Facebook has been publicly attacking Apple over privacy measures and this has not gone down well with not only the public but also its own employees and small business owners whom it says it defends.
BuzzFeed News gained access to internal communications from Facebook. Many employees believed that the attack on Apple was unwarranted. They were also discord in the manner in which Facebook addressed Apple’s privacy measures.
One engineer said, “It feels like we are trying to justify doing a bad thing by hiding behind people with a sympathetic message.”
Popular questions before an internal meeting showed skepticism and concern among employees.
Some of the questions were as follows:
Aren’t we worried that our stance protecting [small and medium-sized businesses] will backfire as people see it as ‘Facebook protecting their own business’ instead?
How do we pick a message that looks less self-serving?
People want “privacy,” Facebook objecting here will be viewed with cynicism. Did we know this would-be bad PR, and decide to publish anyway?
Vice President of product marketing Graham Mudd clarified that they had mentioned that Facebook would be impacted but the small businesses would be hit the most.
However, he was unconvincing, and many Facebook employees did not believe that Apple’s changes would have a negative effect on small businesses.
One employee also highlighted the fact that robust privacy measures can prevent “malicious actors” from tracking people.
Following the campaign launch, Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), a not-for-profit digital organization said that Facebook’s criticism of Apple on privacy issues was “laughable.”
