I Cannot Believe I Am Defending Mark Zuckerberg ⇥ 9to5mac.com

I do not understand this ridiculous post by Chance Miller of 9to5Mac. It is all about how Meta’s PR team digitally removed the manufacturer’s logo from Mark Zuckerberg’s laptop in a promotional photo, likely a MacBook of some kind. It is no big deal and perhaps just a silly post.

But then Miller gets strange referencing that famous photo of Zuckerberg’s desk showing a MacBook Pro with a taped camera and microphone:

An unrelated side-note here: Suckerberg puts tape over the webcam and microphone of his MacBook. The CEO of Facebook, the company with no regard for user privacy, is worried about Apple spying on him through his Mac’s webcam and microphone. And he still uses a MacBook today!

I want to focus on the second sentence: Zuckerberg is almost certainly not worried about Apple spying on his company’s activities, but about anyone spying. The NSA has repeatedly issued guidance (PDF) — as recently as this week — advising people in higher-risk contexts to cover cameras and microphones.

Is it a little ironic that both the NSA and the CEO of Meta closely guard their privacy and security? Sure, but they are also compensating for different risk levels. The average person probably does not need to worry about someone using their microphone to monitor their conversations. The American intelligence apparatus and CEOs are atypical contexts.

I find Miller’s article both painfully cringeworthy and just flat-out wrong. And calling him “Suckerberg” is petty and childish.