Updated April 03, 2018 13:17:05

Photo: Mark Zuckerberg wasn't having it with Tim Cook's comments. (Reuters: Lucy Nicholson/Stephen Lam)

Facebook has failed to protect its users' data. Apple only serves rich people.

That's essentially the war of words that's broken out between tech titans Mark Zuckerberg and Tim Cook in the aftermath of the Cambridge Analytica data scandal that has seen Facebook's share price plunge.

It started when Cook gave an interview to MSNBC and tech website Recode last week in which he took aim at Facebook's approach to consumer privacy.

"I think the best regulation is no regulation, is self-regulation. However, I think we're beyond that here," he said.

Basically, he was saying that government should get involved.

When asked what he'd do if he was in Mr Zuckerberg's shoes, Mr Cook responded, "I wouldn't be in this situation."

A former Cambridge Analytica employee has spoken out about the misuse of Facebook data. Here's what happened and how it connects to the Trump campaign.

He argued that Apple could make "a ton of money" were it to monetise its customers and treat them as a product, whereas instead the company's profits come from selling hardware like phones and computers.

But Mr Zuckerberg wasn't having it. He's now responded in an interview with Vox.

He admitted that the company was in a predicament following the backlash over fake news controversies and privacy violations:

"We will dig through this hole, but it will take a few years."

But he wasn't impressed by Mr Cook's comments:

"I find that argument, that if you're not paying that somehow we can't care about you, to be extremely glib," he said.

Mr Zuckerberg defended Facebook's ad-supported business model, saying the company can only succeed in its mission to connect the world if its product is free and therefore available to everyone.

He made this pointed retort to Mr Cook:

"If you want to build a service which is not just serving rich people, then you need to have something that people can afford."

And he then quoted Amazon's Jeff Bezos as saying:

"There are companies that work hard to charge you more, and there are companies that work hard to charge you less."

Mr Zuckerberg said Facebook was in the latter category — the implication being that Apple was in the former.

He also rejected the suggestion that Facebook's reliance on advertising means its only goal is to maximise time spent on the social network, even if that means decisions are made that go against users' better interests.

He argued that he makes decisions based on what's important for the community, not advertisers, and that ultimately this would only help the business.

"Even if time spent goes down, if people are spending more time on Facebook actually building relationships with people they care about, then that's going to build a stronger community and build a stronger business, regardless of what Wall Street thinks about it in the near term," he said.

Facebook has been under a lot of pressure in recent weeks. It's been called on to explain how Cambridge Analytica, a data firm hired by the Trump campaign, was able to access the data of 50 million users without their permission.

Mark Zuckerberg is under growing pressure to testify before Congress over reports Cambridge Analytica harvested users' private data.

That controversy followed Russian operatives' use of Facebook to try to influence American voters during the 2016 election.

Last week, Mr Zuckerberg declined an invitation to testify before a British parliamentary committee investigating the Cambridge Analytica breach, instead suggesting that the company's chief technology officer or chief product officer attend instead.

That decision was labelled "astonishing" by the head of the committee.

In his interview with Vox, Mr Zuckerberg admitted the company had previously failed to adequately invest in ensuring its platform wasn't misused.

"I wish I could solve all these issues in three months or six months, but I just think the reality is that solving some of these questions is just going to take a longer period of time," he said.

But he did point to a number of initiatives that had been taken to better serve Facebook users:

• At the beginning of 2017, the social media giant had 10,000 people working on security, whereas by the end of 2018 that number will have doubled
• The modification of the News Feed to boost the presence of trusted news outlets as well as local news
• The development of new tools to find fake accounts trying to spread false election news

The full MSNBC/Recode interview with Mr Cook will be released on Friday.

Topics: social-media, internet-technology, internet-culture, science-and-technology, united-states

First posted April 03, 2018 12:57:08