Tim Cook says "inevitable" tech firms will face regulations

Apple CEO Tim Cook told Axios on Monday that tech companies will "inevitably" have to face regulations in order to prevent technology from being using for malicious purposes.

Cook said: "Generally speaking, I am not a big fan of regulation. I'm a big believer in the free market. But we have to admit when the free market is not working. And it hasn't worked here. I think it's inevitable that there will be some level of regulation."

He argued that tech companies should embrace the coming regulations for the good of the general public: "This is not a matter of privacy versus profits, or privacy versus technical innovation. That's a false choice."

2018 had been tough on tech firms following the scandal around Facebook's failure to reveal that a leak of personal information had been used by data miner Cambridge Analytica to influence the 2016 US elections and the Brexit referendum, which led to CEO Mark Zuckerberg being hauled before the US Congress.

In March, Cook sharply rebuked Zuckerberg and Facebook’s business model, saying detailed profiles of individuals compiled by internet platforms should not exist.

In a speech in Brussels in October, Cook went even further, saying mass data collection by companies such as Google and Facebook amounted to “surveillance” and could be “weaponised against us with military efficiency”.