Apple CEO says regulation of tech industry is “inevitable”

Anca Alexe 19/11/2018 | 08:52

Apple CEO Tim Cook said in an interview with Axios that the regulation of the tech industry is “inevitable”, even though Silicon Valley might have had a lot of freedom to “move fast and break things” until now.

“Generally speaking I am not a big fan of regulation,” Cook said. “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. And I think it’s inevitable that there will be some level of regulation.”

Scepticism over the role of tech giants in our lives has been growing globally, and companies like Apple, Facebook or Google have been involved in various conflicts with regulators, mainly around the issue of user privacy.

Cook says that tech companies should embrace the coming regulations: “This is not a matter of privacy versus profit, or privacy versus technical innovation. That’s a false choice.”