How Apple and The European Union Torched Big Tech’s Data Empire

It’s often said that “if you’re not paying for the product, you are the product.” For years, the Big Tech giants held to this business model with an idle solidarity, pocketing the cash as users signed away their profitable data rights. Following new privacy protections from Apple and the European Union, however, these elites are suddenly scrambling to save their empire of cards.

As revealed by The New York Times, the titans of the digital industry are predicting devastating revenue loses as a result of new policies giving users greater control over their personal data.

According to Apple’s ATT iPhone privacy policy, the company is cutting back on big tech’s ability to track and access the “Identifier For Advertisers (IDFA),” a unique code websites like Facebook rely to see when a user looks at an ad and buys a product via its system, for instance.

On Wednesday, an earnings report from Meta (formerly known as Facebook) featured its CEO Mark Zuckerberg blaming Apple and the EU for over $10 billion in lost revenue this year alone.

Announcing that Meta will attempt to invest in other revenue models, Zuckerberg acknowledged the reality of the situation: “There’s a clear trend where less data is available to deliver personalized ads.”