Apple’s CEO publicly attacked its rivals’ data-mining business model in 2015
Evidence
On June 1, 2015, Tim Cook, CEO of Apple, the world’s most valuable company, gave a speech at the annual dinner of a small Washington nonprofit named EPIC, the Electronic Privacy Information Center. Apple’s leaders almost never give speeches in Washington, making Cook’s appearance something of a surprise; though to be fair, he didn’t actually show up at the dinner, but rather videoconferenced his way in. All the same, even more surprising was what he had to say. “I’m speaking to you from Silicon Valley, where some of the most prominent and successful companies have built their businesses by lulling their customers into complacency about their personal information,” said Cook. “They’re gobbling up everything they can learn about you and trying to monetize it. We think that’s wrong.” — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 1115
Categorization
- XREF: connects to: A toy maker’s CEO hire signaled a shift from products to data collection — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 832; Apple’s privacy stance doubled as an attack on competitors’ ad revenue
- yield-rescued: below the book’s yield-target cutoff, included anyway for connecting to: A toy maker’s CEO hire signaled a shift from products to data collection — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 832; Apple’s privacy stance doubled as an attack on competitors’ ad revenue