Losing Privacy, 'You Should Figure Out A Way To Get Off Of Facebook'

Steve Wozniak
Co-Founder of Apple Inc.

Facebook is the giant of the web, there is no doubt about it. But its huge influence over the culture and the internet has its own consequences.

With concerns about privacy and how Facebook manages and use all of its users' information, people all over the world, including governments, are criticizing the company. This time, Facebook is having another 'hater', who is none other than Apple's very own co-founder.

Steve Wozniak has joined a growing list of tech figures that criticize Facebook.

Wozniak himself stopped using Facebook since 2018, not long after the Cambridge Analytica scandal. Fast forward, he suggests that people should follow the same.

He said that Facebook had brought him “more negatives than positives.” And in an interview with TMZ, he said that:

"There are many different kinds of people, and some [of] the benefits of Facebook are worth the loss of privacy. But to many like myself, my recommendation to most people is: You should figure out a way to get off of Facebook."
Steve Wozniak
Steve Wozniak, the co-founder of Apple, interviewed at Ronald Reagan International Airport

Sharing Apple's approach in privacy, Wozniak’s concerns extended even beyond just Facebook: “Who knows if my cell phone is listening right now?” he said in the interview.

“So I worry because you’re having conversations that you think are private … you’re saying words that really shouldn’t be listened to because you don’t expect it,” he said. “But there’s almost no way to stop it.”

True to his Apple roots, Wozniak said that people should be able to pay for more privacy.

Apple has embraced privacy features as a priority, though the company's products tend to be more expensive. This is because it needs to compensate for the resulting loss of revenue opportunities when not using user data for profit.

"People think they have a level of privacy they don’t," Wozniak continued.

"Why don’t they give me a choice? Let me pay a certain amount, and you’ll keep my data more secure and private than everybody else handing it to advertisers."

Adam Mosseri from Instagram said in June 2019 that the app doesn’t listen in to users' conversations, but Facebook’s track record when concerning privacy has been less than stellar. This was further highlighted by a Facebook lawyer back in May.

At that time, the lawyer told a judge in a class-action lawsuit over the Cambridge Analytica scandal that “there is no privacy” on Facebook and other social networks.

Wozniak in joining other tech in confronting Facebook is for reasons beyond his personal reasons. Previously, Apple’s Tim Cook commented that among its rivals, Facebook is that Silicon Valley titan that created a "chaos factory."

Linus Torvalds from Linux said that social media is a "disease". The co-founder of Wikipedia Larry Sanger, suggested that social media needs to be "decentralized".

Even those who were previously tied to Facebook, like former President of Facebook Sean Parker said that Facebook was created to exploit the vulnerability of human psychology. Former Facebook's VP of User Growth Chamath Palihapitiya suggested the same, when he said that social media networks are ripping the society apart.