Here’s why some Facebook employees are calling Tim Cook a hypocrite

In the lead-up to Monday's arrival of the long-awaited iOS 14.5 -- the new version of Apple's mobile operating software that strikes a blow against the creepy user tracking underpinning Facebook's business model -- there was a particular dynamic that consistently dominated much of the press coverage.

Things tended to be put in pretty binary terms whenever Apple's tough new stance against user tracking was written about, with journalists and bloggers presenting it as a sort of zero-sum game between Apple and Facebook and between their respective CEOs Tim Cook and Mark Zuckerberg. And on one level, sure, it is pretty straightforward. Both companies and their chief executives represent different constituencies, have clear and diametrically opposed track records when it comes to privacy, and they have core values that couldn't be more different from eachother. The months-long framing of Apple's launch of its new App Tracking Transparency framework as a showdown between Apple and Facebook, even though these are standards that every iOS app developer now has to adhere to, probably has something to do with that thing that's hard-wired into us as humans -- the need to feel like stories should have a good guy and a bad guy. Nevertheless, the squabble between both companies dominated a juicy New York Times piece on Monday laying out the backstory between Cook and Zuckerberg. Likewise, Zuckerberg has on at least one occasion in the past told his executives that Facebook “needed to inflict pain” upon Apple and Mr. Cook, according to The Wall Street Journal.