Stephen L. Carter, Columnist

Apple vs. Facebook: It’s Not All About Privacy

Apple isn’t objecting to the fact that Facebook collected user data, but rather the way that Facebook collected user data.

January 31, 2019 at 4:40 PM UTC

By Stephen L. Carter

Stephen L. Carter is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist, a professor of law at Yale University and author of “Invisible: The Story of the Black Woman Lawyer Who Took Down America’s Most Powerful Mobster.”

Privacy battleground.
Photographer: Kirill Kudryavtsev/AFP/Getty Images

Provide news feedback or report an error

Site feedback:

Take our Survey

This article is for subscribers only.

This week brings a useful reminder that Facebook is not in the helping-you-keep-in-touch-with-friends business. It’s in the ad-selling business — a business that requires data. Lots of data.

Long story short: On Wednesday, Apple shut down a research app Facebook had distributed to some iPhone and iPad users, paying them up to $10 in exchange for downloading the app, and $20 a month to keep it installed. The app allowed Facebook to collect an enormous amount of user data. News coverage has emphasized the privacy aspects of the story, painting the issue principally in terms of good and evil. Apple is again portrayed as the champion of user protection; Facebook, as usual, is the bogeyman, indifferent to the privacy of its users.