Facebook and Apple are locking horns over the new decision by the latter to notify its users and give them the decision seat on the use of their data, a move Facebook CEO, Mark Zuckerberg claims will hurt small businesses the most and wants it reversed.
After calls for reversal of the policy fell on deaf ears, Zuckerberg went ahead to serve ads in multiple news media claiming the decision will change the internet for the worse. But independent observers are wondering, how worse can that really be.
Zuckerberg explained that those policies would lead to the reduction of high-quality free content and usher in a payment model thus making the internet much more expensive. Zuckerberg’s logic may not be far-fetched as even Google has recently started making changes shifting from an advertising model to a subscription model.
It is wide-known knowledge that the Technology industry has been getting a lot of bad representation over inordinate use of user’s data and data mining for profiteering.
In a recent rebuttal by the Apple CEO, Tim Cook (Or ‘Tim Apple’ as Trump likes to call him) questioned Facebook’s money-making policies which appear to want to gain despite the interest of teeming users. Read his statements below:
“Technology does not need vast troves of personal data stitched together across dozens of websites and apps in order to succeed. Advertising existed and thrived for decades without it, and we’re here today because the path of least resistance is rarely the path of wisdom.
“If a business is built on misleading users on data exploitation, on choices that are no choices at all, then it does not deserve our praise. It deserves reform.
“We should not look away from the bigger picture. In a moment of rampant disinformation and conspiracy theories juiced by algorithms, we can no longer turn a blind eye to a theory of technology that says all engagement is good engagement, the longer the better, and all with the goal of collecting as much data as possible.
Tim Cook further buttressed that too much is on the line and instead of seeking to get away with as much as possible, efforts should be channelled towards measuring the consequences and if at all it is worth it.
Though Cook’s utterances seem morally uplifting, there is the elephant in the room – Artificial Intelligence, which many of the technology giants have adopted assiduously including Apple, whose backbone is majorly dependent on data mining which all but begs the question, is one type of data mining allowed and others not?
A better question would be who gets to determine how the Data should be used because, if anything is clear, informed data is here to stay. Internet Law, it appears is long overdue.
