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Journalism of Courage
Facebook has denied that CEO Mark Zuckerberg ordered his management team to only use Android phones and give up iPhones, because of Apple CEO Tim Cook’s comments which were critical of the social media company.
This was first reported by New York Times in an investigative article on how Facebook and its management team handled the Russian interference in US elections, fake news crisis and Cambridge Analytica data privacy scandal. The report highlights how Facebook knew of Russian influence much before it admitted to this publicly ,and how the company tried to deflect scandal after scandal.
Facebook also released an official statement after the NYT article was published earlier this week, saying that the company has encouraged its employees to use Android because it is “the most popular operating system in the world”, and not because the Apple CEO was critical of them.
Also read: Facebook’s battle with scandal: Company feared Trump supporters, knew of Russian interference
“Tim Cook has consistently criticised our business model and Mark has been equally clear he disagrees. So there’s been no need to employ anyone else to do this for us. And we’ve long encouraged our employees and executives to use Android because it is the most popular operating system in the world,” the statement reads.
Apple CEO Tim Cook’s remarks had said in a MSNBC interview hosted by Chris Hayes and Recode’s Kara Swisher that he would not be in the same situation as Zuckerberg, when asked about the Cambridge Analytica scandal.
The interview was held before Zuckerberg was expected to appear before Congress in the US to testify in the Cambridge Analytical issue.
“We could make a ton of money if we monetised our customers, if our customers were our product…We’re not going to traffic in your personal life. Privacy to us is a human right, a civil liberty,” Cook had said.
The Apple CEO has also been critical of social media companies tracking user habits and other data. When it comes to users, Apple has always said that it supports their data privacy.
In a following interview by Vox, the Facebook CEO had said that Cook’s arguments were “extremely glib” and “not at all aligned with the truth”.
Zuckerberg argued that just because Facebook charges its users less does not mean it does not care about them.”To the contrary, I think 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. Because that sounds ridiculous to me,” he told Vox.
