by the company, the update will “require apps to get the user’s permission before tracking their data across apps or websites owned by other companies.”
Apple’s new update
“Under Settings, users will be able to see which apps have requested permission to track, and make changes as they see fit,” Apple announced. “This requirement will roll out broadly in early spring with an upcoming release of iOS 14, iPadOS 14, and tvOS 14, and has already garnered support from privacy advocates around the world.”
Many have praised Apple’s new update because of the fact that they’re coming down hard on apps that track users’ data excessively.
Social media platform Facebook, however, is not happy with Apple’s anticipated update.
“Apple has every incentive to use their dominant platform position to interfere with how our apps and other apps work, which they regularly do to preference their own,” Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said during the company’s 2020 Q4 earnings call on Wednesday, “This impacts the growth of millions of businesses around the world, including with the upcoming iOS14 changes, many small businesses will no longer be able to reach their customers with targeted ads.”
“Apple may say that they’re doing this to help people, but the moves clearly track their competitive interests,” Zuckerberg continued. “I think this dynamic is important for people to understand because we and others are going to be up against this for the foreseeable future.”
Nonetheless, Apple’s decision was defended by CEO Tim Cook on Thursday at the Computers, Privacy, and Data Protection conference. Cook stated, “Users have asked for this feature for a long time. We have worked closely with developers to give them the time and resources to implement it. And we’re passionate about it because we think it has the great potential to make things better for everybody.”