Mark Zuckerberg sides with Elon Musk over Apple App Store fees controversy

After a tough year for Meta, it is evident that Mark Zuckerberg isn't happy. At The New York Times DealBook summit on Wednesday, Zuckerberg took a jab at Apple and appeared to be on Elon Musk's side over the company's control of the App Store.

"Apple has sort of singled themselves out as the only company that is trying to control unilaterally what apps get on a device.

I don’t think that’s a sustainable or good place to be."

Zuckerberg added that he sees Apple as one of their big competitors.

"There is a conflict of interest there and it makes them not just a kind of governor that is looking out for the best of, of people's interests. I think they also have a lot of their own strategic interests, which makes it very challenging."

Zuckerberg praised Google's approach, on the other hand, which allowed users to sideload an application if they want, even though Google has made that process slightly trickier now.

"They’ve always made it so you can sideload and have other app stores and work directly with phone manufacturers. That’s also been our commitment in how we built up our VR and what we plan to do with our AR headsets."

Last week, Elon Musk had also expressed his concerns over the App Store. He wasn't happy about it either since Apple forces app developers to pay from 15 to 30 percent fees from all in-app purchases, including for subscriptions like Twitter Blue.

Zuckerberg said that Elon Musk's approach towards fighting over App Store policies is rather interesting.

"It’s going to be very interesting to see how this plays out in terms of the approaches he’s taking. I would guess that not everything is going to work, but I think some things might work."

Over content moderation, the Meta CEO believes that they or their company doesn't want to primarily make the decisions.

"I tend to think that I don’t want one person or one company making those decisions, which is why we pioneered this oversight board for our content decisions. People have a vehicle that they can appeal to outside of us."

Apple's App Store Tracking Transparency has already hurt advertising revenue on Facebook by up to 50%. The policy, which was introduced with iOS 14, allowed users to stop Identifier for Advertisers (IDFA) from tracking their data for advertisement purposes, which was Facebook's bread and butter.

Source: New York Times

Mark Zuckerberg sides with Elon Musk over Apple App Store fees controversy