These continued moves of desperation show a company terrified of losing its massive data-gathering surveillance machine.
Hoping Apple demonstrates its commitment to privacy by doing more than hurting internal functionality and speak to the only thing that matters to FB - its ability to surveil people.
Investors and governments pumped billions into FB in the last 5-10 years seemingly under the impression that it was too big to fail. One can definitely see the panic starting to trickle in now that it's clear the platform's days are numbered. I wonder if they will be able to shift to a less predatory/ad-based business model before it's too late or go all-out with the data harvesting.. It'll be interesting to watch it play out either way!
> now that it's clear the platform's days are numbered.
How is that "clear"? It's true that FB has received a lot of bad press and push back in recent times, but none of that changes the fact that FB is pretty much still the 10.000-pound Gorilla in the room with no real alternatives for a lot of people.
Don't get me wrong here: I don't like it either, I just don't see their days as being "numbered", but FB is too entrenched in a whole lot of sectors for it to simply vanish without some kind of competitor actually gobbling everything up they do right now.
Too many people forget that at this point FB isn't just "social media", for a whole lot of small and medium businesses FB has become their sole online presence, due to ease of use and reach.
They are definitely too entrenched with partners, but for the users themselves to mass-migrate all it takes is a big enough user-facing tactical error.
> Hoping Apple demonstrates its commitment to privacy
If Apple had a true commitment to privacy, this wouldn't have happened by design. Apple just has less commercial interest in gathering data about users outside its garden.
What design changes would have prohibited this from happening? The only changes I can think of would make it more difficult to debug things in development.
Apple has a very lucrative business where they have a sizable legion of followers who will spend almost any amount of money to own their products. They don't really need new customers, and aren't likely to convert many with traditional advertising tactics, so they just have to sit back and continue iterating on what they have to get existing customers to keep coming back for newer stuff. Basically, their business is all about draining money from their existing userbase, not expanding it.
Hoping Apple demonstrates its commitment to privacy by doing more than hurting internal functionality and speak to the only thing that matters to FB - its ability to surveil people.