How apple’s new privacy policy will cost social media platforms $10 billion.

Social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat heavily rely on ads for their profit. These platforms collect user data through various apps using trackers and share this data with various services with which the user does not directly interact. These services then send the targeted advertisements to these users.

So let’s understand What exactly is Apple’s new privacy policy and how does it affect these social media platforms?

Earlier this year Apple introduced a new App Tracking Transparency Policy which gave users the option to choose if they want to allow data tracking from social media platforms. The earlier user had no control over what data these platforms collected and how that data was being used from various third-party services. Due to this control over sharing and usage of their personal data around 80% of apple’s users chose to opt-out of data tracking.

Since the update was released on every apple device social media companies were not able to collect any data from these users to send them targeted advertisements. Facebook tried back against the policy using full-page advertisements and claiming that this new policy will affect users' freedom but apple stood its ground.

A recent report by Financial Times (The Verge) states that Apple’s new privacy policy costs Facebook alone $8 billion while the other platform it will cost around 1.5 to 2 billion dollars.

With Facebook, Snapchat whose business model is heavily built around smartphones also took a big hit.

Some experts claim that this privacy policy will change many social media companies' business models. Especially Facebook and Snapchat will have to build a completely new infrastructure from scratch.