Mark Zuckerberg takes a swipe at Apple in Instagram plug for his WhatsApp messaging platform - Fortune

1 year ago 47

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has deed retired astatine rival Apple successful a not-so-subtle Instagram station slamming Apple iMessage’s expected deficiency of privateness compared to that of the Meta-owned WhatsApp. 

Zuckerberg posted an representation of a caller Meta billboard astatine New York’s Penn Station that shows a bluish bubble typically seen successful iMessages, a greenish bubble beneath of the benignant 1 would typically get with iPhone to Android communication, and a abstracted WhatsApp-style ‘Private’ bubble beneath it, implying that WhatsApp is the superior messaging system. 

The CEO wrote successful the Instagram station that, “WhatsApp is acold much backstage and unafraid than iMessage, with end-to-end encryption that works crossed some iPhones and Android, including radical chats.” 

He besides emphasized that WhatsApp, bought by Facebook successful 2014, introduced encrypted backups past year, and that messages tin beryllium acceptable to disappear, which “iMessage inactive doesn’t have” (iMessage does nevertheless springiness users the enactment to delete a connection wrong 3 minutes of sending). 

Apple’s messaging strategy was besides attacked by Google earlier this year. Google called Apple’s exertion standards “outdated” and prompted radical to run with a hashtag, arguing that the iPhone inventor had failed to amended the idiosyncratic acquisition betwixt Apple and Android users by adopting the RCS standard.

Privacy concerns

Aside from the issues of interoperability betwixt devices, end-to-end encryption and wide privateness is Zuckerberg’s large absorption erstwhile it comes to competing with different messenger services. 

Competing connected privateness volition beryllium challenging for Meta, however, arsenic it has been repeatedly criticized for its extortion of idiosyncratic data. Just this period users were warned to “stay distant from WhatsApp” by the laminitis of Telegram Pavel Durov, who claimed it “has present been a surveillance instrumentality for 13 years.”

Zuckerberg’s onslaught connected Apple, which has agelong promoted itself arsenic a paragon of privacy, adds to his long-standing tension with the tech giant. That hostility was exacerbated by Apple’s changes to its privacy policies past year, which present necessitate companies to get support from users of iOS devices earlier collecting idiosyncratic information astir their online behavior. Facebook depends heavy connected tracking users to beryllium capable to amusement them targeted ads.

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