Apple CEO Tim Cook had harsh words for social media companies seeking to maximize engagement, no matter how deep the social polarization is.

Speaking at the "Computers, Privacy, and Data Protection" conference today (January 28), Cook, without naming names, said that companies like Facebook are prioritizing a socially divisive business model to achieve maximum engagement. He condemned.

"In a time of rampant disinformation and algorithmic conspiracy theories, we can no longer turn away from the technology theory that all engagement is good engagement, and the longer the better. [This approach comes at a price: polarization, loss of trust, and violence.

These last words may relate to the attempted mutiny by supporters of former President Donald Trump on January 6. Five people were killed in this coup attempt, and two police officers subsequently committed suicide. It was also the last trump card for Facebook, Twitter, and Snapchat, which ousted Trump temporarily or outright.

The divisions stitched together through Facebook are not an exclusively American phenomenon. In Myanmar, phone plans include unlimited Facebook use, and the social network has become the country's de facto Internet hub. This allowed the ruling government to disseminate disinformation and helped justify the genocide of the Rohingya minority.

In Sri Lanka, anti-Muslim incitement was also widely shared through Facebook, leading to deadly violence. Also in India, Hindu nationalist factions have been privately organized through Facebook-affiliated WhatsApp into vigilante paramilitary groups that have perpetrated violence against the country's Muslim minority.

Facebook subsequently ended its "Free Basics" Internet program in developing countries, apologized for the violence in Sri Lanka, and limited the number of forwards that could be sent over WhatsApp and Messenger.

As for Cook's speech, he touted the privacy measures Apple has taken, including the new App Tracking Transparency, which requires apps to ask for permission to track users. This permission request feature will be implemented in iOS 14.

Cook's speech continued the bickering between the Apple CEO and Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg. In an earnings call recorded by the Washington Post yesterday, Facebook's CEO accused Apple of being anti-competitive, calling it "one of our biggest competitors."

"Apple has every incentive to use its dominant platform position to interfere with how our apps and other apps work, and they do it regularly," Zuckerberg said. He added, "They say they're doing this to help people, but that move is clearly chasing their competitive advantage.

Apple's complete control of the ecosystem allows it to bundle iMessage with the iPhone and override the needs of users to download apps like WhatsApp. Again, Zuckerberg denied Apple's commitment to privacy and went after iMessage and its lack of encryption.

"Apple recently released so-called nutrition labels that focus largely on the metadata the app collects rather than the privacy and security of people's actual messages, but iMessage, unless you disable iCloud, will by default provide non store end-to-end encrypted backups," Zuckerberg said.

The anti-competitive charges come at a time when Facebook is being accused of predatory behavior. Currently, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is suing Facebook, along with 46 states, with the goal of dissolving the company.