Facebook has today attacked Apple in a series of full-page newspaper ads, falsely claiming that iOS 14s privacy changes regarding data gathering and targeted advertising are bad for small businesses. (https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-12-16/facebook-attacks-apple-s-ios-changes-in-full-page-newspaper-ads)
In reality, it is pure self interest. Facebook, Google, Twitter etc want to be able to be track and monitor you everywhere on the web and don’t like Apple interfering, and they also want to be able to track and monitor EVERY time you use their Diem coin.
Their Diem (used to be Libra) coin is the largest, anti-privacy, anti-freedom, anti-liberty trojan horse ever. The “Diem Association”/”Libra Association” is essentially an unregulated central bank that will monitor EVERY transaction in the ledger, freeze, control, inflate the value away or seize your coins at any point. And it will be ONLY the association who can monitor it. Plus you can bet the governments around the world will want in on the ledger to monitor it.
Goodbye privacy for everything if people take up Diem and if Apple doesn’t stand up to them for the privacy of everyone else.
At least with the Fed and other central banks there is some control via a vote so that people know the issues with it. (assuming that Facebook, Google and Twitter allow you to criticize the Diem and don’t label it as “fake news” or “disputed”).
It is centralized, censorable, blocked at a border, tied to fiat, can be frozen at the whim of whatever government can pressure FB. It might just be that FB not liking what you are posting or disagreeing with you. As the last few years have shown, these huge companies (FB, Twitter, Google etc) are behold to the governments and political parities. Do something they don’t like, “well your coins are frozen and you can’t move them or cash out.” Recourse? None since they aren’t regulated banks. Think they are following you now with cookies etc? Soon they’ll be able to also track what you spend your coins on. Bitcoin will (one hopes shortly) be helping to increase privacy on chain via taproot and extensions..
It might as well be the Petro or one of the other nonsense coins. Anyone who decides to use this is just asking to be controlled, watched and monitored.
Apple standing up to Facebook in this case is important. If they’d stand up to the authoritarians everywhere around the world that would be a good step also.