
There Is No Justification for What Mark Zuckerberg Did to WhatsApp - panarky
https://slate.com/business/2018/06/facebook-whatsapp-turmoil-takeaway-mark-zuckerberg-cant-be-trusted.html
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merricksb
Ongoing discussion about WSJ article still on front page:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17238241](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17238241)

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rdtsc
> also had to make a lot of promises. Some of those promises were even
> enshrined in the acquisition agreement: If Facebook imposed “monetization
> initiatives” like advertising onto WhatsApp, its founders’ shares would vest
> immediately, and they could leave without suffering any kind of financial
> penalty.

That's pretty interesting. They foresaw it of course and put a claim in the
contract about it. Though when trying to trigger it FB fought back so Acton
left the money on the table.

> Acton gave up some $900 million; Koum gave up about $400 million. You need
> to be really unhappy at work if you’re willing to quit a job that’s
> effectively paying you some $60 million per month, and from which you
> basically can’t be fired.

A new type of "fuck you" money VC style - you can have your dirty stock
options I am out of here.

> or was he talked into breaking his promise by Sandberg and other executives
> looking covetously at WhatsApp’s unmonetized userbase? Either way, he has
> clearly failed a key leadership test.

The leaders tend to aggregate around them minions who are an exaggerated
version of themselves. If they are liars they will surround themselves over
time with even bigger liars. If they are narcissists they'll end up with
minions who are narcissists. It's mostly natural selection. Well it happened
in this case, there was a clash and those who don't agree leave. Over enough
years it "distills" the company culture into whatever characteristics the top
leaders have.

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bsg75
> The leaders tend to aggregate around them minions who are an exaggerated
> version of themselves

Is there a term for this behavior? It explains a number of situations.

~~~
jessaustin
I don't know the answer to your question, but the proposition seems related to
Conway's Law?

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ggg9990
Right, I'm sure that the WhatsApp founders thought that Facebook paid $19
billion for a company just to keep charging $1 per year with no ads and no
data collection.

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jimmywanger
As long as Facebook paid, their money was good, and there was a contract
signed, it does not matter.

This is wrong. Who cares what somebody else thinks when you get billions of
dollars? Not your problem anymore.

They should have really held Zuckerberg's feet to the fire and enforced the
contract by suing. It seems like a slam dunk. (IANAL)

~~~
duxup
"enforced the contract by suing"

What did the contract say? The only contract I saw in the original story noted
that if adds were forced on them some people could leave with more stock.....
that wouldn't have prevented anything.

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jimmywanger
No, but they could have bled Facebook further with more stock, which is fairly
freely convertible.

"You own the company. If you put ads on the product we sell, give us more
money."

You don't have to prevent anything, you just have to make them think about
things.

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fjsolwmv
Why is it Zuck's fault if he lets Sandberg monetize WhatsApp, but it wasn't
Acton and Koum's fault for letting Zuck do it?

How can it be Facebook's management's fault if they let 3rd party apps abuse
FB user data, but not WhatsApp managements fault for letting Facebook do the
same? Acton and Koum sold out their users for a huge payday, and now they are
so rich that they can walk away from a few hundred million dollars to "buy an
indulgent" for their immortal souls.

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pier25
I'd love to move out of Whatsapp, but in Mexico and Spain literally everyone
is using it.

The other day I ordered take-out exclusively from Whatsapp. The company where
I work recently implemented user support using Whatsapp. I buy coffee from a
nearby roaster and he informs me the day before roasting so that I can get
fresh coffee. I also know lots of parents that communicate with schools and
create groups with other parents.

~~~
always_good
Not to mention it will only become more entrenched since carriers at least
here in Mexico don't count Whatsapp/Facebook towards your data usage, which is
pretty awful if you were ever hoping for a competitor to emerge.

~~~
jxsonl
Same for some SEA countries (Malaysia & Singapore), whatsapp (some includes
other popular messaging apps such as WeChat, FB messenger) messages/calls does
not count toward your data usage for most telcos and it is the main way people
communicate, Whatsapp basically replaced SMS there when it was launched.

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sandov
The problem is that there's not a good free and open source alternative to
Whatsapp.

Signal requires google services and phone number, Telegram doesn't encrypt by
default, riot's interface is still not good enough.

I can't redirect my non-techie friends to any alternative because none of them
is good enough yet.

~~~
veidr
I had the same problem recently. After failing to get my friends and wife to
use Keybase (they tried it, but it just doesn't work on mobile beyond basic
text chats with no image pasting).

Requirements were: secure, iOS/Android/Mac/Linux/Windows, multi-person chats,
and multiple simultaneous/alternating device support (that means chat history
needs to propagate to my phones and computers).

iMessage was not considered (because it supports only iOS & macOS) and
WhatsApp was not considered (because Facebook).

After looking at Signal, Telegram, Keybase, and Wire, we ended up using Wire.
It's not perfect by a long shot, but it is better than the others we tested
and AFAICT better than any solution currently available.

But I had never heard of it until I really started looking around.

[https://wire.com](https://wire.com)

~~~
Siimteller
Hi, curious about the "not perfect" part (I work at Wire) - what stuff would
be prio for you to improve?

~~~
veidr
Hi! Okay sure, I will tell you! I am rooting for you guys.

1\. Presence/active device detection. Often I am sitting right at my computer
actively chatting with somebody, and yet my phone sitting on the desk right
next to it is blowing up with notifications of the same messages I am replying
to.

2\. Too many features. I am constantly accidentally activating features like
snapchat-style disappearing messages and weird alien voice effects. Cool if
you have them enabled by default but I would like settings to turn OFF the
many features that I literally never use (particularly on mobile where there
are both small screens and more features, hence more icons).

3\. 10-device limit. I know it sounds crazy but I have 2 phones and a few
tablets and computers at work and home and I often have to delete a device to
use the one I am at now. (20 devices would work for me; even 15 probably
would.)

4\. Initial log in / start up performance. I know it's hard with the huge
photos and encryption. But sometimes i get a notification on my watch that my
wife just said XXXXX and I want to respond RIGHT NOW on my computer. But it
takes like 8 seconds on an iMac Pro to get to the active/ready state after
booting the app. (I tend to just leave it open for this reason, but sometimes
have to reboot or whatever and it is not). I would prefer it started up and
let me send IMMEDIATELY even if I had to wait for it to load/decrypt the chat
histories.

Those are the main ones off the top of my head. It is a great product, though,
and I appreciate your efforts!

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duxup
They bought the company, it's facebook's to do with as they wish.

There was talk about independence but no indication that facebook was paying
bazillions and were going to leave them alone for long. The founders even knew
it enough to note the possibility of having ads forced on them in their
contracts.

I'm no fan of facebook, but justification is ... it is their product.

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Redoubts
> What’s more, WhatsApp’s two founders both left hundreds of millions of
> dollars on the table, so keen were they to leave Facebook’s ad-friendly
> walls. (It turns out that their contractual right to being paid out in full
> would require them to sue for the money, and, according to the Journal,
> neither of them had the appetite for that.)

Can I sue for it then?

~~~
lord_ring_11
U can bet on other peoples property with credit default swaps, but
unfortunately you can’t sue on behalf of others

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anilgulecha
With Whatsapp's Acton investing 50MM in Signal, perhaps that's the way for the
user-base to go.

I only hope Signal will take steps proactively to not go down whatsapp's path
(lucrative as it was).

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Bucephalus355
There is no justification for a lot of what Mark Zuckerberg did.

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shmerl
Whatsapp was bad to begin with. Some non standard XMPP without federation and
with very poor security. Irresponsible developers who created it, shouldn't
have started such project.

