Apple fighting it on a technical level or playing tough in private negotiations is one thing, but do you truly expect Apple's customers would be pleased if Tim decides in their stead that Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat are off-limits? They have their own profit motives and you can be damn sure they will not hurt them in the name of a privacy crusade. Walling out small time apps with marginal use from your garden is a safe play, doing so with apps used by a crushing majority of your users is a whole different story.
They could just disable new device installs and allow existing users to continue using it. That would be enough to motivate them to correct behavior without causing an uproar. Existing users wouldn't even notice.
Equally likely to be enough motivation for potential iPhone buyers to instead get a Pixel or whatever other top-end phones are made for Android. That seems like a more likely compass for Apple's decision making. Besides, when has there even been uproar that translated into material change of users behavior like an exodus? We're a bunch of self-selected nerds/geeks on this forum which makes us forget how much people do not give a shit about privacy issues and other wrong-doings of the FAAMGs. If they do care, the threshold is either really hard to cross or the addiction/network effect too strong to move the needle. These controversies come and go - The Social Network, Cambridge Analytica, addiction/dopamine, Social Dilemma, Chinese interference (TikTok), censorship, election manipulation, terrorism funnels and countless other issues - but users, as an aggregate, they just come. Same way they never stopped buying iPhones despite suicide nets at Foxconn's factories or coffee made with child labor.
What users would care about is if you'd tell them "No, you can't use these apps with billions of users on our phones". I'm ready to be proven wrong, but I'd take a bet Apple will not act on delisting or banning updates for Facebook & Instagram, that's wishful thinking in my book. Their morale high ground PR is clearly effective however.
It could be like Flash: everyone agrees it’s awful, nobody wants to lose it on their device… but if Apple cuts off a large enough share of the market, it could be enough to cut down Facebook forever.
