It’s no secret that Apple’s App Tracking Transparency feature, focused on giving users more control over their data, has had an impact on many companies. Now, Snap has been hit with a lawsuit from an investor alleging that the company downplayed how App Tracking Transparency would affect its revenue.
As reported by Reuters, Snap was hit with the lawsuit this week. Filed in Los Angeles federal court, the lawsuit comes three weeks after Snap reported lower-than-expected earnings, sending its stock down over 25%.
Investor Kellie Black says in the lawsuit that Snap and several executives oversold the company’s ability to adapt to Apple privacy updates that rolled out broadly in June and prevent digital advertisers from tracking iPhone and iPad users without their consent.
A spokesperson for the Santa Monica, California-based company declined to comment on the litigation on Friday.
When it reported its earnings for the fiscal fourth quarter last month, Snap missed expectations on revenue by $3 million. CEO Evan Spiegel explained at the time that this miss was caused by Apple’s privacy changes:
“Our advertising business was disrupted by changes to iOS ad tracking that were broadly rolled out by Apple in June and July,” CEO Evan Spiegel said during a call with analysts. “While we anticipated some degree of business disruption, the new Apple provided measurement solution did not scale as we had expected, making it more difficult for our advertising partners to measure and manage their ad campaigns for iOS.”
Earlier this year, Spiegel had actually argued in favor of Apple’s App Tracking Transparency system on multiple occasions.
Of course, Snap is not the only company to have been affected by Apple’s privacy changes. Whether or not anything comes of this lawsuit remains to be seen.
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