Several tech companies have voiced their frustrations with
Facebook’s handling of the recent Cambridge Analytics data privacy scandal.
For example, Firefox developer Mozilla recently released the
privacy-oriented “Facebook Container” app shortly after opting to pull their
ads form the social media platform.
Now, it seems Apple is jumping on that bandwagon as well.
Apple CEO Tim Cook recently came out against Facebook’s data privacy standards
in several interviews – while the CEO generally prefer companies to regulate
themselves as far as data privacy goes, he feels the window for Facebook to do
so has long since closed.
“I think the best regulation is no regulation, is
self-regulation,” Cook said to Recode and MSNBC. “However, I think we’re beyond
that here, the truth is, we could make a ton of money if we monetized our
customer – if our customer was out product,” Cook said. “We have elevated not
to do that.”
Cook also isn’t a fan of the way Facebook builds “detailed
profiles” of their users, “patched together from several sources.” Cook feels
this sort of data collection is a result of Facebook treating their users as
the product instead of the customer.
When asked what he would do if he was in Facebook CEO Mark
Zukerburg’s situation, Cook simply said he “wouldn’t be in this situation” to
begin with. Whether you love or hate Apple, the company’s business practices do
seem to back up Cook’s statements for the most part.
As Recode notes, the majority of Apple income seems to come
from selling products directly to consumers, businesses and educational
institutions rather than data harvesting.
