Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak is closing his Facebook account, joining tech leaders who have distanced themselves from Facebook following misuse of users data, China’s Xinhua news agency reported.
Wozniak told the USA Today on Monday that he was taken aback by the extent of Facebook’s data collection when he changed and deleted some of his information before deactivating his account. “I was surprised to see many categories for ads and how many advertisers I had to get rid of. Users provide every detail of their life to Facebook and Facebook makes a lot of advertising money off them.
“The profits are all based on the user’s info, but the users get none of the profits back,” he said in an email to the daily newspaper.
Wozniak compared Apple with Facebook in their relations with users, saying “Apple makes its money off of good products, and not off of you.”
“With Facebook, you are the product,” said the Apple senior executive, who is one of the latest prominent users who have quit Facebook.
Last month, Tesla CEO Elon Musk deleted Facebook accounts for his two major companies, Tesla and SpaceX, in response to a campaign by WhatsApp co-founder Brian Acton on Twitter.
The tech leaders expressed grave concern about the alleged revelation of the data of about 50 million Facebook users by a London-based data analysis company Cambridge Analytica.
Cambridge Analytica was accused of illegally accessing Facebook users data in violation of Facebook terms of service after the data was allegedly misused for the election campaign of US President Donald Trump in 2016. — BERNAMA
