Facebook (now known as Meta) is attacking Apple’s iMessage app in a new advertisement that further fuels the rivalry between the two companies.
On Monday, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg posted a photo of an ad that appears to be displayed in New York’s Penn Station suggesting his WhatsApp messaging is more secure and private than Apple’s system.
“WhatsApp is far more private and secure than iMessage, with end-to-end encryption that works across both iPhones and Android, including group chats,” Zuckerberg wrote in the caption of his Instagram post.
Zuckerberg also noted that a WhatsApp feature allows users to set new messages to automatically delete.
“With WhatsApp you can also set all new chats to disappear with the tap of a button,” Zuckerberg said. “And last year we introduced end-to-end encrypted backups too. All of which iMessage still doesn’t have.”
Both WhatsApp and iMessage are encrypted, which means that the companies can’t see the content of texts and can’t hand them over in response to a legal request
But “messages and device backups on either service might be stored in a way that the company can access them. SMS messages are stored by wireless cellular carriers,” notes CNBC.
During a 2018 earnings call, Zuckerberg said, “Our biggest competitor by far is iMessage,” the report adds.
That is not the only time Zuckerberg has complained about Apple on an earnings call. During a call last year, the CEO stated that Apple’s privacy rules are “negatively affecting” the social media giant’s sales growth.
Facebook complained that Apple’s new privacy terms are likely to cause further issues for the company’s ad business in the third quarter.
Earlier this month, Apple CEO Tim Cook slammed Zuckerberg’s digital “metaverse” — for which the Meta CEO has been funneling billions into developing — saying that the average person still can’t even define what the metaverse is.
You can follow Alana Mastrangelo on Facebook and Twitter at @ARmastrangelo, and on Instagram.