As Apple prepares to roll out new privacy features that will damage Facebook’s business, a report from The New York Times this week aims to explain how the relationship between the two companies went south in the first place.

According to the report, Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg approached Apple CEO Tim Cook at a 2019 tech retreat and asked him what to do about the burgeoning Cambridge Analytica data breach scandal. Cook reportedly said that Facebook should delete all user data, and Zuckerberg was “stunned” by the advice. After all, without user data, Facebook’s entire business model would crumble. But that was just one of many jabs Cook has taken at Facebook over its privacy practices.

“If a business is built on misleading users, on data exploitation, on choices that are no choices at all, it does not deserve our praise. It deserves reform,” Cook recently said, making an obvious reference to Facebook’s data practices.

Apple is also making a big change to its app platform that will require companies to get consent before tracking users — a major problem for Facebook, which relies on this silent tracking to gather data. So it’s clear that no matter what happens next, this beef between tech giants is far from over.

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