Mark Zuckerberg has hit back at Apple CEO Tim Cook over the latter’s criticism of Facebook’s poor handling of user data.

In an interview with Vox, Zuckerberg was asked to address Cook’s contention that Apple has a better business model, based on selling products to users rather than selling user data to third parties.

“You know, I find that argument, that if you’re not paying that somehow we can’t care about you, to be extremely glib” said Zuckerberg.

“The reality here is that if you want to build a service that helps connect everyone in the world, then there are a lot of people who can’t afford to pay. And therefore, as with a lot of media, having an advertising-supported model is the only rational model that can support building this service to reach people.”

“But if you want to build a service which is not just serving rich people, then you need to have something that people can afford. I thought Jeff Bezos had an excellent saying on this in one of his Kindle launches a number of years back. He said, “There are companies that work hard to charge you more, and there are companies that work hard to charge you less.” And at Facebook, we are squarely in the camp of the companies that work hard to charge you less and provide a free service that everyone can use.”

Zuckerberg’s comments were in response to repeated criticism from Apple CEO Tim Cook, who has attacked the Facebook CEO for allowing the social network’s ongoing data scandal to happen.

“The truth is, we could make a ton of money if we monetized our customer — if our customer was our product. We’ve elected not to do that” said Cook in an interview last week.

“The ability of anyone to know what you’ve been browsing about for years, who your contacts are, who their contacts are, things you like and dislike, and every intimate detail of your life – from my point of view, it shouldn’t exist.”

Allum Bokhari is the senior technology correspondent at Breitbart News. You can follow him on Twitter, Gab.ai and add him on Facebook. Email tips and suggestions to allumbokhari@protonmail.com.