According to an internal memo obtained by Business Insider, David Wehner, the company's chief financial officer, blamed Apple for the company's decision to hire fewer new employees.
In the letter to Meta employees, Wehner said that the company needs to take another look at its priorities and make some tough decisions about what projects it goes after in the short and medium term.
This change will affect almost every team in the company, Wehner said, and this will be an opportunity to reprioritize work to make sure we are all focused on the most important things.
Wehner said that Meta hopes to mitigate losses caused by Apple's ATT framework by incorporating artificial intelligence into its ad business. The ATT framework gives users a choice on whether they want to be tracked or not across apps and websites owned by other companies. Meta was against giving users that choice more than any other company.
When users first open an app, they can either allow tracking or ask not to track, but with the latter, the app no longer has access to a critical piece of information.
In December 2020, Meta took out a full-page ad in The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Washington Post calling Apple's privacy changes bad for small businesses. Adding Apple's forced software update will limit businesses ability to run personalized ads and reach their customers, according to Meta.
Cook said in a speech that Apple has long championed user privacy and that ATT is a step in the right direction. Advertising flourished for decades without it. The path of least resistance is rarely the path of wisdom.
Cook said that it has never been so clear how it degrades our fundamental right to privacy first and our social fabric by consequence.
Cook said that even with ATT, Meta can continue to track users across apps and websites as before, but that thanks to ATT, users now have a choice.
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