Sandy Parakilas, a former Facebook employee who left the company after his data privacy concerns fell on deaf ears, has been hired by Apple as a product manager to help improve the smartphone maker’s efforts to minimize data collection and improve user privacy. Prior to working for Facebook, Parakilas was a chief strategy officer for the non-profit Center for Humane Technology.
Here is an excerpt from a report published in Fast Company:
Parakilas worked for Facebook for 18 months before leaving the company in 2012. It was his job to monitor the privacy and policy compliance of Facebook developers. During his time there he warned senior Facebook executives that the company’s data-sharing policies could have potentially damaging consequences. However, Parakilas felt his concerns were being downplayed and eventually left the company for a job at Uber before moving on to a position at the Center for Humane Technology–a campaign group that advocates for stricter regulations on tech companies.
Last March, Parakilas gave evidence to the U.K.’s Parliament after the Cambridge Analytica scandal broke, stating that Facebook’s data protection practices were “far outside the bounds of what should have been allowed.” And now, he’s been snapped up by Apple to work as privacy manager on its product team.
Apple has increasingly been using its stance on privacy as a tactic to distinguish itself from competitors like Amazon and Google. Parakilas’s role at the company will see him work with internal teams all over Apple to make sure that its new products in development will keep data collection to a minimum and protect users’ privacy.
