Facebook’s Zuckerberg tells staff to ‘inflict pain’ on Apple as privacy battle escalates
MacDailyNews Webmaster
Facebook Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg told staffers that company needs to “inflict pain” on Apple due to their efforts to protect their users privacy, which impedes Facebook’s business model which depends on collecting personal data and tracking its users without explicit consent in order to sell targeted advertising.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg Sometimes that shark, he looks right into ya. Right into your eyes. Y’know the thing about a shark, he’s got… lifeless eyes, black eyes, like a doll’s eyes. When he comes at ya, doesn’t seem to be livin’… until he bites ya. And those black eyes roll over white, and then… oh, then you hear that terrible high-pitch screamin’, the ocean turns red, and… they rip you to pieces. – Sam Quint, Jaws[In 2018], Facebook was embroiled in controversy over its data-collection practices. Mr. Cook piled on in a national television interview, saying his own company would never have found itself in such a jam. Mr. Zuckerberg shot back that Mr. Cook’s comments were “extremely glib” and “not at all aligned with the truth.”
In private, Mr. Zuckerberg was even harsher. “We need to inflict pain,” he told his team, for treating the company so poorly, according to people familiar with the exchange.
MacDailyNews Take: It seems that Mark Zuckerberg was smart enough to steal the idea for Facebook, but isn’t smart enough to run Facebook profitably without trampling his users’ privacy.
It wasn’t the first time — or the last — that Mr. Cook’s comments and actions would leave Mr. Zuckerberg seething and, at times, plotting to get back at Apple. The escalation of grievances erupted late last month in a rare public tit- for-tat between the two tech giants that laid bare the simmering animosity between their leaders, who exchanged jabs about privacy, app-tracking tools and, ultimately, their dueling visions about the future of the internet… The trigger last month was a new privacy tool the iPhone maker plans to roll out that will further restrict Facebook’s ability to collect data.
At stake is how the internet will evolve and which companies will dominate it. Facebook and Apple’s visions are diverging and increasingly incompatible. Facebook wants to capture and monetize eyeballs on every possible device and platform. Apple wants to draw users to its own hardware-centric universe, partly by marketing itself as a privacy-focused company. The outcome of the battle could affect what kinds of information users see when they browse the internet.
MacDailyNews Take: We can name this tune in two quotes:
As I’ve said before, if we accept as normal and unavoidable that everything in our lives can be aggregated and sold, we lose so much more than data, we lose the freedom to be human… 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 reform… Too many are still asking the question, “how much can we get away with?” when they should be asking “what are the consequences?” – Apple CEO Tim Cook, January 2021
Zuckerberg: Yeah so if you ever need info about anyone at Harvard
Zuckerberg: Just ask
Zuckerberg: I have over 4,000 emails, pictures, addresses, SSNs
Zuckerberg: People just submitted it.
Zuckerberg: I don’t know why.
Zuckerberg: They “trust me”
Zuckerberg: Dumb fucks
(Instant messages sent by Mark Zuckerberg during Facebook’s early days, reported by Business Insider in May 2010.)
Apple has ratcheted up its privacy controls, preparing to roll out a new feature this spring that will allow users to limit the ability of apps to track what they are doing on their phones… As part of its latest operating software, Apple said, it would allow ad tracking only if consumers opt in when they receive a prompt on an iPhone or iPad. The change means that Facebook or other companies would no longer be able to collect a person’s advertising identifier without permission.
MacDailyNews Take: Imagine the unmitigated gall of Apple, allowing their users to chose whether or not to allow the likes of Facebook to track them!
Facebook’s position in this battle is a losing one; as in: the wrong side of a massacre. Someone will “inflict pain” here. It won’t be Facebook.
If you trust Mark Zuckerberg to be the keeper of your photos, contacts, political views, religious beliefs, etc., you’re batshit insane. — MacDailyNews, May 23, 2018
All of these “social media” platforms – Twitter, Parler, Facebook – are cancers on society. They are clearly eating society from the inside out. There’s something unsavory within human nature that “digital distance” amplifies to the point of disgust.
If you quit these cancers you will quickly realize what they are and what they do. You will be happier and healthier to have excised them from your life.
We haven’t had personal Twitter or Facebook accounts for many years now. And very happily so. — MacDailyNews, January 9, 2021
We use FaceBook as an RSS feed. Our CMS automatically reposts our article headlines and links them back to our website. That is our only interaction with Facebook and has been our only interaction with Facebook for years. We deleted our personal accounts [which we opened only so we could understand the Facebook phenomenon] many years ago.
If you want to share photos and videos with friends, text them using Apple’s end-to-end encrypted iMessage service. You need to control your social networking, not cede it to a gatekeeper like Facebook. – MacDailyNews, March 19, 2018
