Facebook CEO Zuckerberg Says Apple’s App Store “Deserves Scrutiny”
In an interview with Axios, Facebook CEO, Mark Zuckerberg pointed out that Apple has “unilateral control of what gets on phones.” Zuckerberg also addressed the heavy volumes of conservative content circulating on the platform.
Mark Zuckerberg made these statements in an interview with Axios co-founder, Mike Allen. In a candid conversation on multiple issues, Zuckerberg talked about two of the key issues concerning Facebook.
Apple’s App Store “Deserves Scrutiny”
When asked about whether he considers Apple’s App Store a monopoly, he stated that Apple has “unilateral control of what gets on phones, in terms of apps.” Raising the point of enabling a competitive dynamic, he added “there are questions that people should be looking into about that control of the App store.”
While evading discussing government intervention into the Apple matter, the Facebook CEO said, “I think some of the behavior certainly raises questions. And I do think it’s something that deserves scrutiny.” He also compared it to the Google Play Store and the openness of Android as an OS.
It is to be noted that Apple’s latest developments on iOS 14 are likely to hurt Facebook’s advertising revenue. The social media giant earlier issued a statement about “more than a 50% drop” in publisher revenue. Recently, Apple entered into another conflict with Fortnite, after which the latter filed a legal suit in the matter.
On Facebook And Conservative Content
Treading lightly on the question, as usual, CEO Zuckerberg commented on the volumes of conservative content on Facebook. He said “It’s true that partisan content often has kind of a higher percent of people,” but also said that it is important to “differentiate that from, broadly, what people are seeing and reading and learning” on Facebook.
Talking about hate-speech on Facebook, he added, “If you look in the country right now … a lot of people … are very exercised and I think, frankly, for a lot of good reasons. And we have real issues.”
Adding that he “won’t take down anti-vaxxer posts,” Zuckerberg justified the content as a matter of “perspective.” He also clarified that Facebook will block ads seven days prior to the election.
While Facebook’s policies are under question on a lot of matters, there has been a spree of resignations from Facebook. Recently, a software engineer quit Facebook saying that the company was “profiting off hate.”
