Food delivery service Postmates backtracks after trashing Mark Zuckerberg for 'screwing our democracy' in an app update

Melia Robinson

• Food delivery service Postmates has backtracked after making a joke at Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg's expense in its new app release notes.
• Facebook "screwed our democracy," taunted Postmates, making light of the Cambridge Analytica scandal, where as many as 87 million Facebook profiles were improperly used for political ad targeting.
• The company later backtracked and removed specific references to Facebook or Zuckerberg from the app update notes.

Silicon Valley can't stop talking about Facebook's ever-growing privacy scandal. But food delivery startup, Postmates, took the gossip to a whole other level: It trash-talked Facebook in - of all places - the notes that accompanied Postmates newest app update.

"Not satisfied with screwing our democracy, Facebook's changes to the way other apps integrate with the platform have blocked everyone from accessing their Tinder accounts." Postmates also offered a free delivery to the first 100 customers who use the promotional code "FACEPALM."

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To recap: Facebook has admitted that political research firm Cambridge Analytica, linked to both President Trump's 2016 presidential campaign and the Brexit leave vote, improperly obtained data from as many as 87 million Facebook users for ad targeting purposes. In the aftermath, CEO Mark Zuckerberg has apologized and promised big changes.

However, one of those changes involved the way that outside apps can log in using Facebook - temporarily breaking the login process for popular dating app Tinder, as well as a handful of other popular services.

Postmates later backtracked on the update: "Our app updates are meant to be light-hearted and playful. We obviously missed the mark on this one. We never meant for it to be received negatively and we have already changed the copy in the app store," a spokesperson tells Business Insider.

The updated text still refers to the Tinder incident, but removes any specific mention of Facebook or Zuckerberg: "Can't log in to Tinder? Well, you can log in to Postmates," it begins. Notably, this matches the update notes that the Android version of the app has displayed all along.

Facebook did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Here's the full text of how Postmates originally described the new features of its app on Apple's App Store, as originally found and tweeted by Chris Maddern, co-founder of app marketplace startup Button.

iTunes/Postmates

Here's what it said on the Google Play store for Android. At press time, the text here matched what was viewable on the Apple App Store.

Postmates/Play Store

There doesn't seem to be a deep-seated motive for the mud slinging, although there is a thin connection between Facebook and Postmates. Slow Ventures, a Postmates investor, was founded by former early Facebooker Dave Morin. As the backlash on Facebook has grown, Morin said he was considering trying his hand at bringing back Path, his own failed attempt at building a social network.