Facebook and Apple Are Beefing Over the Future of the Internet

Last July, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, along with the heads of Google, Amazon, and Apple, spent a long day

fielding heated questions from members of the House Antitrust

Subcommittee. Did he realize at the time that the most immediate threat

to his company’s business model would come not from Congress, but from

one of the other executives at the hearing?If he didn’t then, he

does now. On Thursday morning, Apple CEO Tim Cook gave a speech

explaining his company’s upcoming privacy changes, which will ban apps

from sharing iPhone user behavior with third parties unless users give

explicit consent. And he made plain that these new policies were

designed at least in part with Facebook in mind. Speaking as part of a

conference convened

for International Data Privacy Day, Cook excoriated the social media

business model, which is based on monitoring people’s behavior in order

to target ads to them.