As we already know, Facebook is involved in a privacy scandal, which has Cambridge Analytica as a pivot. Last weekend, Tim Cook, CEO of Apple, made some comments criticizing the improper access of data of 50 million citizens of the United States.
Cook, looking to strengthen his company against rivals Google and Facebook, said his company has always been concerned about the privacy of its users. According to him, Apple never traded its customers' private data with third parties.
Mark Zuckerberg, in turn, after the statement, defended his product and also criticized Cook's speech in relation to Apple's business model.
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Zuckerberg even says that we'd better run away from the "Stockholm Syndrome", which is when the victim falls in love with their kidnappers.
Check out Mark Zuckerberg's speech in full:
You know, I think this argument, that if you're not paying for something, then we don't care about you, is extremely simplistic. And it is not at all in line with the truth. The reality here is that if you want to build a service to connect everyone around the world, then a lot of people won't be able to afford it. Therefore, as is the case with many media, an advertising-based model is the only one that is rational and capable of sustaining the construction of this service to reach people.
This does not mean that we are not primarily focused on serving people. I think, probably to the dissatisfaction of our sales team, that I make all of our decisions based on what will matter to our community and with less focus on the advertising side of the business.
But if you want to create a service that won't just serve the rich, then you have to have something that people can pay for. I think [Amazon founder and president] Jeff Bezos had an excellent speech about this at the launch of a Kindle a few years ago. He said "there are companies that work hard to charge you more and there are companies that work hard to charge you less." And at Facebook, we're in the realm of companies that work hard to charge you less and provide a service that everyone can use.
I don't think that means we don't care about people. On the contrary, I think it's important that we don't have Stockholm Syndrome and [with that] let companies that work hard to charge more convince you that they do, in fact, care about you. Because that sounds ridiculous to me.
