Mark Zuckerberg is under fire, and if you thought Apple CEO Tim Cook was going to take it easy on the Facebook founder you’d be wrong.

The social media giant’s follies have been well documented these past few weeks, and the outrage over their penchant for handing out users’ data has led to a very strong backlash.

Cook set the ball rolling when he spoke out during a live interview with Recode’s Kara Swisher and MSNBC’s Chris Hayes as a part of the upcoming MSNBC special, “Revolution: Apple Changing the World”.

TIME reports:

When he was asked by Swisher what he would do if he were in Mark Zuckerberg’s position, he didn’t mince any words about the role played by Zuckerberg, with whom he is known to have somewhat of a terse relationship.

“I wouldn’t be in this situation,” Cook replied.

In the interview, Cook criticized [sic] Facebook’s handling of users’ personal data, contrasting it with Apple’s approach. “We care about the user experience and we’re not going to traffic in your personal life,” Cook said. “I think it’s an invasion of privacy. I think it’s… privacy to us is a human right. It’s a civil liberty, and is something that is unique to America, this is like freedom of speech and freedom of the press and privacy is right up there for us.”

Wow, Tim, way to get a little Apple punt in there whilst twisting that knife.

Of course Zuck wasn’t going to let that go without a response, and he chose to focus on Facebook’s accessibility to the masses:

“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,” Zuckerberg said. “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”.

Here’s the real kicker:

“I think it’s important that we don’t all get Stockholm Syndrome and let the companies that work hard to charge you more convince you that they actually care more about you,” he added. “Because that sounds ridiculous to me.”

Shots. Fired.

Cook is also calling for greater regulation around privacy online, something Apple has shown it places great value on over these past few years, in the wake of Facebook’s latest data scandal.

I wonder if Zuck uses an iPhone? Oh, wait:

I wonder if he will now switch to Android? Talk about biting off your nose to spite your face…

[source:time]