2019年5月5日
Apple CEO Tim Cook says digital privacy 'has become a crisis'
Apple CEO Tim Cook called online privacy a “crisis” in an interview with ABC News, reaffirming the company’s stance on privacy as companies like Facebook and Google have come under increased scrutiny regarding their handling of consumer data.
Unlike companies such as Google and Facebook, Apple’s business isn’t focused on advertising, and therefore it does not benefit from collecting data to improve ad targeting. “The people who track on the internet know a lot more about you than if somebody’s looking in your window,” he said. “A lot more.”
In January, he published an op-ed in Time calling for government regulation that would make it more difficult for companies to collect data while providing more transparency for consumers. Apple doesn’t benefit from gathering data about consumers, as companies with booming advertising businesses would. Although Cook described privacy as a crisis, he added that he believes it’s a “fixable” problem.
Cook also addressed the mounting concerns about screen time in his interview with ABC News, saying he doesn’t want consumers using their iPhones too much. “But I don’t want you using the product a lot,” he said. “In fact, if you’re using it a lot, there’s probably something we should do to make your use more productive.”
Apple had removed apps that help parents manage screen time from the App Store following the release of its own screen time management feature for the iPhone in September. Cook told ABC News he’s open to suggestions from parents when it come to screen time management and parental controls, saying that it’s “something that we together need to fix.”
Even billionaires are acknowledging that the system that created their crazy amount of wealth is unsustainable
Billionaire Marc Benioff recently put his vast wealth to work on a cause that is plaguing his hometown of San Francisco, donating $US30 million to the University of California-San Francisco to study the causes of homelessness. While Benioff said in a statement that he hopes to find “a North Star for truth on homelessness,” the underlying question is what if billionaires, and the system that allowed Benioff and his peers to accumulate this wealth, are the true reason for the US’s staggering levels of wealth inequality.
Even billionaires are sounding the alarm on the possible side effects coming from when so few people control so much wealth. JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon have said populism and a trend toward more extreme political stances are inevitable results of this inequality.
“I don’t want to be a tone deaf CEO; while the company is doing fine, it is absolutely obvious that a big chunk of [people] have been left behind,” Dimon said at an event in March unveiling a new $US350 million program by the bank to help people in underserved communities get jobs.
Major corporations like Dimon’s have used the savings they have gotten from the tax bill not to pay workers’ higher salaries or create new branches, but to buy back stock, boosting their share prices and helping the minority of the American population that is invested in the stock market. No billionaire is calling for a regime change yet. In fact, the 44% of millennials that would prefer to live in a socialist country are “people who don’t know history”.
