Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak has announced he intends to quit Facebook following concerns over the way the social media giant is using personal data in the wake of the Cambridge Analytica scandal.
“Users provide every detail of their life to Facebook and … Facebook makes a lot of advertising money off this,” Wozniak told USA Today via email.
“The profits are all based on the user’s info, but the users get none of the profits back.
“Apple makes its money off of good products, not off of you. As they say, with Facebook, you are the product.”
The high-profile tech figure cited a lack of control and transparency over advertising as one of his main issues and said he would rather pay to access Facebook than share his data.
Before deactivating his account Wozniak posted a goodbye message saying the platform had ‘brought [him] more negatives than positives’.
Many other users are following suit with #DeleteFacebook trending after the revelations around data mining firm Cambridge Analytica.
Facebook also came under fire during this period after a whistleblower revealed the platform was improperly sharing the personal data of 87 million users without their consent. Affected users are due to be contacted from today.
Several high-profile users have deleted accounts following the revelations, such as Tesla CEO Elon Musk and Playboy.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg will appear in Congress this week to testify on the company’s data practices in the fallout from the scandal.