Mashable: The two businesses were discussing the possibility of launching a new paid membership service that would provide users with an ad-free version of the widely used social networking website.

For the last several years, Facebook and Apple have been at differences over how users' data is used for advertising purposes, with Apple announcing at WWDC 2020 that applications on iOS will need users to opt into cross-app advertising monitoring.

Facebook spent several subsequent months protesting Apple's intentions and forecasting financial instability as a result of the planned changes, but the functionality was finally deployed in April of 2021 with the release of iOS 14.5. However, a fresh story from The Wall Street Journal suggests that Facebook and Apple were working on cooperation and revenue-sharing arrangement before all of this went down.

The two businesses were discussing the possibility of launching a new paid membership service that would provide users with an ad-free version of the widely used social networking website.

A portion of the membership cost would go to the Cupertino-based firm. This would have been a fantastic deal for Apple if it had included subscriptions and in-app purchases via the app. It seems that part of the agreement was for Apple to get a percentage of the money given to Facebook to promote the page to a bigger audience, sometimes known as "promoted posts."

Facebook's promoted posts make up a significant portion of the platform's advertising offerings. However, Apple argued that, as an in-app purchase, it should be entitled to a 30% revenue share of the transaction. Facebook, however, contended that the revenue reduction would not apply to its advertising goods.