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How Mark Zuckerberg and Tim Cook Became Foes (nytimes.com) 118

The chief executives of Facebook and Apple have opposing visions for the future of the internet. Their differences are set to escalate later today. The New York Times: At a confab for tech and media moguls in Sun Valley, Idaho, in July 2019, Timothy D. Cook of Apple and Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook sat down to repair their fraying relationship. For years, the chief executives had met annually at the conference, which was held by the investment bank Allen & Company, to catch up. But this time, Facebook was grappling with a data privacy scandal. Mr. Zuckerberg had been blasted by lawmakers, regulators and executives -- including Mr. Cook -- for letting the information of more than 50 million Facebook users be harvested by a voter-profiling firm, Cambridge Analytica, without their consent. At the meeting, Mr. Zuckerberg asked Mr. Cook how he would handle the fallout from the controversy, people with knowledge of the conversation said. Mr. Cook responded acidly that Facebook should delete any information that it had collected about people outside of its core apps.

Mr. Zuckerberg was stunned, said the people, who were not authorized to speak publicly. Facebook depends on data about its users to target them with online ads and to make money. By urging Facebook to stop gathering that information, Mr. Cook was in effect telling Mr. Zuckerberg that his business was untenable. He ignored Mr. Cook's advice. Two years later, Mr. Zuckerberg and Mr. Cook's opposing positions have exploded into an all-out war. On Monday, Apple plans to release a new privacy feature that requires iPhone owners to explicitly choose whether to let apps like Facebook track them across other apps. One of the secrets of digital advertising is that companies like Facebook follow people's online habits as they click on other programs, like Spotify and Amazon, on smartphones. That data helps advertisers pinpoint users' interests and better target finely tuned ads. Now, many people are expected to say no to that tracking, delivering a blow to online advertising -- and Facebook's $70 billion business.

At the center of the fight are the two C.E.O.s. Their differences have long been evident. Mr. Cook, 60, is a polished executive who rose through Apple's ranks by constructing efficient supply chains. Mr. Zuckerberg, 36, is a Harvard dropout who built a social-media empire with an anything-goes stance toward free speech. Those contrasts have widened with their deeply divergent visions for the digital future. Mr. Cook wants people to pay a premium -- often to Apple -- for a safer, more private version of the internet. It is a strategy that keeps Apple firmly in control. But Mr. Zuckerberg champions an "open' internet where services like Facebook are effectively free. In that scenario, advertisers foot the bill. The relationship between the chief executives has become increasingly chilly, people familiar with the men said. While Mr. Zuckerberg once took walks and dined with Steve Jobs, Apple's late co-founder, he does not do so with Mr. Cook. Mr. Cook regularly met with Larry Page, Google's co-founder, but he and Mr. Zuckerberg see each other infrequently at events like the Allen & Company conference, these people said.

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How Mark Zuckerberg and Tim Cook Became Foes

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  • Call be naive (Score:5, Insightful)

    by fred6666 ( 4718031 ) on Monday April 26, 2021 @10:24AM (#61315602)

    but I was not aware Apple was letting Facebook do that:

    On Monday, Apple plans to release a new privacy feature that requires iPhone owners to explicitly choose whether to let apps like Facebook track them across other apps. One of the secrets of digital advertising is that companies like Facebook follow people's online habits as they click on other programs, like Spotify and Amazon, on smartphones. That data helps advertisers pinpoint users' interests and better target finely tuned ads.

    The Facebook app should not be allowed to collect information outside its app, period.

    • Re: Call be naive (Score:4, Informative)

      by reanjr ( 588767 ) on Monday April 26, 2021 @10:33AM (#61315648) Homepage

      I don't think it is directly. What's going on is both the Facebook app and Spotify are talking to Facebook's servers. Apple is providing a device ID to tie the activity of these apps together. Now, Apple will remove the ID. It doesn't stop Spotify from spying on you for Facebook, but it makes it much harder to build a profile of your activity.

      • Is it clear in the Spotify terms of services that they are sending information to Facebook?
        And why was such ID provided by Apple to begin with?

        • Virtually all terms of service reserve the rights to sell whatever info to whomever
        • Re: Call be naive (Score:4, Insightful)

          by teg ( 97890 ) on Monday April 26, 2021 @11:52AM (#61315998)

          Is it clear in the Spotify terms of services that they are sending information to Facebook? And why was such ID provided by Apple to begin with?

          There is a "connect to Facebook" option in Spotify, so you can show your friends on Facebook what you're listening to, see what they are listening too etc... No need to hide it when people will just give you the information in the open.

          • I explicitly don't use that feature. I don't expect Facebook to be able to match my Facebook profile to my Spotify's.

        • by SirSlud ( 67381 )

          it's so telling that you're asking that here instead of just reading it like any normal person shouldn't be expected to

          • oh I'm just testing you. I read all 75 pages of course, like everybody else.

            • oh I'm just testing you. I read all 75 pages of course, like everybody else.

              It's only 20 pages, not 75. And while that's still quite a bit, you don't have to read all of it because there's a hyperlinked table of contents at the top. It looks like the relevant section is Third Party Applications and Devices [spotify.com], which says:

              The Spotify Service is integrated with or may otherwise interact with third party applications, websites, and services ("Third Party Applications") and third party Devices to make the Spotify Service available to you. These Third Party Applications and Devices may h

        • Re: Call be naive (Score:5, Informative)

          by tlhIngan ( 30335 ) <slashdot@worf.ERDOSnet minus math_god> on Monday April 26, 2021 @03:12PM (#61316792)

          And why was such ID provided by Apple to begin with?

          Well, it wasn't. Apple has an API to retrieve the device ID, a random string of digits that represents the serial number and other things. This is used to uniquely identify the device so if you sync or backup, you know which backup to use. The Device ID doesn't change, and survives an OS reinstall, making it useful for if the user resets their device, they can restore the backup automatically by connecting to iTunes.

          The Device ID was an API that allowed developers to store data for the user that even though it wasn't backed up, could be used as a cookie to get back their data - if your cloud service stores data about something in the cloud, the Device ID coul be used to retrieve it without the user having to log in all the time.

          Other developers saw the potential to exploit users that way and used it for tracking. Apple got alerted to it, and ended up creating a parallel API they called Advertising ID which the user has some control over, and blocking access to the Device ID.

          Basically developers abuse an API to the point where Apple had to act on it.

    • but I was not aware Apple was letting Facebook do that:

      On Monday, Apple plans to release a new privacy feature that requires iPhone owners to explicitly choose whether to let apps like Facebook track them across other apps. One of the secrets of digital advertising is that companies like Facebook follow people's online habits as they click on other programs, like Spotify and Amazon, on smartphones. That data helps advertisers pinpoint users' interests and better target finely tuned ads.

      The Facebook app should not be allowed to collect information outside its app, period.

      Why the indignation? Mr. Zuckerburg thought his earliest customers were "dumb fucks" for trusting him. Business pays lip service to integrity but worships money. Can anybody actually still be ignorant of that history? Tsk, tsk...

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by Anonymous Coward

        https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/... [wikiquote.org]

        Zuck: Yeah so if you ever need info about anyone at Harvard
        Zuck: Just ask
        Zuck: I have over 4,000 emails, pictures, addresses, SNS
        [Redacted Friend's Name]: What? How'd you manage that one?
        Zuck: People just submitted it.
        Zuck: I don't know why.
        Zuck: They "trust me"
        Zuck: Dumb fucks

    • by Whibla ( 210729 )

      but I was not aware Apple was letting Facebook do that:

      The Facebook app should not be allowed to collect information outside its app, period.

      That's not quite the way it works.

      As I understand it each consumer device, including Apple's, is given an 'Advertising Identifier' [wikipedia.org] which is sent, along with whatever data request, to every website / service the device visits. This allows the interests of the devices' users to be associated with that particular ID by the organisations that serve adverts to that site. Now, when you visit facebook, and your device sends them the ID, these same marketing agencies can send theoretically relevant adverts via face

      • yeah, at the minimum Apple should have an option to randomize that ID on every request. And even better, it should be on by default.

        • Apple should have an option to randomize that ID on every request
          Perhaps you want to look up for what word ID is an abbreviation in a dictionary?

          An ID that is random is not an ID ...

  • by Ostracus ( 1354233 ) on Monday April 26, 2021 @10:24AM (#61315606) Journal

    Like lions competing over a kill.

  • by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 26, 2021 @10:28AM (#61315626)
    Fuck the Zuck and Cook him with BBQ sauce!
    • by tomkost ( 944194 )
      Right on - stupid article mentions - But Mr. Zuckerberg champions an "open' internet Open my ass. Zuckerberg wants to censor everything that doesn't agree with his politics and then keep sucking up every last atom of data into his cloud. I pretty much quit using FB finally. I hope Android follows suit with iOS...
      • Even if Android follows suit with iOS, it's only going to be for Google's benefit, so that they can have better profiles on their users than Facebook, to take that marketshare of ads away from them.

  • by FudRucker ( 866063 ) on Monday April 26, 2021 @10:31AM (#61315642)
    and especially not zuckercuckerberg, i hate facebook but i do keep an empty profile going on it since if i didnt they would make one of me anyway, i look forward to iOS-14.5 because of its improved privacy standards, i dont think it is anyone's business where i go, and it is not facebook's business what websites i visit, this shit of turning everybody on the internet into a product to be exploited by corporate interests needs to stop,
  • Burger vs Sandwich (Score:5, Insightful)

    by BlacKSacrificE ( 1089327 ) on Monday April 26, 2021 @10:36AM (#61315662)

    Why do these two arseclowns get to decide the "future of the internet"? There's a bajillion of us, granted largely unwashed masses, surely we (especially as the cattle who made these guys rich) should have some sort of say here.

    Real talk though, good luck with that. Everyone's too distracted, which is how you get two arseclowns like these wind up in a position to decide the "future of the internet".

    • i am supporting Apple's side of the argument on this one, people have a right to privacy and not be tracked by corporate interests so they can target you with advertising, its none of facebook's business what i do on my phone what other apps or what websites i visit or what products i am interested in,
      • The fact that you are happy to accept that you should pay for privacy is exactly the point of OP's post.
        • by jellomizer ( 103300 ) on Monday April 26, 2021 @11:38AM (#61315932)

          Well we basically sold our privacy for the price of cheap or free products.

          That Android phone that has all the same specs and performance of the iPhone but is $100 cheaper... Well that is because that phone is setup to collect your data, that you have to agree to (after buying that phone) use it.

          That service that you use to free that you can chat with nearly everyone you know, wasn't free to build, so to use it, it cost your privacy.

          If you are going to get a product or service, it will need effort and materials for it to be created, as well prolong investment to keep it running. Either you pay for it in currency, trade your privacy, or have to pay for it via Taxes.

          Free and Open Software has its limitations and it isn't fully sustainable enough to meet demand, and the big projects often require funds to keep going, often coming from big companies who pay them to keep the product going so they can resell it, or include it as part of their business process where their expense is passed onto the customer.

        • i sort of got the impression he did not like either one, and considered it a choice between two bad sandwiches
        • by SirSlud ( 67381 )

          are you upset that your right to privacy isn't legislated and subsequently enforced robustly enough? that's not free either

        • No, you shouldn't have to pay for privacy on your devices. But in fact, you *don't* have to pay for that privacy if you're willing to do the work yourself... buy the right Android, root it, keep the OS up to date, install the right privacy software, configure it, keep that up to date, and all that. If, on the other hand, you prefer to pay someone else to handle that for you because maybe you'd like to focus your own efforts on other things; you have the option of hiring Apple to do the job for you.

          Either

        • by MikeMo ( 521697 )
          Apple is not requiring you to pay for your privacy, except that their features only work on Apple devices. Pretty hard for them to make an OS-level feature for Android. What they have done is add a prompt that asks you if you want allow whatever app is asking for the tracking info to have it. If you deny permission, the app doesn't get it. Costs you nothing. Saying you have to "pay Apple" for privacy is a bit disingenuous.
      • Apple and Tim Cook "care" about privacy solely because their current business model doesn't make any money from selling people's data. Instead they make money by selling overpriced devices to rich countries made by underpaid and overworked employees in poor countries. And they make money from the racket they have where if you want to have sell an app on iOS, you must pay 30% of the profit to Apple.

        Of the beef between the two, Tim Cook is worse in my eyes because he's a complete hypocrite. Zuckerberg at leas

    • by geekmux ( 1040042 ) on Monday April 26, 2021 @11:17AM (#61315840)

      Why do these two arseclowns get to decide the "future of the internet"? There's a bajillion of us, granted largely unwashed masses, surely we (especially as the cattle who made these guys rich) should have some sort of say here.

      If Apple and Facebook disappeared tomorrow, the internet would still work.

      In other words, these two arseclowns don't decide the future of the internet. Some dumbfuck journalist simply thought they did.

    • Because they have money.
      20 years ago, we were so focused on Microsoft and AOL. Because they had the money, and used it to influence their vision on the future of the internet. Where Facebook and Apple kinda slid in under their radar and took dominance.

      So where the OS/Client Side Software and the ISP were fighting for their vision of the future, a large centralized website, and a hardware manufacturer, snuck in can became the dominate force.

    • False Dichotomy (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Comboman ( 895500 ) on Monday April 26, 2021 @11:28AM (#61315890)

      Certainly there should be more options than "expose yourself to the world on Facebook" or "be a prisoner in Apple's walled garden".

      • > "expose yourself [...or...] be a prisoner".

        I'm not a prisoner in Apples garden, I hired them to fend off Facebook and their ilk trying to spy on me.

      • There are, at various levels of required tech savvy and convenience.

        For myself, I opted for "Rooted Android Phone + XprivacyLua + AFWall"

      • by Tom ( 822 )

        For the average user who knows little about the tech he is using and can't run a sniffer to figure out if some app is phoning home - sadly not really. You can have Facebook know all about you so they can sell you to sleazy ad people, you can give in to the MS empire who do a bit less of the advertising and a bit more of the "nice data you have there, would be a shame if something happened to it..." or you can pay the premium Apple asks and in return you're a customer, not a product.

        Of course you can do the

      • by Uberbah ( 647458 )

        be a prisoner in Apple's walled garden

        I wonder what the Venn diagram looks like of the people who whine about Apple's "walled garden" who also have a game console hooked up to their TV, which only plays a list of manufacturer approved titles....

        • It looks like this: O O

          Whereas, the Venn diagram of Apple users and those who use "whataboutism" to justify their walled garden looks like this: (O)

          • by Uberbah ( 647458 )

            Ah yes, whattaboutism: a Big Word thrown out by hypocrites to defend their hypocrisy, rather than deal with their double standards or how full of shit they are. So by all means keep whining, moaning and bitching about Apple while taking a break from your Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo products.

    • "Why do these two arseclowns get to decide the "future of the internet"? There's a bajillion of us, granted largely unwashed masses, surely we (especially as the cattle who made these guys rich) should have some sort of say here."

      I wish we the cattle did have a say. An actual effective say. And not just regarding the internet, but also regarding everything else. But, we can't have that because the System tries to be self-perpetuating for those in power. And anytime the People get a say, they call it Sociali

    • by Sloppy ( 14984 )

      They don't decide the future of the internet; they only decide the future of their own users. And you have a say in whether or not you're one of their users.

    • The mouth breathers don't care and most management in the industry doesn't care.
  • differences (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Turkinolith ( 7180598 ) on Monday April 26, 2021 @10:42AM (#61315696)
    "Mr. Cook wants people to pay a premium -- often to Apple -- for a safer, more private version of the internet. It is a strategy that keeps Apple firmly in control. But Mr. Zuckerberg champions an "open' internet where services like Facebook are effectively free. " effectively free = everything about you is saved and stored for an ever constant barrage of advertisements I'm totally willing to pay a bit more to NOT deal with the annoyance.
    • Re:differences (Score:5, Insightful)

      by UnknowingFool ( 672806 ) on Monday April 26, 2021 @10:50AM (#61315720)
      At the core of the issue is both companies make money on vastly different things. Apple makes money when you buy their goods and services. This traditional model means Apple has to look out for their customers. With Facebook, users are their products, and to me this has been shown by how blasé they have treated user data leaks. To me, Facebook does not see data leaks as problems with customer relations or privacy/legal issues; they have treated it as loss of product.
    • by cusco ( 717999 )

      As we used to say about Hotmail, "If the service is free you're not the customer, you're the product."

  • It seems that reporters are unable or unwilling to understand that human relationships have multiple dimensions. By saying "foe" it makes it seem that Cook and Zuckerberg are willing to fight to death in some kind of duel.

    Do reporters do this because they're stupid? Do they do this because they think we're stupid?

    "Husband and wife are foes because she wants a truck and he wants a minivan."
    "Husband and wife disagree about the kind of vehicle to purchase."
    "Wife and husband's disagreements fray their relations

  • by nicolaiplum ( 169077 ) on Monday April 26, 2021 @10:51AM (#61315724)

    The article quote is disingenuous. This isn't a control or free speech argument. It's an argument about being a provider to the users or an exploiter of the users.

    The actual difference in vision is that Apple wants to sell goods and services to customers who are willing to pay for them while Facebook wants to conduct pervasive surveillance of its users and sell the information about them to the advertisers (Facebook's actual customers).

    Apple wants people to buy their electronic equipment, pay for services to use with that equipment, and to trust the products and services so customers use and buy them more. Users and customers (who pay Apple) are the same people.

    Facebook wants people to use its social network so that it can carry out pervasive surveillance of these users (and anyone and anything they interact with) then sell the information to advertisers (who pay Facebook). Users and customers of Facebook are not the same people and Facebook exploits the users to earn money from the customers (advertisers). Tim Cook wants to make a lot of money for Apple's shareholders and he's smart and capable enough to do it without exploiting the users - the users willingly pay him for the goods and services he organises Apple to create.

    Facebook doesn't have to conduct pervasive surveillance of its users to make money. Facebook does have to conduct pervasive surveillance of its users to make a lot of money. Zuck (who still controls Facebook, while Cook doesn't control Apple) wants to make a lot of money and he doesn't care how immoral and unethical he is when he's making that money. Zuck has no way to make a lot of money without exploiting his users.

    • Facebook thinks their users are "Dumb Fucks" (Zuckerburg's words).

    • I generally agree with your take, but I do think there are some important questions for Apple too.

      Does anybody know exactly what user data Apple is tracking?
      Because of the breadth of services it offers around its hardware, it has the luxury of exchanging a great deal of information between its business units while claiming that Apple as a whole is not selling or disclosing your data. And given Apple's notorious secrecy, it is quite easy to imagine that they are doing many of the same marketing tricks as

      • by Uberbah ( 647458 )

        Does anybody know exactly what user data Apple is tracking?

        No, but if they were collecting and selling the information, it would probably show up on their public revenue reports. Greater concern would be giving a backdoor to the NSA/FBI, their public beefs to the contrary.

        Will this entrench Apple's monopoly power over the software that runs on its devices?

        Every company has a monopoly on its own products. Ford has a monopoly on Mustangs. Intel has a monopoly on Xeons. Microsoft has a monopoly on XBox's.

  • Does Zuckerberg strike you as the kind of guy who makes friends easily?

    • by cusco ( 717999 )

      He doesn't need to, he can buy all the friends he ever needs.

      • He doesn't need to, he can buy all the friends he ever needs.

        Yes, people with low standards can be bought. For me, there is no amount of money or other inducements Zuck could give me to make me his friend.
        • My time and emotional investment is much too valuable to waste on sucking up to some rich guy for his scraps. I get that some people are career climbers and this is one path to a higher standard of living.

          Also, does this happen? A person of average means has a wealthy friend. At 3 am his pregnant wife goes into contractions, but a week earlier than expected. Time to take her in. Do you call up your rich friend at 3 am to take care of your pets while you're away? I can only imagine how badly that would go fo

      • And wife too, probably.
  • by war4peace ( 1628283 ) on Monday April 26, 2021 @11:10AM (#61315810)

    Insanely rich and powerful a-holes are bickering about who should get the biggest slice of the giant pizza.
    Cry me a river...

  • by erp_consultant ( 2614861 ) on Monday April 26, 2021 @11:12AM (#61315818)

    The Apple business model is to sell people hardware, software and services like Apple Music.

    The Facebook business model is to put out a "free" application that allows people to post photos, stories and communicate with their friends and family.

    The big difference is that Facebook collects all of the information on their customers and sells it to advertising agencies and accepts no responsibility for what happens to that data once it leaves their grubby hands. Much of the data they collect occurs outside of the Facebook application as they follow you around the internet. The security settings are intentionally obscure and difficult for the average user to comprehend. Facebook has time and again lied about how they collect data.

    Some people don't like Apple products and if you don't want to do business with them you can simply not buy their products. Facebook, on the other hand, will follow you around even if you don't have a FB profile.

    Facebook has a slimy business model and people are starting to catch on to it. Cook is sitting in a nice position and Zuck knows it.

    • by cusco ( 717999 )

      The Apple business model is to sell people hardware, software and services like Apple Music and privacy from Apple-enabled snooping

      FTFY.

      • by Uberbah ( 647458 )

        [citation needed]

        • by cusco ( 717999 )

          Read TFS.

            Apple plans to release a new privacy feature that requires iPhone owners to explicitly choose whether to let apps like Facebook track them across other apps. . . That data helps advertisers pinpoint users' . . .
          Mr. Cook wants people to pay a premium -- often to Apple -- for a safer, more private version of the internet.

          • by Uberbah ( 647458 )

            Did you get a free pair of clown shoes with the hatorade? Cuz you have both if you think a company developing features it thinks its customers will want and advertising it is deplorable is cuckoo for coca puffs. And probable fandroid hypocrisy, since Google's entire mobile business model is based around monetizing what you do on a phone.

            • by cusco ( 717999 )

              Eh, dislike the business practices of both of them, and Microsoft as well. That's what we're stuck with though.

    • by Uberbah ( 647458 )

      Or, more simply:

      With Apple, you are the customer.

      With Facebook (and Google and Twitter) you are the product.

  • Assuming that ads online are unavoidable, targeted ads are a *good* thing, that people actually sees something relevant (instead of, say, a Clergyman seeing a Tinder ad)

    However when the segments are too fine and the tracking too ubiquitous...coupled with a bit of data collection, ML-driven correlation - the end result is that advertisers effectively have PII.

    Only redrawing a strict boundary where both sides concede a little will resolve this.

    • by nicolaiplum ( 169077 ) on Monday April 26, 2021 @11:29AM (#61315896)

      Online advertising isn't entitled to exist. No business is entitled to exist. Online advertising is not unavoidable.

      So we don't need closely-targeted ads because we don't actually need ads.

      You do not need to make excuses that we must accept internet surveillance to target advertisements because there must be advertisements and we should, in some Stockholm-syndrome way, just make the surveillance and exploitation less unpleasant. There are not "good people on both sides" here.

      You can, and I can, and we all can, enforce (via laws, via privacy built into our technology, via not providing features specifically to make tracking easier) that advertising surveillance doesn't happen.

      Then advertisers can advertise as they wish, or you could... pay for online services directly, you know.

      • by Tom ( 822 )

        So we don't need closely-targeted ads because we don't actually need ads.

        We need ads - and we need targeted ads - but of an entirely different kind.

        Instead of getting shit pushed in my face everywhere, I'd like to have an ad service where I can CHOOSE to see ads. Something like... you know... Google. You see, every once in a while I want to buy something and I'd like to know what is out there. Or I have a bit of play money and I wonder if there's something cool I can spend it on. In those moments I'd like to go to a website and say "show me cool tech toys" or "does anyone sell h

    • by k2r ( 255754 )

      I paid tens of thousands of Euros to Apple over more than two decades and I don't want Apple to concede a little bit to "resolve this".

      I don't agree with some of Apples decisions, maybe because I'm becoming an old, grumpy UNIX head, but here they are absolutely right.

      • by Wolfier ( 94144 )

        Apple is also a small player in this arena, you know. If Apple is to make the ad-driven model obsolete...it had better apply the same restrictions to themselves, too.

  • by NicknamesAreStupid ( 1040118 ) on Monday April 26, 2021 @11:38AM (#61315930)
    Some believe the top one percent control the world. Depending upon how you measure that, it might come down to tens of millions of people, all of whom believe they have a great vested interest in keeping at least their portion of the world working. This public row between Mark Zuckerberg and Tim Cook is an example of how we can take some comfort in knowing that tens of millions could never conspire collectively. While they will always have points of agreement to exploit, those will always be based on orthogonal vectors of self-interest that diverge as quickly as they intersected. In other words, it could be worse. Recent examples include North Korea, the Soviet Union, and Nazi Germany. Many might say that 'justifying' disproportionate wealth by comparing it to totalitarian governments is hardly fair. True. To those, I ask, "How fair is life?"
    • Life should be fair. I didn't ask to be born. It isn't my fault my Father cheated on his wife with my Mother without a condom and I was the result.
  • The claim that Cook or Apple want to charge extra for a more secure and private version of the internet is debatable. First of all, Apple charges more for its products and services for many reasons, and has for years. And the price gap with equivalent phones in the same product category has not widened significantly since Apple first highlighted this problem. Second, the converse is certainly not true: a less secure version of their product would not include a discounted price.

  • by RogueWarrior65 ( 678876 ) on Monday April 26, 2021 @12:03PM (#61316044)

    "anything-goes stance toward free speech" Seriously, NYT? I call B.S. It's only anything goes if the Facebook agrees with you. Otherwise, you get put into Facebook jail.

  • Let's be clear (Score:3, Insightful)

    by argStyopa ( 232550 ) on Monday April 26, 2021 @12:51PM (#61316224) Journal

    "...letting the information of more than 50 million Facebook users be harvested by a voter-profiling firm..."

    The outrage here was that CA had helped The Orange Devil himself, and that he had the audacity to WIN.

    That the Obama campaign had CHEERFULLY farmed data from FB in 2008 and 2012 was widely, lauded as 'cutting edge' and 'groundbreaking use of analytics'. "A modern data driven campaign".

    One might almost call it nakedly, wildly hypocritical. But of course doing so in our binary political culture means somehow I'm ipso facto a white supremacist that supported the Orange Baboon.

  • > At the center of the fight are the two C.E.O.s

    C.E.O.?
    Sophomoric copywriter detected. NYT, arey you trying to compete with the stupid mannerism of ö and ë from The New Yorker?

  • You got it backwards (Score:5, Interesting)

    by laird ( 2705 ) <lairdp@gm a i l.com> on Monday April 26, 2021 @01:13PM (#61316314) Journal

    "Mr. Cook wants people to pay a premium -- often to Apple -- for a safer, more private version of the internet. It is a strategy that keeps Apple firmly in control. But Mr. Zuckerberg champions an "open' internet where services like Facebook are effectively free." is precisely backwards.

    Apple wants users in control of their data, not Apple - consumer data is stored locally, not on Apple's servers (for example, fingerprints and face scans only exist within the device), and when data is on a server it's encrypted, generally secure end-to-end, so that Apple can't access or use the data, and the user is in control of their own data. In contrast, FaceBook's model (and Google's) relies on the services having complete access to all the data, so that they can mine it to maximize their revenue, putting them, not the users, firmly in control, with FB (and Google) extracting a huge revenue stream from their data mining and ad targeting - it's far from free, you pay for it my getting aggressively targeted by adds everywhere you go online, and of course, FB makes money selling users' personal behavior data to many other companies.

    FB doesn't take an "anything goes" approach to free speech - they moderate and suspend people whenever they think that it interferes with their revenue streams. They may not mind insurrection and treason and lies, but they sure block copyright violations and anything close to pornography, which might hurt their business model.

    • I doubt Tim Cook is really THAT angry or upset with Facebook and its choices on a personal level. As people keep pointing out, "privacy" is a nice sales tactic for Apple right now, in a tech world that doesn't consider it very critical. It even allows them to sell you half-baked solutions that you'll "want to use because they're more secure" - like HomeKit. (By far, the least functional of the home automation options out there, but the 2x more expensive HomeKit compatible products all make the effort to

      • by laird ( 2705 )

        Well, we can't know what's inside Tim Cook's heart, but he's pretty consistently pushed for increased consumer control over their data, and Apple has developed and implemented products that provide that, even over strong opposition (e.g. the parts of law enforcement that hate real security, FaceBook, parts of Google), so it doesn't feel to me like it's just a sales tactic - I think data privacy is a policy that he, and Apple, feels strongly about. Look at how the Apple Card works, for example - it's careful

  • Tim: So OK, we need more user info. We need to see what we haven't changed in a while so we can change and claim innovation. Our systems aren't up to the task. All Macs around don't you know. Not a PC to be found. You need not to get caught.
    Mark: k
    ---
    Mark: So you know who you said that we couldn't be caught
    Tim: Oh, no
    Mark: So we have been caught
    Tim: Gods dammit
    Mark: multiple times.
    Tim: GRRRR
    ---
    Tim: Hey Mark
    Mark: Yeah
    Tim: We don't want your data anymore. We finally got around to making our own
  • "But Mr. Zuckerberg champions an "open' internet"

    Riight.. He wants Facebook to 'be' the 'internet'. His plan was pretty much everything existed on Facebook (or one of their purchases).

    There was a while where he even tried to replace email with your FB account, where everyone got a Facebook.com email address.

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • by Uberbah ( 647458 )

      NYT wouldn't know because they don't know any conservatives.

      Sure they do - democrats. It's an extreme right wing party, as often as not to the right of the GOP. It was't Trump that deported more immigrants than all previous presidents combined and spent his entire presidency trying to cut Social Security. And it wasn't Obama who froze evictions & student loans while sending out stimulus checks in response to an economic crisis.

  • My father had this saying when two politicians were in the news attacking each other: It's like alley cats: you hear a lot of noise, and you think they're fighting, meanwhile the're mating.

    What we, the consumer plebs, are told, is just what is deemed a good official story to keep the 0.5 percenters in their entrenched positions longer.

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