Steve Wozniak leaves Facebook
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. “The profits are all based on the user’s info, but the users get none of the profits back.”
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.”
