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1/ Thread. Here’s one way to view the Facebook/Apple dispute. Say I own a chain of 100 popular grocery stores. It’s far from the biggest chain, but folks trust it. Dole uses my chain to test new items. It wants to pilot a new kind of canned fruit at 3 of my stores, and I say OK.
2/ But Dole deliberately ships the test product to *all* of my stores, not 3. Plus, it turns out that the nature of the product violates my policies that Dole has agreed to. So I ban the product. (Note: I am not referring to the real Dole here of course. This is a made-up Dole.)
3/ Dole’s reaction is to relabel the banned product and then ship it again to all my stores. This time, I ban all their products in that one category for one day. It disrupts their operations briefly, even though they remain on the shelves of my of my bigger competitor.
4/ Instead of focusing on Dole’s repeated breach of policies it has agreed to in writing, some complain that I have too much power. But do I? All I’m doing is setting and enforcing known policies in my own private-sector stores. And Dole is still selling everything elsewhere.
5/ My company isn’t the government. It’s allowed to have its own vendor policies. If customers and vendors don’t like those policies, they’ll desert me. But I’m willing to take the risk. In fact, many customers trust me BECAUSE of my tough policies. So how am I the bad guy?
