Tim Cook told Mark Zuckerberg to delete user data sourced by third parties in 2019

Apple CEO Tim Cook warned Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg to delete extraneous data about its users in 2019, a profile on the antagonistic relationship between the two men claims.

As the heads of two major tech companies, Cook and Zuckerberg have met each other a number of times, and has clashed in public over their respective companies' policies and actions. In a profile ahead of the implementation of Apple's App Tracking Transparency rules, it seems that Cook made a suggestion in one 2019 meeting that Zuckerberg fundamentally disagreed with.

One of regular meetings between the two men at the Sun Valley gathering in 2019, Zuckerberg was in the process of trying to manage the Cambridge Analytica scandal, which involved the data of more than 50 million Facebook users being harvested and misused without their consent. During the meeting, sources of the New York Times say Zuckerberg asked how Cook would handle the controversy.

Cook reportedly responded "acidly" that Facebook should delete any data that it had collected concerning its users that was sourced from outside its core apps. This would theoretically include any information it had picked up from third-party apps with access to its platform.

Zuckerberg was said to have been stunned by the suggestion, as Facebook heavily relies on that collected data to provide targeted advertising to users. In effect, Cook told Zuckerberg the business was untenable due to the collection of that data.

The Facebook CEO declined to follow Cook's suggestion.

The profile continues to cover a number of elements in the battle between Facebook and Apple that led to the current battle over App Tracking Transparency, which threatens Facebook's advertising revenue. This included a newspaper campaign that tried to paint Apple's policy as bad for small businesses, though later Zuckerberg apparently changed his tune.

The campaign is only the latest attempt by Facebook to discredit Apple and Cook in public. In 2017, Facebook tapped Washington research firm Definers Public Affairs to distribute research about Apple's compromises with the Chinese government, as well as the publishing of articles criticizing Cook.

An "astroturfing" campaign by Definers also tried to suggest Cook was a potential 2020 presidential candidate, potentially in a bid to damage Cook's political relationship with then-president Donald Trump.

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6 Comments

lordjohnwhorfin 866 comments · 18 Years

About 3 years ago

It’s facebook that should be deleted.

maciekskontakt 1168 comments · 15 Years

This is exact reason why financial data that are required to be stored for seven years are deleted after seven years and CEO's who are overzealous to keep them longer are not smart and will face liability issues. You never store any information on systems beyond required regulatory period for risk and legal reasons. Apparently Mark Zuckerberg cannot learn this principle. I could help while I was in process to get hired by Facebook, but I decided it is not worth my nerves to work for people who need some maturity and experience first. I started long before Zuckerberg was even planning to attend proper schools.

lordjohnwhorfin said:

It’s facebook that should be deleted.

I understand your frustration, but your claim is not mature. What should happen is section 230 should be taken away from Facebook (liability protections) and new regulatory laws should imposed on all new BigTech companies. That includes Google, Twitter and Amazon, but also Apple (which may have least of problems to obey from all BigTech companies). Unfortunately, governments would use these regulations to completely uncontrolled political purposes, so it may not be feasible.

tronald 36 comments · 14 Years

maciekskontakt said:

lordjohnwhorfin said:

It’s facebook that should be deleted.

I understand your frustration, but your claim is not mature. What should happen is section 230 should be taken away from Facebook (liability protections) and new regulatory laws should imposed on all new BigTech companies. That includes Google, Twitter and Amazon, but also Apple (which may have least of problems to obey from all BigTech companies). Unfortunately, governments would use these regulations to completely uncontrolled political purposes, so it may not be feasible.

Without section 230 the Internet would bifurcate between parts that would be an unusable mess of unmoderated content (without moderation, all user content forums devolve rapidly into angry crap that overwhelms everything else) and parts that would be essentially devoid of user content. Why? Because if moderation (which is necessary to prevent user content devolving into angry crap) causes the platform to be legally liable for user content, then moderated content will cease to exist so websites would have to choose whether to allow essentially everything (yielding angry crap) or essentially nothing. No company could realistic afford to implement the amount of moderation and the kind of analysis that would be required to include only content that could never open them up to a user-content-related lawsuit.

It is ironic that someone would demand in a hosted comments section that section 230 should be taken away.

There should be regulation on the gathering, use, and security of user data. I don't think the US (or the world in general) could ever agree on how to change section 230 into something that could work effectively, because there is no agreement on what "effectively" could even possibly mean.