Apple Inc CEO Tim Cook lambasted tech giants for “data exploitation,” saying that the practice of selling user data to target ads should be reformed. The iPhone maker is rolling out new privacy features that restrict how mobile apps, such as those from Facebook Inc and Alphabet Inc’s Google, gather data about users to target ads.
“If a business is built on misleading users, on data exploitation, on choices that are not choices at all, then it doesn’t deserve our praise, it deserves reform,” Cook told the online Computers, Privacy and Data Protection Conference yesterday.
Without naming specific businesses, Cook criticized companies’ algorithms for perpetuating the spread of disinformation and conspiracy theories for the sake of user engagement, saying that the systems have the power to degrade the social fabric of countries.
Photo: Reuters
“It is long past time to stop pretending that this approach doesn’t come with a cost — of polarization, of lost trust and, yes, of violence,” Cook said, alluding to the attacks at the US Capitol.
Cook reiterated calls for a US privacy law, much like the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation, saying that it was time for worldwide laws and new international agreements that “enshrine the principle of data minimization, user knowledge and data security around the globe.”
Following an update to Apple’s iPhone and iPad operating system this spring, users are to be prompted to explicitly permit or deny developers the ability to track their data across apps or Web sites.
Many consumers are expected to not choose to allow this, making it harder for apps to show users ads based on their past online activity, drawing the ire of Facebook and other advertising companies that rely on such abilities.
In newspaper ads in December last year, Facebook attacked Apple over the plans, saying that the features would hurt small businesses.
Facebook on Wednesday told analysts that the iOS changes could curb its revenue growth.
A group of French online advertisers last fall filed an antitrust complaint against Apple, saying that publishers’ ad revenue could plunge by as much as 50 percent as result of the update.
Apple has said that the features would give users more transparency about how their data is used, and in a way that still enables advertising.
The remarks come after Apple on Wednesday issued a cautious outlook for its wearables and services sales, despite posting quarterly revenue that topped US$100 billion for the first time.
The company also published a separate report detailing how companies track user data across Web sites and apps, alongside quotes from privacy advocates supporting Apple’s new measures.
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