France’s Antitrust Complaint Against Apple Is Due To Ad Changes In iOS 14

The most recent antitrust complaint, filed on Oct. 22, requests that Apple suspend the pop-up ad tracking notification until it meets with France’s competition authority to discuss “an acceptable solution for obtaining user permission/consent to tracking”, reported CPO Magazine. 

Apple’s set of privacy changes in iOS 14 were largely welcomed by consumers, but the advertising industry was very unhappy with the tweaks made to ad tracking systems. This general state of disgruntlement has gone as far as talk about antitrust complaints against the hardware giant; in France, a coalition of publishers and advertisers have taken the first actual step.

The four French advertising lobbies that have come together to bring the antitrust complaint are IAB France, MMAF, SRI and UDECAM. The complaint centers on the fact that Apple itself can still track users of its hardware and send direct messages to them based on their activity, which the complainants view as a monopoly power. The associations also insist that Apple is not complying with European Union privacy regulations in retaining the ability to do its own internal ad tracking.

This differs somewhat from prior EU antitrust complaints against Apple, which have tended to center on the fact that the company has one of only two major mobile operating systems and that working through its app store is virtually mandatory for many companies.

The existing antitrust actions against Apple in the EU date back to 2019 and have been spearheaded by Spotify, which feels that Apple capriciously changes their app store rules and puts the squeeze on direct competitors (in this case moving to promote Apple Music over Spotify). In addition to this existing action, the EU opened an investigation into Apple Pay in June of this year.

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