By Prarthana Mitra
As Facebook continues to flail about in the fallout of its controversial data breach crisis, Apple CEO Tim Cook lambasted Mark Zuckerberg in an interview last monthover Facebook’s utter lack of self-regulation when it comes to managing users personal data.
He-said-he-said
In a series of digs against Facebook, Cook severely criticised the company for treating its consumers as products, adding that Apple would never find itself in a situation like this since their business model focused on selling products to users, rather than selling users to advertisers.
We care about the user experience and were not going to traffic in your personal life, Cook told Recode and MSNBC.
Zuckerberg dismissed these claims in an interview with Vox yesterday, calling Cooks comments glib and not aligned to the truth. He insisted that an advertising-supported business model is the only rational model that can support building a service aimed at connecting people across the world, many of whom cannot afford to pay.
This is a deliberate jab at Apple products’ expensive prices. In comparison, Facebook markets itself as providing a free service to everyone regardless of class or income.
I think its important that we dont all get Stockholm syndrome and let the companies that work hard to charge you more convince you that they actually care more about you, Zuckerberg told Vox co-founder Ezra Klein on his podcast. Because that sounds ridiculous to me.
Privacy is paramount – Cook
Apple has always been a stickler when it comes to user privacy rights. However, Cooks stance in the earlier interview sets him distinctly apart from most other tech CEOs, especially when he doubled down on his call for regulation, a generally dreaded word in Silicon Valley and Wall Street, according to Time magazine.
Cook regarded Facebooks handling of user information as a blatant invasion of privacy, saying, I think privacy to us is a human right. Its a civil liberty, and is something that is unique to America, this is like freedom of speech and freedom of the press and privacy is right up there for us.
This fresh onslaught of criticism against Facebook follows in the wake of revelations that political consultancy firm Cambridge Analytica harvested personal data from over 50 million Facebook users during the 2016 US presidential elections. At a US Congressional hearing in October 2017, the company acknowledged its complicity in and failure to crackdown on misinformation disseminated by Russians through fake propaganda accounts.
Zuckerberg, who is likely to testify on Capitol Hill later this month, admitted that it has been an extremely difficult year for Facebook, with increasing clamour from the global community, for greater transparency about how data is being gathered and mined for advertising purposes.
Cooks harsh critique comes at a time when Facebook is faced with intensified calls for tighter regulation from all corners. However, Zuckerberg himself does not seem so averse to the idea of regulation at this point, and has appeared to give it some serious consideration.
I actually am not sure we shouldnt be regulated,” Zuckerberg told CNN. “I think in general, technology is an increasingly important trend in the world and I actually think the question is more, What is the right regulation, rather than, Yes or no, should it be regulated?