EFF calls Facebook's criticism of Apple's privacy protections 'laughable'

The EFF has no time for Facebook's small business argument.

What you need to know

• The Electronic Frontier Foundation, a digital rights nonprofit, has responded to Facebook's attack on Apple.
• The organization says that its argument against Apple's new privacy measures is "laughable."

Reported by 9to5Mac, The Electronic Frontier Foundation, an organization that describes itself as "the leading nonprofit defending digital privacy, free speech, and innovation", has sided with Apple in the Facebook versus Apple fight.

Facebook recently launched two newspaper ads attacking Apple for its new privacy labels that show what kind of data an app gathers and uses to track you. While Facebook has claimed that the new privacy measures will be damaging to small businesses, the EFF says the company's argument is "laughable."

Facebook has recently launched a campaign touting itself as the protector of small businesses. This is a laughable attempt from Facebook to distract you from its poor track record of anticompetitive behavior and privacy issues as it tries to derail pro-privacy changes from Apple that are bad for Facebook's business.

Requiring trackers to request your consent before stalking you across the Internet should be an obvious baseline, and we applaud Apple for this change. But Facebook, having built a massive empire around the concept of tracking everything you do by letting applications sell and share your data across a shady set of third-party companies, would like users and policymakers to believe otherwise.

The EFF goes on to say that Facebook's business model actually requires businesses to be "sneaky and adverse to their own customers."

Facebook touts itself in this case as protecting small businesses, and that couldn't be further from the truth. Facebook has locked them into a situation in which they are forced to be sneaky and adverse to their own customers. The answer cannot be to defend that broken system at the cost of their own users' privacy and control.

Apple has also responded to the Facebook ads, saying that its new privacy measures give consumers the choices that they fundamentally deserve.

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