Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak says he's left Facebook over data collection
Apple
co-founder Steve Wozniak says he's left Facebook over data collection
SAN FRANCISCO — Apple
co-founder Steve Wozniak told USA TODAY he's leaving Facebook out of growing
concern for the carelessness with which Facebook and other Internet companies
treat the private information of users.
"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."Facebook
Wozniak said he'd rather
pay for Facebook than have his personal information exploited for advertising.
And he heaped praise on Apple for respecting people's privacy.
"Apple
makes its money off of good products, not off of you," Wozniak said.
"As they say, with Facebook, you are the product."
His
surprise announcement marks the latest development in back-and-forth corporate
sniping by tech leaders as Facebook copes with a scandal over the
potential misuse of user data by political targeting firm Cambridge Analytica.
In an update last week, Facebook estimated as many as 87 million people, mostly in the
United States, may have had their data improperly shared. Apple CEO Tim Cook started the unusual public criticism in late March. During a
joint interview with Recode and MSNBC, he was asked what he would do about the
crisis if he were in Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg's position.
"I
wouldn't be in the situation," said Cook.
He
added that Apple reviews apps to confirm that each one meets the privacy
standards his company has required for users.
"We
don't subscribe to the view that you have to let everybody in that wants to, or
if you don't, you don't believe in free speech," said Cook. "We don't
believe that."
Cook
also questioned the practice of social media platforms monetizing the personal
data of their users.
Zuckerberg
hit back in a subsequent interview with Vox, calling Cook's
comments "extremely glib."
"If
you want to build a service which is not just serving rich people, then you
need to have something that people can afford," said Zuckerberg.
Championing
his own company's business model, Zuckerberg also said: "At Facebook, we
are squarely in the camp of the companies that work hard to charge you less and
provide a free service that everyone can use. I don’t think at all that that
means that we don’t care about people."
Zuckerberg
is scheduled to testify before congressional committees in Washington this week
about the Cambridge Analytica episode and Facebook's response.
Starting
Monday, the 87 million users whose data might have been shared
with Cambridge Analytica will get a message in their news feeds. Most of
the affected users — more than 70 million — are in the U.S. In
addition, all 2.2 billion Facebook users will get a link so they can review
what apps they use and what information is shared with those apps.
The
Cambridge Analytica affair hasn't dented user engagement, according to
Jefferies analyst Brent Thill.
"We
analyzed Facebook's traffic over the course of March and believe that
recent headlines around Facebook's data policies have not meaningfully impacted
engagement on the platform," Thill wrote in a research note.
According
to a survey of 750 U.S. Internet users, Facebook and Instagram are still
tops, Thill found, with 93% using Facebook and about 50% using Instagram.
Wozniak
is one of the prominent users who have called it quits. On Sunday, he
deactivated his Facebook account after posting the following
message: "I am in the process of leaving Facebook. It's brought me
more negatives than positives. Apple has more secure ways to share things
about yourself. I can still deal with old school email and text messages."
In an
email to USA TODAY, Wozniak said he was taken aback by the extent of
Facebook's data collection when he changed and deleted some of
his information before deactivating his account.
"I
was surprised to see how many categories for ads and how many advertisers I had
to get rid of, one at a time. I did not feel that this is what people want done
to them," he said. "Ads and spam are bad things these days and there
are no controls over them. Or transparency."
Still,
breaking up with Facebook isn't easy. Wozniak chose not to delete his
Facebook account. He didn't mind bidding farewell to his 5,000 Facebook
friends, many of whom he says he doesn't know. But he didn't want to give up
his "stevewoz" screen name.
"I
don’t want someone else grabbing it, even another Steve Wozniak," he said.
Wozniak's
latest comments aren't the first time he's thrown shade at Internet giants.
Speaking at an international business conference in Montreal last year,
Wozniak said he tries to "avoid Google and Facebook."
He
cited the companies' use of widescale data-collecting operations that are used
to help sharpen ad targeting of the social media platform's users, online magazine The Drum reported.
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