According to Reuters, Tim Cook, CEO of Apple, criticized the current situation full of polarization and misinformation on social media on Thursday local time.
Reuters pointed out that the move further aggravated the conflict between Apple and Facebook.
In a speech at the Computer, Privacy and Data Protection Conference, Cook criticized some applications that he believed collected too much personal information and prioritized promoting relevant content “just because of the high participation rate of conspiracy theories and violent incitement”.
Cook said: “At a time when algorithmic promotion is full of a lot of false information and conspiracy theories, we can no longer turn a blind eye to technical theories that think that ‘all participation is good participation’, ‘the longer it takes, the better’ and ‘all of which are aimed at collecting as much data as possible’.
In addition, Cook also criticized social media for destroying public trust in the coronavirus vaccine and encouraging users to join extremist groups.
“It was long before to stop pretending [believing] that this practice would not have any cost, including polarization, lack of trust, and of course, violence, and not to make social distress a social disaster,” Cook said.
Although Cook did not mention Facebook in his speech, there has been a dispute between the two companies.
As Apple is preparing to implement privacy policy reforms to allow users to choose whether to allow the program to collect personal information, many people in the digital advertising industry have expressed dissatisfaction, believing that it will lead some users to refuse to use the advertising positioning function.
This includes Facebook companies that rely on online advertising for the majority of its revenue.
Facebook accused Apple of anti-competitive behavior because Apple has an increasing directory of paid applications and its own digital advertising business.
Facebook said in a statement that it believes that “Apple has harmed the interests of application developers and small enterprises by using control over the App Store to countercompetitive.”
Facebook CEO Zuckerberg criticized Apple’s privacy policy reforms in the opening of the company’s fourth quarter financial report conference call on Wednesday, saying that Facebook is increasingly considering Apple as one of its biggest competitors.
He also said that Apple “has various motivations to use its dominant platform position to interfere with the way our applications and other applications work.”
Just after Tuesday, U.S. Congressman Ed Markey wrote to Zuckerberg condemning the Facebook platform, saying that many Facebook groups are becoming hotbeds of hatred, disinformation and violent coordination.
He also said that Facebook’s political group recommendation function poses a serious threat to American democracy and public safety.
Facebook said on Wednesday that the platform will never recommend any civil society organizations and political groups to users.
