Thanks to the poor redactions, we can see sections comparing the use of Apple’s Messages app to Meta apps like Instagram and WhatsApp. The original slide displayed only a quote from Apple director of product marketing Ronak Shah describing an iMessage “core use case” allegedly similar to Facebook’s. Another, labeled “Snapchat in 2020: Competitors Are Succeeding and Not Just Meta Apps,” says that “Tiktok, Insta, FB, Messengers and YouTube” are “thriving.”
Those aren’t especially juicy details; at most, it looks like someone was just being cautious — or trying to be, anyway — with slides that came from other companies’ internal meetings. But the leak calls to mind mid-2023, when Sony spilled PlayStation secrets by using sharpie to hide information — which let the darker printed ink below be visible under, say, the bright light of a document scanner — in court documents shared in the Microsoft antitrust trial.
