Lawyers representing Apple stated that the company may struggle to trust Meta, following the accidental leak of internal data that was shared under confidentiality.
Interestingly, Meta did not intend to disclose the data; the leak occurred due to a commonly known flawed method of redacting PDFs, which can be easily reversed…
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has filed a lawsuit against Meta for alleged antitrust violations. The company is accused of attempting to form an illegal monopoly in consumer social networking by acquiring Instagram, a competitor of Facebook, along with messaging service WhatsApp.
This marks the second round of litigation, initially raised in 2020. While Meta previously succeeded in having the case dismissed, the judge permitted the FTC to present more detailed arguments regarding its claims of monopoly formation through the acquisitions. The commission has since complied, and a new trial is now in progress.
Should Meta lose this case, it may be compelled to divest Instagram and WhatsApp.
One argument from Meta’s side is that Apple’s Messages app is more widely used than the DMs on Instagram, Facebook Messenger, and WhatsApp. They contended that social networking messaging applications cannot be isolated from broader messaging services like iMessage, due to overlapping consumer usage patterns.
To support this argument, Meta displayed redacted slides that obscured actual usage statistics. However, The Verge quickly revealed that the redaction was merely achieved by overlaying solid black rectangles within the PDF, a method that could be easily undone to expose the original content. This technique is a well-documented flaw in PDF redaction.
Apple’s legal team was among those who criticized the “egregious” mistake.
Attorneys representing both Apple and Snap labeled the errors as “egregious,” with Apple’s delegates suggesting that the company may no longer be able to trust Meta with sensitive information moving forward. An attorney for Google also held Meta accountable for compromising data belonging to the search giant due to this blunder.
DMN’s Perspective
The information revealed was not particularly groundbreaking – it merely indicated that 88% of iPhone users in the U.S. had utilized the Messages app within the past week. While Apple has refrained from disclosing this figure, it is a reasonable assumption that the usage rate is extraordinarily high.
The utter incompetence displayed in the redaction has spurred speculation that it might have been intentional, but I tend to believe in Hanlon’s Razor: “Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by incompetence.”
Featured Accessories
Image by Phil Hearing on Unsplash
