In an interview with theBig Technology Podcast,Will Cathcart- at the head of WhatsApp since May 2019 - was questioned about Apple's new policy in favor of the defense of private life. The firm is in fact renowned for making it its hobby horse for several months now, with Tim Cook at the forefront. But many publishers don't always see it that way...
Starting withFacebook, which regularly opposes this positioning. Indeed, Mark Zuckerberg's social network needs personal and behavioral data in order to identify the habits of its regular users. Objective: better target them withadvertisement, and guarantee advertisers a simple way to generate income with the Business Manager tool.
Do as I say, not as I do
WhatsApp, which was bought by Facebook in 2014, is also singled out by the general public for this type of unfavorable opinion, even ifits teams have been trying to put on a good show since. It therefore made sense to question the manager when Apple has just implemented theprivacy labels. These tell Internet users what kind of data the apps they use collect.
According to Cathcart, however, we do not see “no label for iMessage when you download it, since you don't download it“. In fact, the app is automatically installed on all iPhones, all iPads and all Macs and does not have a listing on the App Store. Since the declaration of the boss of WhatsApp, Apple has however decided to remedy this, and has put online a dedicated page which lists these confidentiality labelsfor its own apps.You can consult it at this address.
Anticompetitive
Taking up the arguments of the video game studio Epic Games (behind the success of Fortnite) or the European Commission and the United States Senate, Cathcart also attacks the practices judgedanti-competitivefrom Apple. More specifically, he claims that the incompatibility of Messages with Android smartphones sometimes blocks group conversations or even video calls.
Those who are on Google OS therefore find themselves shortchanged... But who really uses this functionality, honestly?
