Technology

The information revealed in the slides isn’t necessarily the most earth-shattering disclosures. As reported by The Verge, one slide showed data, seemingly from Apple, that shows the frequency of use of several different apps that have messaging features—including Apple’s Messages, TikTok, Instagram, Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, and Snapchat—that suggested Messages dominated iOS when it comes to communications, not Meta’s offerings. Another slide, per The Verge, was titled “Snapchat in 2020: Competitors Are Succeeding and Not Just Meta Apps” and said apps other than Meta’s own are “thriving.”

But the fact that information made its way to public consumption was a pretty big “oops” on Meta’s part. The information was visible because of how the company redacted the documents, which it turned out was pretty easy to remove…which, of course, people did. That did not inspire confidence among the legal representation for companies, including Apple, Google, and Snapchat, that Meta was doing all it could to keep proprietary information protected. (Why they would want that information redacted is a different matter.)