As Facebook begins the process of lettings users know whether or not their personal data was shared with Cambridge Analytica, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak has come out against the social media giant in a new interview. Speaking with USA Today, the computer engineer turned philanthropist said he had deleted his Facebook account in the wake of the Cambridge Analytica scandal, which revealed significant issues with the platform’s methods (or lack thereof) for protecting their users’ privacy. Wozniak also used the opportunity to attack the company’s business model when compared to Apple’s.
“Apple makes its money off of good products, not off of you,” he said, adding: “As they say, with Facebook, you are the product.”
“Users provide every detail of their life to Facebook and… Facebook makes a lot of advertising money off this,” he said in an email to USA Today. “The profits are all based on the user’s info, but the users get none of the profits back.”
Wozniak also told the outlet that he would “rather pay for Facebook than have his personal information exploited for advertising.” Whether general Facebook users would ever echo such a sentiment remains to be seen, however, as most social media (not to mention most websites, especially news outlets and popular blogs) is freely available. Yet Wozniak’s announcement echoes comments made previously by Cook, who called for “well-crafted regulation” while decrying Facebook’s “dire” lack of privacy protections for its users. Facebook CEO Mark Zucker later called Cook’s remarks “extremely glib.”
(Via USA Today)