It’s no secret that Facebook makes most of its revenue from targeted advertising — and that system only works because of the amount of user data it controls. So when the company’s rival Apple announced that it would be making it harder for developers to mine data on iOS 14, Facebook sounded the alarm with its investors.

Of course, Facebook couldn’t just come out and say that a new user-friendly privacy policy was hurting its business. So instead, the company took the (pretty gross) approach of saying Apple’s new tool would hurt small businesses.

“I think we’ve seen these online platforms like Facebook and targeted ads have really been a great help to help small businesses during a time when that lifeline online is so important, and we are concerned that aggressive platform policy changes will cut at that lifeline at a time when businesses really need it to grow,” Facebook Chief Financial Officer David Wehner said on the company’s quarterly follow-up earnings call.

While the revenue of small businesses are certainly a concern, especially in the current economy, it’s obvious that this isn’t Facebook’s real issue. The fact is that Apple is stopping Facebook from scraping as much user data as it wants — and that is a threat to the company’s very foundation.

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