WhatsApp CEO Will Cathcart launched scathing attacks at Apple calling their privacy labels discriminatory.
Apple and Facebook have been at loggerheads for quite some time now. Apple CEO Tim Cook and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg have openly attacked each other’s companies on a number of occasions.
The latest entrant from the Facebook camp is WhatsApp CEO Will Cathcart who was recently speaking at the ‘Big Technology Podcast’.
Cathcart launched scathing attacks at Apple calling their privacy labels discriminatory adding that Apple does not want people to use Android phones.
"I assume it’s in Apple’s interest to have everyone using an iPhone, I mean, obviously, it is. And you look at a place like the US, most people have an iPhone, and the messaging experience works better on iMessage if everyone else has an iPhone," Cathcart said.
"It’s certainly in their strategic interest that people not use something like WhatsApp because they want people to not use an Android phone,” he added.
Apple had rolled out new privacy labels earlier this year and had stated that its App Tracking Transparency framework is going to go live soon and many companies are not happy with it. According to the privacy labels, Facebook Messenger and Whatsapp collect more data than other messaging apps.
“Regardless of whatever purpose these labels serve, WhatsApp competes with iMessage (Apple’s own messaging app) and in the US more people use iMessage than WhatsAppYou don’t see a label for iMessage when you download it because you don’t download it, it’s on your phone to begin with. And so, we were critical of that,” the WhatsApp CEO said.
Apple’s ‘Labels’ page has all the information about data that is collected by in-house apps. For apps like iMessage that already in the phone and can’t be removed, Apple has labels for these on their website.
When asked what phone he uses himself, Cathcart said, “Well, I use an Android because if you look at WhatsApp’s user base, we are very Android heavy. I also use an iPad, I’ve used iPhones for many years, but I really want to actually use the product in the way most people are using it, so I use an Android. A lot of people use both or go back and forth because we’re building our products for both and you got to understand them all.”
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 "Apple does not want people to use Android phones, says WhatsApp CEO Will Cathcart")
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