How Mark Zuckerberg and Tim Cook’s feud began in 2014

The feud between Zuckerberg and Cook became public in 2014, when Cook lambasted Facebook’s business model.

In September 2014, Cook gave an in-depth interview with Charlie Rose that touched on a range of topics, including privacy.

During the interview – which took place in the weeks following the infamous leaks of multiple female celebrities’ nude photos stored on their iCloud accounts – Cook espoused Apple’s commitment to privacy while denouncing the business models of companies like Google and Facebook.

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“I think everyone has to ask, how do companies make their money? Follow the money,” Cook said. “And if they’re making money mainly by collecting gobs of personal data, I think you have a right to be worried. And you should really understand what’s happening to that data.”

Soon after, Cook reiterated his stance in an open letter on Apple’s dedicated privacy site. “A few years ago, users of internet services began to realise that when an online service is free, you’re not the customer. You’re the product,” Cook wrote.

Cook’s comments rankled Zuckerberg, who called the claims “ridiculous” and blasted Apple products as being expensive.

In an interview with Time later that year, Zuckerberg was reportedly visibly irritated by Cook’s assertions.

“A frustration I have is that a lot of people increasingly seem to equate an advertising business model with somehow being out of alignment with your customers,” Zuckerberg told Time. “I think it’s the most ridiculous concept. What, you think because you’re paying Apple that you’re somehow in alignment with them? If you were in alignment with them, then they’d make their products a lot cheaper!”

The Cambridge Analytica scandal

Their squabble came to a head following the Cambridge Analytica scandal when Cook criticised Facebook’s actions.

In 2018, a whistle-blower revealed that consulting firm Cambridge Analytica harvested user data without consent from 50 million users.

Cook added that Facebook should have regulated itself when it came to user data, but that “I think we’re beyond that here”. He also doubled down on his stance that Facebook considers its users its product.

Zuckerberg then hit back. “You know, I find that argument, that if you’re not paying that somehow we can’t care about you, to be extremely glib. And not at all aligned with the truth,” he said during an interview on The Ezra Klein Show podcast. He refuted the idea that Facebook isn’t focused on serving people, and once again criticised the premium Apple places on its products.

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In November 2018, The New York Times published a blockbuster report detailing the fallout from the Cambridge Analytica scandal. The Times reported that Cook’s comments had “infuriated” Zuckerberg, who ordered employees on his management team who used iPhones to switch to Android.

Facebook then wrote a blog post refuting some of the reporting by The Times – but not the Zuckerberg-Cook feud. “[W]e’ve long encouraged our employees and executives to use Android because it is the most popular operating system in the world,” it said.

The App Store policy fights

In August 2020, Zuckerberg jumped in the fray as Apple faced criticism over its App Store policies.

During a companywide meeting, Zuckerberg openly criticised Apple, saying it has a “unique stranglehold as a gatekeeper on what gets on phones”, according to a report from BuzzFeed News.

Zuckerberg also said that the App Store blocks innovation and competition and “allows Apple to charge monopoly rents”, BuzzFeed reported.

Apple has been facing antitrust scrutiny from Congress and has been strongly criticised by developers – most notably Fortnite creator Epic Games – for the 30 per cent fee it takes from App Store purchases. In 2020, Facebook said Apple blocked an update to Facebook’s iOS app that would have informed users about the fee Apple charges.

Apple’s iOS software

Apple’s iOS 14.5 software update angered Facebook, which says the privacy features could destroy part of its business.

That version of Apple’s smartphone operating system, iOS, made it so that iPhone app developers would need permission from users to collect and track their data. While this affects any company that makes iOS apps, it also has a direct impact on Facebook’s advertising business, as it uses data tracking to dictate which ads are served to users.

In an August 2020 blog post, Facebook said it may be forced to shut down Audience Network for iOS, a tool that personalises ads in third-party apps.

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“This is not a change we want to make, but unfortunately, Apple’s updates to iOS 14 have forced this decision,” Facebook said.

The complaints from Facebook and other developers led Apple to temporarily delay the new privacy tools, saying it wanted to “give developers the time they need to make the necessary changes”.

Facebook’s full-page ad

Facebook escalated the feud to a full-page ad in The New York Times, Washington Post, and Wall Street Journal. In the ads, Facebook argued that the changes would hurt small businesses that advertise on Facebook’s platform.

“Without personalised ads, Facebook data shows that the average small business advertiser stands to see a cut of over 60 per cent in their sales for every dollar they spend,” the ad reads.

Apple hit back, telling Business Insider that it was “standing up for our users”. “Users should know when their data is being collected and shared across other apps and websites – and they should have the choice to allow that or not,” an Apple spokesperson said.

Meanwhile, Facebook also said it would help Epic Games, the company behind Fortnite, in its legal battle against Apple. Epic Games had accused Apple of violating antitrust laws and engaging in anticompetitive behaviour regarding the App Store’s fees and policies. Facebook said it planned to help Epic with discovery for the trial.

Zuck said Apple “interferes with how our apps work”

Zuckerberg also lashed out at Apple during an earnings call in 2021, saying the company frequently interferes with how Facebook’s apps work.

When discussing Facebook’s suite of messaging apps during the company’s fourth-quarter earnings call, Zuckerberg made a clear dig at Apple, saying the iPhone maker made “misleading” privacy claims.

“Now Apple recently released so-called nutrition labels, which focused largely on metadata that apps collect rather than the privacy and security of people’s actual messages, but iMessage stores non-end-to-end encrypted backups of your messages by default unless you disable iCloud,” Zuckerberg said.

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Zuckerberg went on to describe Apple as “one of our biggest competitors” and said that, because Apple is increasingly relying on services to fuel its business, it “has every incentive to use their dominant platform position to interfere with how our apps and other apps work, which they regularly do to preference their own”. “This impacts the growth of millions of businesses around the world,” he added.

But Cook hasn’t backed down from his view that Facebook’s business model of harvesting user data and selling it to advertisers is harmful to consumers.

During a speech at the European Computers, Privacy and Data Protection Conference the same week, Cook discussed business models that prioritise user engagement and rely on user data to make money. Though he didn’t mention Facebook by name, Cook made several references that alluded to the platform.

Facebook made a case for personalised advertising

Facebook launched another ad campaign in 2021 aimed at proving the need for personalised advertising amid its ongoing battle with Apple. The initiative, titled “Good Ideas Deserve to be Found”, makes the case that personalised ads help Facebook users discover small businesses, particularly during the pandemic.

Cook called Facebook’s objections to the privacy update “flimsy arguments” during an interview with The New York Times.

During a podcast interview with Kara Swisher, Cook said that he believes society is in a privacy crisis and that he’s been “shocked” that there’s been pushback to the new feature to this degree. Cook also said he doesn’t view Facebook as a competitor, contrary to what Zuckerberg has said.

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“Oh, I think that we compete in some things,” Cook said. “But no, if I may ask who our biggest competitor are, they would not be listed. We’re not in the social networking business.”

The Apple iOS update

Apple’s iOS 14.5 update finally rolled out in April 2021, and Facebook paid steeply for it.

“The impact of iOS overall as a headwind on our business in 2022 is on the order of US$10 billion,” then-Meta CFO David Wehner estimated in an earnings call that year.

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In March, Meta, Microsoft, X (formerly Twitter) and Match Group joined Epic Games in arguing that Apple has been flouting a 2021 court-ordered injunction that required the company to let developers show users links to alternative payment systems beyond the App Store.

Apple, for its part, said in January that it had “fully complied” with the injunction.

Their fight over augmented reality

The latest battleground in Apple and Meta’s feud is their work on virtual and augmented reality.

Apple released its Vision Pro headset in February, and Zuckerberg was quick to offer his critique of the competitor to Meta’s Quest headsets.

“I have to say that, before this, I expected that Quest would be the better value for most people since it’s really good and like seven times less expensive,” Zuckerberg said in a video on Threads. “But after using [Vision Pro], I don’t just think that Quest is the better value, it’s the better product, period. They have different strengths, but overall Quest is better for the vast majority of things that people use mixed reality for.”

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Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth has also taken shots at Apple over its Vision Pro.

“As soon as I put the headset on, I can see what trade-offs they made and why they made them. And, perhaps definitionally, those aren’t the trade-offs I would have made,” he said.

Bosworth called the Vision Pro’s motion blur “really distracting” and said the headset was “very uncomfortable to use”.