Originally published at: https://tidbits.com/2019/02/01/certificate-wars-a-quick-rundown-of-apples-dustup-with-facebook-and-google/
Apple has spent the past week engaged in a dizzying back-and-forth with Facebook and Google over shady research apps trying to make an end run around App Store rules. Here’s a quick timeline of events and some thoughts on what it all means.
That’s depressing, but in some ways, Facebook and Google paying for data is more honest than all the surreptitious tracking that goes on for the rest of us.
Except of course that much of that surreptitious tracking happens at the behest of Google and Facebook, and the business models these companies propagate.
If they were honest, they’d come out and say their services are never free, but rather paid by their users through wholesale of their privacy. Because they’re dishonest crooks they call it “advertising” instead. 
This cartoon by Signe Wilkinson made me laugh
$20 seems cheap when you think about how valuable the data is to Facebook