Oliver Haslam·

Facebook Execs Reportedly Forced To Switch From iPhone To Android By Zuckerberg After Tim Cook’s Privacy Comments

Facebook just can’t stay out of the news these days, and The New York Times has published a new, in-depth look at how the company dealt with the many, many issues it has been faced with over the last few months.

While it’s generally worrying to see some of the activities Facebook has been up to, one interesting tidbit relates to Apple, and how Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg forced his executive team to switch to Android.

The switch came after Zuckerberg became enraged at comments Apple CEO Tim Cook made about privacy and Apple’s role in it. Cook made specific comments that appeared to be related to Facebook in particular, something that Zuckerberg did not take kindle to. Cook was commenting at a time when Facebook was embroiled in an ongoing farce relating to Cambridge Analytica.

“We’re not going to traffic in your personal life,” Tim Cook, Apple’s chief executive, said in an MSNBC interview. “Privacy to us is a human right. It’s a civil liberty.” (Mr. Cook’s criticisms infuriated Mr. Zuckerberg, who later ordered his management team to use only Android phones, since the operating system has far more users than Apple’s.

The quote appears to have been taken from an interview with MSNBC that was hosted by Chris Hayes and Kara Swisher, with an even better one following it when Cook was asked how he would deal with the situation if he was in Zuckerberg’s shoes.

To no surprise Swisher and Hayes brought up the Facebook controversy, and Cook had a sharp response to the question of what would he do if he was in Zuckerburg’s shoes, saying “I wouldn’t be in this situation,” to roaring audience laughter and applause.

Zuckerberg later responded himself, although that response appears to have been amid him losing his mind behind the scenes.

You know, I find that argument, that if you’re not paying that somehow we can’t care about you, to be extremely glib – and not at all aligned with the truth.

If you want to build a service which is not just serving rich people, then you need to have something people can afford. I think 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, because that sounds ridiculous to me.

Since then, Facebook’s problems haven’t gone away and show no signs of doing so.

Update: Facebook has declined that Mark Zuckerberg forced anyone at the company to switch from iPhone to Android.

(Source: NYT)

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