Speaking at The New York Times DealBook Conference on Wednesday (30), Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta, said he believes Apple’s power as a gatekeeper of the apps market is problematic.
“If you look at all the major competing platforms that have ever existed — iOS, Android, Windows — Apple stands out,” he said. “It’s the only one where a company can control which apps go on the device. I don’t think that’s sustainable or good.”
App stores can put pressure on companies like Facebook and Twitter because of the stores’ ability to remove apps that don’t meet their guidelines, which would make it difficult for billions of potential users to download and gain access to the services.
Yael Roth, Twitter’s former head of trust and security, wrote in an op-ed for The New York Times this month that if Apple or Google removed Twitter from their app stores it would be “catastrophic,” and suggested that the app stores have a role in guiding content moderation in the app.
This week, Elon Musk complained on Twitter that Apple “threatened to pull Twitter from its App Store but wouldn’t tell us why.”
Zuckerberg compared Apple’s App Store to the Google Play app store. “Google may control what goes into the Play Store, but they’ve always done it so you could load from other sources, have other app stores, and work directly with the phone makers.”
Apple also made changes to its privacy policy last year, making it harder for social networking apps like Facebook to target users with ads. The changes have contributed to a drop in revenue for Facebook and other companies that rely on digital advertising. Meta’s profits fell more than 50% in the third quarter compared to the same period a year ago.
Zuckerberg said that, unlike a government, “Apple obviously has its own interests” and that “the fact that companies have to deliver their apps exclusively from platforms controlled by competitors – there’s a conflict of interest there.”
Translated by Luiz Roberto M. Gonçalves.
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