‘It Deserves Scorn’: Apple CEO Calls Out Facebook’s Misleading Business Model

Tim Cook with Warren Buffet via Tim Cook’s Instagram

‘It Deserves Scorn’: Apple CEO Calls Out Facebook’s Misleading Business Model

By Movieguide® Staff

Apple CEO Tim Cook claims Facebook’s business model, primarily using user data to serve targeted ads, directly correlates to real-world consequences and even violence.

During a data privacy conference in Brussels, Cook mentioned warned attendees about an unnamed social media company. However, it is clear Cook’s warning addressed Facebook’s access to users’ data.

“If a business is built on misleading users, on data exploitation, on choices that are no choices at all, it does not deserve our praise. It deserves scorn,” Cook said.

Cook also called out Facebook for their algorithm, which pushed extremist political groups to drive user engagement. Facebook says that they have since amended this part of their algorithm.

“At a moment of rampant disinformation and conspiracy theories juiced by algorithms, we can no longer turn a blind eye to a theory of technology that says all engagement is good and the longer the better,” Cook said.

After the ban of former President Donald Trump, many big tech companies were accused of censorship and even encouraging the protests on Jan. 6 through their social media’s business model.

As the pressure mounts against Facebook, COO Sheryl Sandberg defended the company: “It is long past time to stop pretending that this approach doesn’t cover the costs of polarization, of lost trust, of violence. A social dilemma cannot be allowed to cause a social catastrophe.”

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg claims that Apple, their biggest competitor, is merely taking advantage of their tech dominance.

“Apple has every incentive to use their dominant platform position to interfere with how our apps and other apps work, which they regularly do to preference their own,” Zuckerberg said.

However, Cook’s remarks are not a new idea. In the recent documentary, THE SOCIAL DILEMMA, former tech execs from Google, Twitter, and Facebook expressed similar concerns about particular social media business models.

Movieguide® previously reported:

The movie also claims that the most engaging content is misinformation, conspiracy theories, and stories that stoke “outrage-ification.”

“We’ve created a system that biases toward false information,” notes one interview in the movie. “Because false information makes the companies more money than the truth. The truth is boring.”

More recently, Orlowski said that the Jan. 6 Capitol Hill riots confirm that media is divisive and does not unite people.

“We see how [Jan. 6] just made it so apparent how conspiracy theories, how misinformation, how these platforms that sold us on this idea of connection are actually just increasing tribalism in some ways, and connecting us to like-minded thinking,” Orlowski said. “They are not actually connecting us with the world. They’re distancing us and separating us from reality.”

Orlowski added: “That’s one of the things that has me most frightened is that regardless of the issue that you care about, we’re finding it more and more difficult to take meaningful democratic actions because…basically every issue in the world has been in some way, shape or form polarized through these platforms.”

Wishing Warren Buffett a very special 90th birthday — thank you for your leadership, friendship and unwavering commitment to American innovation. pic.twitter.com/tAFQjjL5RL

— Tim Cook (@tim_cook) August 30, 2020

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What you listen to, watch, and read has power. Movieguide® wants to give you the resources to empower the good and the beautiful. But we can’t do it alone. We need your support.

You can make a difference with as little as $7. It takes only a moment. If you can, consider supporting our ministry with a monthly gift. Thank you.

Movieguide® is a 501c3 and all donations are tax deductible.