Mark Zuckerberg Fires Back After Tim Cook Critique
03 April 2018 - 2:53AM
Dow Jones News
By Imani Moise
Facebook Inc. Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg on Monday shot
back at Apple Inc. CEO Tim Cook's critiques of his company, writing
them off as "not aligned with the truth."
Last week, Mr. Cook said he would never be in the situation Mr.
Zuckerberg found himself in after the Cambridge Analytica scandal,
contrasting Apple's focus on selling devices with the ad-based
businesses used by Facebook and Alphabet Inc.'s Google, which are
built on user data. He also called for regulation of data and
privacy, saying certain tech companies had failed to self-regulate
and limit what they collect from users.
In an interview with Vox Media's Ezra Klein published Monday
morning, Mr. Zuckerberg rejected the notion that Facebook doesn't
care about its users, suggesting such comments were "extremely
glib."
Mr. Zuckerberg reiterated Facebook's goal of building a site
that connects people around the world. The company changed its
mission statement last year and said it would work to help fix a
"striking decline in the important social infrastructure of local
communities.
To reach as many people as possible, he said, his company has to
lean on an advertising model to make its product free.
"There are companies that work hard to charge you more, and
there are companies that work hard to charge you less," Mr.
Zuckerberg said in the Vox interview, attributing the quote to
Amazon.com Inc. CEO Jeff Bezos. "It's important that we don't all
get Stockholm syndrome and let the companies that work hard to
charge you more convince you that they actually care more about
you."
Apple and Facebook didn't immediately respond to requests for
comment.
Facebook shares have been battered since the mid-March
revelation that its user data was improperly obtained by Cambridge
Analytica, a data-analytics firm whose clients included Donald
Trump's 2016 presidential campaign. That incident has drawn
widespread scrutiny and rekindled longstanding concerns about
privacy practices at Facebook and other tech companies.
Mr. Zuckerberg has apologized for the episode. He vowed to look
for potential abuses of personal data by app developers, and
Facebook has since tweaked its privacy tools so that users can more
easily track and change some of the social network's data about
them.
Facebook shares have fallen by roughly 12% over the past month,
shaving off more than $60 billion in market value from the
company.
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
April 02, 2018 12:38 ET (16:38 GMT)
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