‘We Need To Have This Knife Fight.’ Inside Facebook’s Strategy To Bring the War to Apple.

An internal Facebook plan reveals the machinations of a company determined to fend off Apple’s new privacy controls

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“While no one wants to see two trillion-dollar companies having a knife fight,” read the internal strategy document drafted by Facebook executives, “we need to have this knife fight.”

This elegant depiction of boardroom barbarism is hardly surprising. Facebook has a famously pugilistic culture, stemming from the early “move fast and break things” era to the company’s aggressive handling of its latest scandal. And the object of Facebook’s ire here is hardly a surprise either: Apple.

After all, the two Silicon Valley giants have been at each other’s throats for years, competing on messaging, privacy, and clout. Most recently, however, Apple’s been working methodically to cut off Facebook’s ability to track people outside of its app — a move that’s left its advertisers “running blind.”

Facebook obviously didn’t love the idea of getting into a war with Apple, but the…