AAPL Apple Inc

By Imani Moise 

Facebook Inc. Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg on Monday shot back at Apple Inc. CEO Tim Cook's critiques of his company, writing them off as "not aligned with the truth."

Last week, Mr. Cook said he would never be in the situation Mr. Zuckerberg found himself in after the Cambridge Analytica scandal, contrasting Apple's focus on selling devices with the ad-based businesses used by Facebook and Alphabet Inc.'s Google, which are built on user data. He also called for regulation of data and privacy, saying certain tech companies had failed to self-regulate and limit what they collect from users.

In an interview with Vox Media's Ezra Klein published Monday morning, Mr. Zuckerberg rejected the notion that Facebook doesn't care about its users, suggesting such comments were "extremely glib."

Mr. Zuckerberg reiterated Facebook's goal of building a site that connects people around the world. The company changed its mission statement last year and said it would work to help fix a "striking decline in the important social infrastructure of local communities.

To reach as many people as possible, he said, his company has to lean on an advertising model to make its product free.

"There are companies that work hard to charge you more, and there are companies that work hard to charge you less," Mr. Zuckerberg said in the Vox interview, attributing the quote to Amazon.com Inc. CEO Jeff Bezos. "It's important that we don't all get Stockholm syndrome and let the companies that work hard to charge you more convince you that they actually care more about you."

Apple and Facebook didn't immediately respond to requests for comment.

Facebook shares have been battered since the mid-March revelation that its user data was improperly obtained by Cambridge Analytica, a data-analytics firm whose clients included Donald Trump's 2016 presidential campaign. That incident has drawn widespread scrutiny and rekindled longstanding concerns about privacy practices at Facebook and other tech companies.

Mr. Zuckerberg has apologized for the episode. He vowed to look for potential abuses of personal data by app developers, and Facebook has since tweaked its privacy tools so that users can more easily track and change some of the social network's data about them.

Facebook shares have fallen by roughly 12% over the past month, shaving off more than $60 billion in market value from the company.

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

April 02, 2018 12:38 ET (16:38 GMT)

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