Facebook Employees Aren't Buying Their PR Department's "Apple's Privacy Features Hurt Small Business" Spiel

I guess we’re taking “Buzzfeed News” seriously now? Whatever. Craig Silverman and Ryan Mac, reporting for Buzzfeed News:

[…]Facebook employees complained about what they called a self-serving campaign that bordered on hypocrisy, according to internal comments and audio of a presentation to workers that were obtained by BuzzFeed News. A change in Apple’s iOS 14 mobile operating system — which requires iPhone owners to opt in to allow companies to track them across other apps and websites — hurts Facebook, some employees argued on the company’s private message boards, and their employer was just using small businesses as a shield. […]

“It feels like we are trying to justify doing a bad thing by hiding behind people with a sympathetic message,” one engineer wrote […]

Several employees seemed unconvinced by the presentation. Some did not understand how Apple’s changes would negatively affect small businesses, while one said Facebook’s attempt to undermine Apple’s privacy policy made it “a traditional trojan virus.” […]

“The only thing I’m hearing, again and again, is ‘this is bad for the businesses,’ and I’d really like someone at the top to explicitly say, ‘People are better off if they don’t know what we’re doing, if we don’t have to explain ourselves to them, if they don’t get a choice to opt in or opt out of our practices, if we obscure it as much as possible behind interesting features and then get them to accept surreptitious tracking on the back end as long as we downplay it,’” they wrote

I’m glad these individuals are speaking up about how shitty Facebook’s tracking practices are, but where have their voices been for the past decade? They’re way late to the party; they aren’t heroes, they’re squeamish accomplices.