This week, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is testifying before Congress about the Cambridge Analytica scandal, which has been the impetus for many criticisms about Facebook's practices as a company—including how they make their money.
Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak is the latest high-profile person to weigh in on the very public scandal, sharing in an email to USA Today that it’s made him re-evaluate his presence on the network—and he’s out.
"Users provide every detail of their life to Facebook and ... Facebook makes a lot of advertising money off this," he said in an email to USA TODAY. "The profits are all based on the user’s info, but the users get none of the profits back."
Wozniak said he'd rather pay for Facebook than have his personal information exploited for advertising. And he heaped praise on Apple for respecting people's privacy.
"Apple makes its money off of good products, not off of you," Wozniak said. "As they say, with Facebook, you are the product."
Wozniak’s statements are very similar to what current Apple CEO Tim Cook said a few weeks ago in an apparent slight at Facebook. “The truth is, we could make a ton of money if we monetized our customer—if our customer was our product. We’ve elected not to do that.”
Cook’s remarks garnered so much attention that in an interview with Vox Zuckerberg responded. "If you want to build a service which is not just serving rich people, then you need to have something that people can afford.”