Apple’s privacy labels are discriminatory, believes WhatsApp Head will Cathcart

Facebook and Apple have been in a war of words for quite some time now with Apple CEO Tim Cook, as well as Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg openly criticizing each others’ companies, no holds barred. Head of WhatsApp, Will Cathcart, is the latest from the Facebook camp to slam Apple as he didn’t have good words for the iPhone maker while speaking on the ‘Big Technology Podcast’. 

Cathcart criticized Apple by saying that their private labels are discriminatory. “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 U.S., most people have an iPhone, and the messaging experience works better on iMessage if everyone else has an iPhone,” said Cathcart, according to Gadgets Now. “It’s certainly in their strategic interest that people not use something like WhatsApp because they want people not to use an Android phone,” he added.

Earlier this year, Apple rolled out its new privacy labels which claimed WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger collect a lot more data compared to other top messaging apps. Reportedly, the Facebook Messenger app has 65 different privacy labels which include product personalization, third-party advertising, app functionality, and “other purposes,” while WhatsApp has 16 labels. 

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When asked about these privacy labels, Cathcart said, “Regardless of whatever the purpose of the labels was, we compete with iMessage from Apple, we compete in the U.S. — where way more people use iMessage than use WhatsApp — we compete in a bunch of places around the world. You 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.” 

As for what phone he prefers and uses himself, Cathcart said that it is Android because of Whatsapp’s “android heavy” user base. ” 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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