Apple Faces $2.7 Billion Class Action Lawsuit: Accused of Unfair App Tracking Rules Benefiting Its Own Advertising Ecosystem to the Detriment of Third-Party Developers

BlockBeats News, September 3rd, Apple faced a collective lawsuit in London, with a claim amount of up to £20 billion (approximately $27 billion). The lawsuit was filed today in the London Competition Appeal Court, represented by former senior official of the UK Competition and Markets Authority, Ann Pope, on behalf of app developers. The core accusation is that Apple's 2021 introduction of the "App Tracking Transparency" (ATT) feature imposed stricter restrictions on third-party developers than on its own services, giving Apple's own advertising ecosystem an unfair competitive advantage. Ann Pope stated that Apple's policy "has caused very significant harm to businesses that rely on Apple as a gatekeeper."

Since its launch, the ATT feature has been a focus of global regulatory scrutiny for many years. Apple's official position is that the feature is designed to allow users to control whether apps track their activity on other companies and websites. However, the plaintiffs argue that there is a double standard in the actual enforcement of this rule—tracking requests from third-party apps require strict pop-up authorization, while Apple's own personalized ads and services can bypass the same restrictions. This lawsuit represents the latest legal challenge Apple faces regarding its ATT policy and is the first large-scale private antitrust lawsuit in the UK market against Apple's app ecosystem rules following scrutiny by the EU, the US, and multiple countries.