Apple asked for a cut of Facebook’s ad sales years before it stifled Facebook’s ad sales

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

According to The Wall Street Journal, Apple was in talks with Meta about making more money from its presence on the App Store.

According to reports, Apple argued that it should get a cut of the revenue from Facebook. Users were able to pay to have their posts reach more people with the help of boosted posts. Apple argued that boosted posts are in-app purchases, which it famously takes a portion of, while Meta said they were ads. Meta appears to have won.

Apple wanted to increase sales from Meta. According to the CEO of Automattic, Apple turned down the recently-introduced boost-like feature until they offered them as in-app purchases.

The WSJ reported that Apple and Meta talked about removing ads from Facebook. This could have helped Apple as it would have been able to make money from subscriptions. The two companies couldn't agree on the ideas. The discussions took place most of the time in the last two years.

Apple and Meta did not respond to the request for comment. Privacy is a key differentiating factor for Apple's products, while Meta relies heavily on advertising in order to survive. Meta lost $10 billion in ad revenue last year as a result of Apple's introduction of the "Ask App not to Track" prompt in the newios.

The WSJ reported that Meta executives considered stopping the collection of third-party data, but CEO Mark Zuckerberg decided to leave the bulk of its data-collection practices in place.

The updated August 12th is from Matt Mullenweg.