I always knew that the average investor was too lazy to question the truthfulness (or accuracy) of the information available out there and run a quality check but the recent debate on Facebook made me realize that the average investor is even lazier than I thought.
In the last few days I read so many posts and comments about the Apple's privacy changes and their impact on revenue of Facebook. For many, the best days of Facebook are behind the company.
It's interesting how this issue comes up almost exclusively in discussions about Facebook, when among all companies that generate revenue from online ads (hey there, Google), it is the best positioned one in order to handle this change. Why? Because the feature requires app developers to ask for permissions before they track people's activity across apps or websites they don’t own in order to target advertising to them and Facebook, given the nature of its business, still has access to an enormous amount of high quality data.
It's obvious that Apple's feature does not allow Facebook to harvest data as effectively as it did before, but you know, you can deny Facebook permission to track your data across apps or websites it doesn’t own as much as you want but if you then log in on Facebook (or Instagram, for that matter) to write a post about how good the Big Mac that you had for lunch was, you're still providing Facebook with a mountain of valuable data.
Before Apple launched its new App Tracking Transparency feature in iOS 14.5, Facebook had complete control of its game. What about now that this feature is available then? Apple global smartphone market Share is about 30%. Of that 30%, 86% of iOS devices are running a recent enough version of the software to be presented with ATT prompts, according to an October report from AppsFlyer. Of the people who see the pop-up, 38% are still opting-in, and 62% are opting-out. Being 100% the global smartphone market share, only about 16% is using the feature. Yep, the days of Facebook are definitely numbered.
One of the posts that really stuck with me was the one arguing that now it's just about iOS devices but pretty soon also Android will follow suit. What makes you think that Alphabet, whose revenue is mainly derived from online ads, is rushing to provide Android users with the chance to “opt-out” if they don't want apps and websites to track their data?
Also, to all those people who hate Facebook so much that can't help but write about how much they hate Facebook on every other social media (which, by the way, do exactly the same thing that Facebook does, just on a smaller scale), don't you find it a little hypocrite to hate that much Facebook for doing what it does with your data but have nothing to say on the companies (and I guess that only few would not make it in this list) that exploit those data to aggressively push for their products (hey there, Apple)?
In all fairness, Facebook is nothing but a scapegoat, the real issue is the society in which we live.
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