A coalition of industry groups, including the Interactive Advertising Bureau France, have filed an antitrust complaint against Apple over iOS 14 anti-tracking (via WSJ).
French Antitrust Complaint
These groups are the latest to criticize an iOS 14 anti-tracking feature that will go into effect early next year. It will require apps to ask permission before they can track users. Companies that rely on advertising are concerned, saying that few users will agree to be tracked and will threaten the targeted advertising industry. Damien Geradin, the competition lawyer representing the coalition, said:
At the highest level, this is a novel case—a truly important case—because it deals with the use of privacy as a sort of fig leaf for anticompetitive conduct. We think that this is the sort of thing that will arise increasingly in the future.
Although Apple customers previously had access to a toggle within settings that achieved the same thing by limiting this kind of tracking, in iOS 14 a pop-up will appear when an app asks you track you. This makes people more aware of what kind of tracking goes on behind the scenes.
The anticompetitive nature of the complaint stems from the fact that these prompts for user permission won’t appear for Apple’s own advertising. Apple said that its data collection doesn’t count as tracking because it doesn’t share user data with other companies. “These rules apply equally to all developers—including Apple.”