If Facebook stopped all their applications (Facebook, Instagram, Whatsapp) from working on iOS, who would lose more? Will most people start using other social media platforms more, or will they buy Android devices?
Of course not. But Apple can't afford kicking out Facebook or Google. Not even Uber[2].
All of these background deals and exeptions are not unprecedented, really. If I went to Target and wanted them to distribute my craft beer, I'd get worse terms than Heineken has.
[1] - https://www.macrumors.com/2019/01/29/facebook-sideloading-vp...
[2] - https://www.theverge.com/2017/4/23/15399438/apple-uber-app-s...
I can't imagine any ad supported business ignoring iOS users. The demographic is too lucrative.
One freemium iOS app I worked on did nearly 5X the revenue compared to its Android counterpart (others were at varied-but-similar multiples). I imagine the ad-supported business would reflect the same - the iOS audience is just too lucrative for advertisers to ignore.
edit to adjust multiple. I went back and looked it up.
They would probably use 2 phones one iOS and one Android for FB apps cause utility of FB apps is just too big.
Heck, if Google and FB banded up right now to reject iOS out of the blue, iOS would fall into an unclimbable chasm. Of course, that won't happen though.