Facebook preparing anti-trust lawsuit against Apple, report claims

Facebook is believed to be readying a lawsuit aimed at loosening Apple’s grip on the App Store that serves as an exclusive gateway onto iPhone.

The leading social network is preparing an anti-trust civil suit accusing Apple of abusing its control of the App Store by requiring outside developers to abide by rules not applied to its own software, The Information reported.

"As we have said repeatedly, we believe Apple is behaving anti-competitively by using their control of the App Store to benefit their bottom line at the expense of app developers and small businesses," Facebook said in a statement to AFP, declining to confirm or deny the report.

The dispute between the tech giants centers on changes in the latest version of Apple’s iOS operating software, which include a tracking transparency feature that Facebook claims will cripple its ability to serve up targeted ads.

Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg said during a conference call with investors on Wednesday that Apple was becoming one of his company’s biggest competitors.

"Apple 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," Zuckerberg said.

"Apple may say that they’re doing this to help people but the moves clearly track their competitive interests."

Facebook is not alone among those complaining about how Apple rules the App Store, where it collects 30pc of sales or subscription fees third-party offerings.

Some developers say Apple takes too big a bite of the revenue and maintains rigid policies that may hamstring services competing with those of the iPhone maker. Fortnite-maker Epic Games has taken Apple to court over the practice.

Apple has argued its App Store delivers billions to independent developers, and that its practices are reasonable compared with other digital marketplaces.

Apple did not reply to a request for comment. However, last night, chief executive Tim Cook seemed to take aim at Facebook when he blasted "disinformation and conspiracy theories juiced by algorithms" during a virtual data privacy conference in Brussels on Thursday, according to reports by CNBC and the Wall Street Journal.

Cook did not mention Facebook by name, but skewered business models built on targeted advertising, which accounts for most of the social network’s revenue, media reports indicated.

"If a business is built on misleading users, on data exploitation, on choices that are no choices at all, it does not deserve our praise," Cook was quoted as saying.

He reasoned that letting online platforms serve as stages for extremist groups or for sowing doubt in life-saving vaccines can result in "polarization, lost trust and yes, of violence," according to media reports.