Facebook’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg is expected to testify before Congress on the company’s recent privacy scandal because while Facebook has been embroiled in similar situations in the past, the fallout from this recent scandal is particularly severe. However if there is at least one tech CEO who believes they’ll never find themselves in that situation, is Apple’s Tim Cook.
In an interview with Recode’s Kara Swisher and MSNBC’s Chris Hayes, Cook was asked what he would do if he were Facebook’s CEO and found himself in this position, in which Cook replied by saying, “I wouldn’t be in this situation.” Cook also went on to add that Apple could have just as easily gone down the path that Facebook took, and would have made a ton of money doing so.
According to Cook, “The truth is, we could make a ton of money if we monetized our customer — if our customer was our product. We’ve elected not to do that.” This isn’t the first time that Cook has spoken up regarding customer privacy in the past, where several years ago he made similar comments with regards to the privacy Apple offers its customers versus Facebook and Google.
Cook isn’t alone on this either as his predecessor and the late co-founder of Apple, Steve Jobs, also highlighted Apple’s stance on privacy way back in 2010.