Thousands of British app developers filed a $2.7 billion lawsuit on Thursday against Apple over its App Tracking Transparency (ATT) framework, claiming the service was designed and implemented unfairly and resulted in significant losses for their businesses.
The class-action lawsuit, led by Ann Pope with the Hausfeld law firm, claims that Apple’s framework held third-party apps to tracking restrictions that were tougher than those faced by Apple’s own ad operations, putting the outside developers at a competitive disadvantage.
Apple introduced the ATT framework in 2021, which third-party developers are required to use if they collect user data and share it with other companies. The tracking feature triggers a pop-up box that typically requires users to choose if they want the app to track their activity or “ask app not to track.”…