A Facebook ad for WhatsApp
Facebook/Twitter
Zuckerberg is trying to put WhatsApp above Apple’s iMessage on interoperability and privacy.
He said the Facebook-owned app is actually “far more private and secure” than Apple’s.
Apple’s recent privacy changes proved a major hit to Facebook’s ad-based business.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg slammed Apple’s iMessage on Monday, criticizing the lack of interoperability between iPhones and Android devices.
He posted a photo of a billboard ad from Facebook that jokes about iMessage limitations that make Android messages show up in green bubbles, while iPhone texts appear in blue bubbles.
“WhatsApp is far more private and secure than iMessage, with end-to-end encryption that works across both iPhones and Android, including group chats,” Zuckerberg wrote Monday on Instagram.
Some users have long lamented this poor cross-device messaging experience, as well as poor-quality compressed videos, the lack of read receipts, group text difficulties, and emojis that don’t send properly.
Google bashed Apple on this topic earlier this year, devoting a rare spot under its search bar online. Google said Apple converts texts sent between iPhones and Androids into SMS and MMS, which are decades-old methods of sending text-only messages from device to device. Google wants Apple to use its RCS system instead. Apple CEO Tim Cook has resisted making iMessage more interoperable with Android phones because the technical difficulties help sell more iPhones.
Zuckerberg also had another motive to criticize iMessage. Facebook, which last year changed its corporate name to Meta, recently rolled out a major marketing campaign for WhatsApp, pushing the platform’s security aspects and privacy features.
Alongside the photo of WhatsApp billboard campaign in New York, Zuckerberg added that the platform allows users to set chats to “disappear with the tap of a button” and that “end-to-end encrypted backups” have been available since last year. “All of which iMessage still doesn’t have,” he wrote.
Facebook acquired WhatsApp in 2014 for $22 billion and the company is lately turning to the platform as a potential source of revenue growth as other growth parts of the company stall. It’s business, made up almost entirely of digital advertising, has taken a $10 billion hit due to privacy changes implemented last year by Apple. In an update to its iOS, Apple prompted its more than 1.6 billion device users to opt-out of being tracked by apps. Such tracking is how companies like Facebook built reliable user targeting for advertisers and became one of the largest businesses in the world.
It’s not the first time Zuckerberg has attempted to come for Apple’s business since it enacted its privacy changes. During Facebook’s Connect developer conference last week, Zuckerberg and other executives referenced several times their hope and belief that its Oculus headsets and metaverse developments could one day replace the laptop. “Eventually we think your Oculus will be the only workspace you actually need,” CTO Andrew Bosworth said during the event.
Zuckerberg has previously cited Apple as a competitor, prompting Cook to last year say he did not think of Facebook in the same way. “If I may ask who our biggest competitors are, they would not be listed. We’re not in the social networking business.”
An apparent dislike between the two executives goes back to at least 2014, when Cook first publicly criticized Facebook’s business model. During an interview, Cook questioned companies making money “by collecting gobs of personal data,” and said for those that do, “I think you have a right to be worried.”
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