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PHILADELPHIA >> Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak is shutting down his Facebook account as the social media giant struggles to cope with the worst privacy crisis in its history.
In an email to USA Today, Wozniak said Facebook makes a lot of advertising money from personal details provided by users. He said the “profits are all based on the user’s info, but the users get none of the profits back.”
It’s “a big hypocrisy not respecting my privacy when (Facebook CEO Mark) Zuckerberg buys all the houses around his and all the lots around his in Hawaii for his own privacy,” Wozniak said.
Wozniak was referring to an attempt Zuckerberg made in 2016 to acquire about a dozen small land parcels on Kauai using a controversial legal practice to force the owners to sell their property to the highest bidder at auction. The small parcels are within 700 acres Zuckerberg bought in 2015 for around $100 million. After a public outcry, Zuckerberg withdrew his bid to gain ownership of the parcels.
A British data mining firm affiliated with Donald Trump’s Republican presidential campaign gathered personal information from 87 million Facebook users to try to influence elections.