
WhatsApp Cofounder Brian Acton on Why He Left $850M Behind - petethomas
https://www.forbes.com/sites/parmyolson/2018/09/26/exclusive-whatsapp-cofounder-brian-acton-gives-the-inside-story-on-deletefacebook-and-why-he-left-850-million-behind
======
mattnewport
This article seems a little unfair to the WhatsApp founders when it suggests
they should have known that any assurances Facebook made to them as part of
the acquisition were obviously lies. Sure in 2018 it might be obvious to most
of us that nothing Facebook says or promises can be trusted but I don't think
that was necessarily as obvious when the acquisition happened and they can be
forgiven for thinking they weren't being lied to.

~~~
scarface74
What year would it be ok to be naive enough to think that any for profit
company’s main motivation is not to make as much money possible?

~~~
cowpig
There is such a thing as business ethics.

Facebook's complete disregard for them should not be the norm, even if it,
sadly, might be more often than not.

~~~
394549
>> What year would it be ok to be naive enough to think that any for profit
company’s main motivation is not to make as much money possible?

> There is such a thing as business ethics.

> Facebook's complete disregard for them should not be the norm, even if it,
> sadly, might be more often than not.

It's alarming how businesses' lack of business ethics is getting normalized by
comments like the grandparent's. We should require that companies be ethical
and condemn them when they aren't. Yes, we'll often be disappointed, just like
we're disappointed with the fraction of humanity that becomes criminal, but
that doesn't mean we should lower our standards.

~~~
scarface74
How do we as individuals “require” companies to be ethical? At the end of the
day, we don’t have the power to enforce ethics. We have to work within the
framework of reality and get everything in writing.

~~~
nemo44x
Boycott them and don't purchase or use their products.

If you feel strongly about it go further and organize more people to do the
same. Try to convince people who don't feel the company is unethical that it
is.

But in the end you can't expect because you don't like a company that your
feelings on what should happen to come to be.

It's like so many people complaining on Twitter about Twitter not banning
voices they don't like. If you don't like Twitter's policies then stop using
their product. If enough people agree with you and do this they will change.
If you feel it's worth spending your life organizing people to boycott Twitter
then spend your life doing that. But the culture of demanding that platforms
must adhere to someones arbitrary expectations as if using their platform is a
right is ridiculous.

~~~
jschwartzi
This is exactly what I do with Uber. I don't use it. I use Lyft. This is
because I don't consider Uber an ethical company, nor do I particularly like
their HR and other management practices.

I don't know very much about Lyft but I have yet to hear anything bad about
them which is pretty encouraging.

~~~
lazerwalker
Peter Thiel is a major investor and board seat holder in Lyft. If your
politics lead you to believe Uber is not an ethical company, that might also
give you pause.

~~~
hardlianotion
Genuine question. Is Peter Thiel known to be unethical?

~~~
atomical
Why does Peter Thiel think Donald Trump is so awesome?

------
madrox
I'm sure Acton and Koum told themselves they were also keeping the power to be
in control. I'm sure they went into it thinking they could avoid this end. The
brain is a powerful rationalizer when it sees generational wealth within
reach.

The indignant tone of the comments here make me laugh. There are very few
things I can imagine readers of HN not doing for a billion dollars. People may
say otherwise, but until they've been tested I choose not to believe them.

~~~
waterhouse
Not saying you're not mostly right, but there is the case of Jean-Baptiste
Kempf, maintainer of VLC, who apparently turned down tens of millions to put
ads into VLC. (I suppose that is two orders of magnitude smaller than a
billion.)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15372048](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15372048)

~~~
madrox
And if he chose to criticize the WhatsApp founders, it would carry a lot of
weight with me. I didn't say altruism doesn't exist...I just don't believe
it's in this comment thread. :)

~~~
st1ck
I don't know the details, but he could've turned down monetization of his work
for purely selfish reasons as well.

------
deleted_account
I feel like I'm coming across more of these "exit, then atone" profiles and
none of them seem to have any teeth. They read like self-help articles for the
ultra-rich: "Broken moral compass keeping you up at night? Try driving a Honda
Odyssey."

I get it; you took the money. I'd sure as hell take the money. One anecdote
about sniping at Sheryl Sandberg is washed away by this milquetoast sentiment:

 _“It was like, okay, well, you want to do these things I don’t want to do,”
Acton says. “It’s better if I get out of your way. And I did.”_

~~~
sushisource
I also fail to see how driving a minivan makes you a better person. I don't
understand why we fetishize the rich who live like they aren't.

I get not overconsuming, but if you're gonna buy a car might as well make it a
nice one - the impact is basically the same.

~~~
chadash
The environmental impact, sure, but there's also a "keeping up with the
Joneses" factor. If people don't flaunt their status, other people won't feel
as pressured to either.

I once heard a very wealthy guy complain that "everyone these days wears a
Rolex", so he needs to buy something fancier. Well, once every super wealthy
person goes out and buys something fancier, then the less wealthy people will
want _that_ and the effect trickles down. The fact is that conspicuous
consumption is a problem for our society in that it leads people to buy things
that they can't afford. By driving a minivan, Brian Acton isn't contributing
to that problem as much and I commend him for it.

~~~
roywiggins
It's a Red Queen effect, I guess.

------
xibalba
Acton is being incredibly disingenuous and it is disappointing. When you sell
your company to another for $19B, you should surely know that the expectations
for monetization will be very heavy indeed. Well beyond Acton's suggested
metered-user model.

I'm certainly no great fan of Facebook, but anyone who thinks that they
deserve to use a service free of charge and also avoid advertising is
extremely entitled and disconnected from reality. There is no free lunch.

None of this is to excuse FB's bad behavior. The fact that they claimed they
wouldn't attempt to link accounts but had teams elsewhere in FB working on
that very task is yet another example of the true nature of that company and
its highest ranking people.

~~~
b3n
> [...] anyone who thinks that they deserve to use a service free of charge
> and also avoid advertising is extremely entitled and disconnected from
> reality. There is no free lunch.

We are using Hacker News, free of charge, without advertising. Or for a bigger
example, most Wikipedia users have never donated and yet use the service with
zero advertising. Or there's Signal, as mentioned in the article, and
countless other examples.

Perhaps there is a free lunch after all.

~~~
xibalba
Hacker News is subsidized by perhaps the most successful venture capital firm
of all time. Wikipedia routinely raises lots and lots of money via donation.
Signal is funded by a multi-billionaire.

There is never a free lunch. Employees must be compensated, capital equipment
must be bought/rented. The revenue has to come from somewhere.

Neither of Hacker News nor Wikipedia nor Signal was purchased to the tune of
$19B. So who set that price? Let me assure you, Facebook would have gladly
paid less. And, of course, Facebook bought WhatsApp with the intention of
turning a profit. The rest follows logically.

------
antirez
I want to tell a story about Whatsapp that is unrelated to that, but
incidental, and the reason why this seems too much to me. I don't like the
company even if I use Whatsapp every days since the start, because when it
started to spread in Europe, at the start of the iPhone and Apple store era,
Whatsapp was the worst thing ever in the app store in terms of how strongly
they advertised their platform, almost in a spammy way, everywhere. Moreover
the application was pure garbage. It was not just unencrypted, but the IMEI of
the phone hashed with the phone number, or something like that, was used to
_authenticate_ to the service. There was _zero attempt_ at privacy. Later when
they made big money they fixed it, but still... Fast forward the acquisition,
there was another element I did not like: they really did a big noise about
how scalable was Whatsapp 'cause it was FreeBSD + Erlang based, one thing that
I believe was not honest. Whatsapp was very scalable fundamentally because
they just acted as a bridge without storing anything. The backends were
probably also decently designed, but not because FreeBSD + Erlang, you could
do it differently with the same results. Moreover many times here in Europe
where it is massively used, during like xmas or at the new year party time, it
goes down, so... like everybody else on earth. And now that story. I never
liked the company vibe, and I think he should stop with this Facebook story,
because you are the actions you make: don't trust the big social network
model? Well, develop your company and find a business model you like. Now it's
late to cray. Besides I don't think Facebook is doing anything terrible with
Whatsapp.

~~~
slig
I remember that they false advertised it on App Stores as "WhatsApp - Free
SMS".

~~~
antirez
Exactly, among the many other similar things.

------
tumetab1
> The company is also set to charge businesses for messages they receive from
> potential customers via the WhatsApp platform — of between a half a penny
> and 9 cents, depending on the country.

Didn't knew this and takes back to the outrageous SMS pricing of 10 cents per
SMS.

I as a consumer can change easily but it's sad to see that business will have
to deal with this crap.

~~~
goshx
While I understand the sentiment and generally agree with you, someone has to
pay for the service, right?

And businesses have been paying for all those Toll Free calls customers are
making. It's only toll free for the caller.

~~~
eksemplar
If Skype hadn’t been a thing I’d agree, but it was.

The fact that we aren’t using peer-to-peer encryption in our message apps
today is solely because companies want to charge you money for sending
messages.

Because Skype had the capability to operate as a decentralized encrypted
messaging app, and now 10-15 years later, there isn’t an app like that. Not
because it’s not possible but because giant tech companies have become the
equivalent of fossil fuel companies, killing innovation by buying it and
absorbing it, altering it or shutting it down.

~~~
toast0
Do you remember how skype worked in 2011? You could send messages anytime, but
they would only be delivered if you and your conversation partner were both
online at the same time. If you used two computers, the conversation history
would sync up if both computers were online simultaneously -- or you would
sometimes get it from your conversation partners if they were online.

That's fine in the world of desktops with always on connectivity (often not
even NATed), but it doesn't work on iPhones were when your app isn't on
screen, it isn't running (they have a limited amount of background execution
these days), and anyway connectivity is spotty.

~~~
buboard
so offline messaging was such a difficult thing to solve without selling? I
doubt it. Skype hasn't improved much, not only because MS is not doing its
best, but also ISPs typically throttle that.

~~~
toast0
Centralization was more or less required to do offline messaging. Not so much
the selling bit (but note that Skype had already been sold twice before
Microsoft bought it in 2011). I agree Microsoft hasn't done a good job with
it, though.

~~~
EthanHeilman
You could cache encrypted messages on a P2P network until the offline party
comes online. There is no money in that, but from a technical PoV it is very
doable.

Systems like the lightning network on Bitcoin or Raiden on Ethereum are
working on something similar for outsourced channel monitoring (aka
watchtowers).

~~~
toast0
You could, but in order to make that reliable, you have to use a lot of other
people's space storing other people's messages... It's a lot simpler to keep
it reliable if the service owner owns this (this is also part of the reason
the Skype supernodes moved to be company hosted)

~~~
EthanHeilman
How much replication do you need? 10x? 20x? If these are text messages that's
probably less than 10KB per person per week of being offline. Delete the
messages if the recipient hasn't come online in a week.

I believe you could build a highly reliable P2P offline texting app without
any centralized services. I'm not sure anyone would want it and it seems
difficult to monetize, but it is doable.

~~~
uxcolumbo
Messaging apps nowadays also allow you to send images and even videos.

How would you handle those? Or only allow sending text when the other person
is offline?

~~~
EthanHeilman
I agree that once you start adding features like images and videos that it
tips the balance more toward centralization.

> Or only allow sending text when the other person is offline?

I think that is an excellent idea.

Also I'd propose a vector-based image format with a maximum file size and
fixed resolution (for online and offline messages). That way you could send
drawings and diagrams without increasing the data requirements. It would also
give the app a unique look and feel and would make it more difficult but not
impossible for people to send hideous photographic content.

The real question to me is how many people are willing to have less features
for more decentralization. I suspect that is a small number of users.

~~~
uxcolumbo
Yeah I like your vector-based image idea. It would make it look unique and
still be usable.

I've already got some ideas about potential UX flows for this...

And I think it there is a big enough community that would use this kind of
messaging system.

Build things that don't scale - so they say ;)

------
lpolovets
Here's an interesting post about the departure from the perspective of a
Facebook exec: [https://www.facebook.com/notes/david-marcus/the-other-
side-o...](https://www.facebook.com/notes/david-marcus/the-other-side-of-the-
story/10157815319244148/)

~~~
samat
“About connecting people”. Well, and getting as many eyeballs on the newsfeed
ads as (in)humanely possible. Does that count as connecting people?

~~~
touristtam
Probably in the same way a company is a legal person in from of the law.

------
tomcam
Now I find myself in the unfortunate position of defending Facebook, a site I
barely use and whose founder does not to me represent the best of Silicon
Valley. He took their money. He should just shut up. There was never any
question about what Facebook was dealing with its data. Never. They have
always been explicit about it in their user agreement. He didn’t seem to mind
when he took billions from them. I have an old-fashioned sense of ethics and
cannot understand how someone would like that would bad-mouth the public
company he benefited so richly from, when he knew all along what they were
doing. There are no heroes in this story.

~~~
pentae
I think like most people who sell their business then see it multiply in size
and value afterwards, hindsight is a bitch - he regrets it. He was tortured
for years thinking about 'what if' he hadn't sold the company and been in
control of its destiny. Rather than appreciating the position he's in, which
is probably what he should be doing.

~~~
tomcam
I can't read his mind so I don't know if you're right... but it sure feels
that way.

------
jamesmcnalley
I get the frustration of seeing your pride and joy used in ways that you hoped
to avoid. But he likely would have retained more control of WhatsApp if he
stuck around and played ball. Now he has some money, zero control, and he has
absolutely scorched the earth for his co-founder or anyone else who wants to
minimize ads or find alternate monetization options.

~~~
randomsearch
Which cofounder? They’ve both left.

~~~
jamesmcnalley
The other co-founder left later, and it’s unlikely that the acrimonious
departure helped.

------
leothekim
I can't help but go back to Mark Zuckerberg's letter when Facebook was
preparing to IPO:

"... we don’t build services to make money; we make money to build better
services.

"And we think this is a good way to build something. These days I think more
and more people want to use services from companies that believe in something
beyond simply maximizing profits." [1]

I mean, there was no way he was going to drop $22 billion dollars on something
and not get a return. But I can't help but notice how the article depicts him
as someone who is thinking more strategically, contractually, and businesslike
(i.e. profit-driven) than someone who would write something like the quote
above. Whatever he was then, he seems to have taken a step away from it and
become... a CEO.

[1] [https://www.yahoo.com/news/mark-zuckerberg%E2%80%99s-ipo-
let...](https://www.yahoo.com/news/mark-zuckerberg%E2%80%99s-ipo-letter--why-
facebook-exists.html)

~~~
ThrustVectoring
>I mean, there was no way he was going to drop $22 billion dollars on
something and not get a return.

There's plenty of valid business reasons to spend money on ventures that
aren't "net present value of cash flow projections exceed costs". There can be
indirect effects like maintaining a moat - buying WhatsApp can be worthwhile
simply to ensure that other companies can't use it to compete with Facebook's
core business. Or there can be real option considerations. Or it can drive
down the price of the complements of your core product.

~~~
leothekim
Definitely, great point. For Facebook + WhatsApp, I'd bet that this is a case
of Mark having a giant ad revenue hammer, and everything else that's
corralling eyeballs is inevitably going to be a nail.

------
forgingahead
If you think about it, there was no other way this could have played out.
Acton (and maybe Koum) are privacy idealists, but could never have gone to the
next level of philanthropy via massive wealth just by organic Whatsapp growth
and revenue.

They needed the FB acquisition to supercharge their wallets, needed the pound
of flesh to be demanded for the price that was paid in order to revisit their
original mission, and now we're seeing Acton at least refocus on easy-to-use
encrypted communications via Signal and potentially other platforms. The FB
money has allowed for potentially more investments in the privacy tools
sphere, if Acton continues his work in that area.

Whatsapp is a massively dominant messaging service, but the drive for privacy
amongst consumers will continue to increase. It'll be interesting to see how
we all communicate with the next evolution of all these apps in 10 years.

~~~
sixstringtheory
On one hand I wonder if money should really be apportioned to people who’d
sell their user base to FB, like, will they make the best decisions down the
road? Another part of me thinks well, better the money in a good person’s
hands than FB’s. But you have to assume Acton et al are truly better people
than FB, and still the user base is offered up as a sacrifice to that. Doesn’t
feel great to me.

------
jiveturkey
“used him”

i have little sympathy for such actors. i’ve known people who got rich on
stock options in the ‘00s and then fled california while decrying the rat
race. this is the same thing.

if you really mean it, donate all the money to charity, an ed foundation, or
some such. i’ll even forgive you for keeping 10mm for yourself. otherwise, cry
me a river.

~~~
fredoliveira
From the article (first paragraph, too):

> Brian Acton, who left Facebook a year ago — before going on to publicly bite
> the hand that fed him, by voicing support for the #DeleteFacebook movement
> (and donating $50M to alternative encrypted messaging app, Signal)

And:

> And for leaving a cool ~$850M in unvested stock on the table by not sticking
> it out a few more months inside Zuckerberg’s mothership, as co-founder Jan
> Koum did.

Sounds like this actor may in fact be worthy of a little sympathy.

~~~
abalone
You left out the part where he expected and tried to get the $850M but FB’s
lawyers pushed back and he settled after burning bridges. $50M is 0.7% of his
net worth last I checked (maybe it’s changed).

Look, I’m glad they’re not still at Facebook but this is hypocritical
posturing. They’re not giving the money back. They’re crying all the way to
the bank.

~~~
ummonk
It specifically says he didn't settle, because he didn't want to sign an NDA.

~~~
abalone
Sorry I meant gave up after burning bridges. Their plan was always to bail
before monetization kicked in and be able to say they had nothing to do with
it. But you don't get a $19B valuation from Facebook for a text messaging
arbitrage app without being _fully aware_ of where that money will come from.
That's why they didn't forbid it, only required accelerated vesting.

------
Illniyar
One does not "use" the CEO (or whatever his title was) of a billion dollar
company. Either it was part of his duty and responsibility to the company or
he willingly cooperated with deceiving a regulator.

To portray it otherwise is just a spin.

At least he admits to “At the end of the day, I sold my company. I am a
sellout. I acknowledge that,”. I'm sure it's much easy to be remorseful with a
few billion dollars in the bank.

------
josefresco
"“I called her out one time,” says Acton, who sensed there might be greed at
play. “I was like, ‘No, you don’t mean that it won’t scale. You mean it won’t
make as much money as . . . ,’ and she kind of hemmed and hawed a little. And
we moved on. I think I made my point. . . . They are businesspeople, they are
good businesspeople. They just represent a set of business practices,
principles and ethics, and policies that I don’t necessarily agree with.”"

Would have loved to be a fly on the wall in _that_ room!

~~~
Mahn
It really does not scale. Charging users after a certain threshold of messages
is a silly idea. Can you imagine if Facebook charged after a certain number of
status updates and photos shared? It's not that it doesn't make as much money,
it's that people would have quickly jumped ship.

~~~
scrollaway
> _Can you imagine if Facebook charged after a certain number of status
> updates and photos shared?_

I can't, and neither can you, because it doesn't and it hasn't really been
tried in a popular app.

Whether it's as obvious as you think that it doesn't scale and/or it wouldn't
work, people would jump ship etc remains to be determined.

------
Jyaif
How an individual can leave $850M on the table to prove a point blows my mind.

I'm in awe at that guy, but I can't help but think that with $850M he could
have funded so many interesting projects/research.

~~~
cryptozeus
When you have money and principles you believe in, its not that hard.

~~~
icebraining
How many times have you walked away from 9 digit sums?

~~~
shawabawa3
The same number of times i've received 10 digit sums

------
ohazi
> At a meeting over the issue he said Zuckerberg also told him: “This is
> probably the last time you’ll ever talk to me.”

I realize this was probably said in fruatration, but I think it paints a
pretty clear picture of Zuckerberg's arrogance and entitlement.

~~~
Illniyar
I think that's a reasonable position in response from an employee trying to
"activate a clause written into their contract to allow them to immediately
get all their stock if the company began “implementing monetization
initiatives” without their consent" .

Now whether or not he was in the right to demand it, when actually doing so I
doubt anyone expected to have a working relationship after that.

~~~
ohazi
In a vacuum, perhaps, but I think there's more to it than that.

Another account yesterday mentioned plans to put Kevin Systrom under a
different manager that would have given him "less access to Zuckerberg."
Earlier accounts described them as friendly, always seen together, etc.

It seems like Facebook is a company where access to the CEO is so tightly
controlled that it's basically used as a political weapon.

~~~
JumpCrisscross
> _access to the CEO is so tightly controlled that it 's basically used as a
> political weapon_

This is true at almost any organization of scale. Access to top decision
makers must be restricted. The people who make decisions about the
restrictions, therefore, gain influence through that process. The power can be
used properly or improperly. In this case, it appears to have been used
properly: there was no further discussion on the matter, and the employee had
shown themselves to be out of line with the CEO's strategy.

------
chubot
Mark Zuckerberg seems to be the master of putting things in contracts that
play out in his favor.

The article says they wanted a clause that granted them approval over
monetization strategies. So Zuckerberg gave them some version that he knew had
no teeth in order to close the acquisition. But he got exactly what he wanted
in the end, without any real compromise.

This falling out with Acton and Joum seem like just another case in the long
line of bad relationships: Saverin, and perhaps the Winklessvoss twins,
although that "business" relationship was for the sole purpose of ripping them
off.

~~~
akudha
It is not like he personally wrote those contracts! Like any mega corp, FB
must be having super high priced lawyers who do the dirty work.

Hell, I am a lowly engineer in a tiny company who got screwed by a single line
in a contract. I saw first hand what lawyers can do.

------
MarkMc
If I understand correctly, Zuckerberg forced Acton to hold onto his Facebook
shares - and the value of those shares then doubled in a three-year period.
Surely that must mollify Acton's animosity somewhat.

It reminds me of the scene in The Big Short where at one point the investors a
clamoring to withdraw their money from Michael Burry's fund. They hate him and
call him names, but he refuses to let them withdraw. Later when he pays out a
huge profit he emails them saying, "You're welcome".

------
buboard
> At the end of the day, I sold my company. I am a sellout. I acknowledge that

I think he's acknowledging that his company was un-monetizable and selling was
obviously the best thing they could do. And 10 years later, it remains
unmonetizable, that's sad.

~~~
jamesmcnalley
Monetization is really hard. The ‘90s was filled with the wreckage of
companies that couldn’t get it right, with debris spreading out into the early
‘00s. The ad monetization model is one way to do it, and it can be rolled out
to a wide variety of products, but it is unlikely to be the only model.

Business is hard, and it can take a long time and many failures to be truly
innovative. I’m an engineer, but I’m a little sad that so few people with
strong business backgrounds are trying new things. Maybe in another decade or
two.

~~~
overcast
I guess the lesson here is to stop making a business out of burning venture
capital, and start with a real business plan. There are plenty out that are
building things people are willing to pay for. WhatsApp is super popular,
because you're giving away the worlds 100th iteration of a chat client for
free.

------
ac4tw
I find the article interesting from a cryptographic perspective--specifically
have they implemented searchable encryption or such a "encrypted environment"
where they able to capture more than meta-data.

These quotes specifically:

The challenge was WhatsApp’s watertight end-to-end encryption, which stopped
both WhatsApp and Facebook from reading messages. While Facebook didn’t plan
to break the encryption, Acton says, its managers did question and “probe”
ways to offer businesses analytical insights on WhatsApp users in an encrypted
environment.

...

When Sandberg, Facebook’s COO, was asked by U.S. lawmakers in early September
if WhatsApp still used end-to-end encryption, she avoided a straight yes or
no, saying, “We are strong believers in encryption.” A WhatsApp spokesperson
confirmed that WhatsApp would begin placing ads in its Status feature next
year, but added that even as more businesses start chatting to people on the
platform, “messages will remain end-to-end encrypted. There are no plan

~~~
rstuart4133
They are not that interesting. You have no way to verify if their statements
about encryption are true, so you'd be nuts to bet much on assuming they are.
WhatsApp being sold to an advertising company is just one fine example of why
it's nuts.

In fact given the recent bill's introduced into the Australian parliament,
it's irrelevant if they are true. The bill allows the government to demand
they produce a version of WhatsApp with a bug that sends a copy of all data
receives somewhere, and also allows them to demand they download that app via
the automatic security patch mechanism. So unless there is a way to verify
what software you have isn't bugged you have to assume even if it isn't now,
it could well be in the future.

There are ways out of this mess, but none of them are based on taking someones
word for it. Yet the "it's secure because that's what it says on the box"
seems to be the most common security model people adopt. It's so clearly wrong
I sometimes think I'd be less perplexed if most of the world's population
started insisting water wasn't wet.

~~~
ac4tw
Actually a fellow on HN the other day demonstrated that you could decompile
their APK and inspect the code, so you can make a pretty solid attempt to
verify product statements if you have the skill and the time.

Also, I think we're cross talking about their statements--I can't divine
anything specific from what they say, but their answers (esp. Sandbergs non-
answer) seem supportive of other things I've seen claiming the encryption
they're using is leaking business analytical information to FB on purpose
(effectively undermining the lay understanding of end-end encryption).

BTW That situation in Australia is saddening.

------
jolesf
> At a meeting over the issue he said Zuckerberg also told him: “This is
> probably the last time you’ll ever talk to me.”

------
jerguismi
So... Basically he cashed out billions. That is ridiculous amount of money.
Now he said "no" to $850 millions for moral reasons, and the moral action here
is mostly that he won't work for facebook any more.

For me this sounds quite ridiculous. He already cashed out as they sold the
unprofitable service for ridiculous amount of money. Facebook has to generate
profit for shareholders so they have to monetize it somehow. It is quite easy
for him to say "yeah I'm morally superior, thanks for the money but I don't
want the product to be profitable that way you know, now when you have paid
me..."

~~~
iMuzz
> “At the end of the day, I sold my company,” Acton says. “I sold my users’
> privacy to a larger benefit. I made a choice and a compromise. And I live
> with that every day.”

Seems like he's aware but Forbes is desperately trying to spin it differently.

------
padthai
Are Matrix clients reliable and fast enough to use them? I am looking forwards
to install them to my family but last time I tried they were a little bit
unresponsive.

~~~
ptx
I switched from WhatsApp to Riot, connecting to the public matrix.org server,
and it's working well for me. The app is pretty nice. It looks like any other
modern chat app.

The end-to-end encryption had some issues earlier (last year?), losing my
encryption keys and making all messages in the conversation unreadable, but it
seems to be working well in the latest version. It still warns you that
encryption is experimental when you enable it, though.

------
sdiq
I have just deleted WhatsApp from my phone. I am not really sure though what
to replace it with for the occasional foreign phone calls.

~~~
computerfriend
Signal would be the obvious choice.

~~~
seppin
An app people actually use would be a more obvious choice.

~~~
balladeer
_This is anecdotal._

Out of my 356 contacts only 46 are on Telegram and among them 11 were seen
recently (let's assume they still have the app). In last few weeks only 8 of
them replied to my messages or read them so I'd say only 8 are actively using
it (I checked with the remaining :P).

On Signal, there are just 13 and only 3 replied to me in last few weeks. All
of those 3 were coerced by me into installing it on their phones after I
deleted my WhatsApp account recently. So basically none of my contacts was
actively using Signal (the remaining 10 didn't even receive the messages).

No one was on Matrix/Riot and no one installed it even after my repeated
evangelistic encouragements and promise of full time tech support. Can't blame
them as I myself find it difficult to use the service/app for any non-
Slack/non-IRC kinda usage i.e person to person messaging.

One day I checked just for testing and more people are on
[https://hike.in](https://hike.in) than on Telegram from my contact book. That
was surprising. Didn't try any further and uninstalled it.

Almost everyone was on WhatsApp and almost everyone was on Fb Messenger too
when I used them.

My contact book is very generic - obviously not the very tech savvy specific
circle but a decent mix professions and backgrounds. Also, I have keep my
contact book regularly trimmed and limited otherwise it would have been a lot
more than 356.

So, if I have to choose WhatsApp's replacement based on this criteria then
there's really no other choice sadly :( Though I do have some hopes from
Acton's $50 million.

PS. I had checked one day and around 20 are on Apple devices (shows iMessage
option for them but a lot of them might be on macOS) and except 3-4 of them
none use iMessage at all.

~~~
valeg
>One day I checked just for testing and more people are on
[https://hike.in](https://hike.in) than on Telegram from my contact book. That
was surprising. Didn't try any further and uninstalled it.

This reminds me of Viber, a local success in the Eastern Europe.

------
Mahn
> _Acton said he tried to push Facebook towards an alternative, less privacy
> hostile business model for WhatsApp — suggesting a metered-user model such
> as by charging a tenth of a penny after a certain large number of free
> messages were used up._

> _But that “very simple business” idea was rejected outright by Facebook COO
> Sheryl Sandberg, who he said told him “it won’t scale”._

> _“I was like, ‘No, you don’t mean that it won’t scale. You mean it won’t
> make as much money as…,’_

This doesn't scale because people would ditch WhatsApp in favour of a
messaging app that didn't restrict the amount of messages you can send behind
a paywall.

I know that hating Facebook is in vogue, but frankly with that line of
thinking he sounds like would have made poor business/product decisions.

------
roymurdock
Zuckerberg: Take the money.

Acton: I'm not taking it.

Z: Just take it.

A: No!

Z: Look, I don't give a fuck, but the boys'll feel better.

A: Fuck their feelings!

Z: [Brian], we're a team.

A: A team? You guys are fucking insane. I'll go back to the Valley, I'll
[create messaging apps]. It can't be like this.

Z: It is. I'm sorry, but it is. It's ugly, but it's necessary.

A: I became a [developer] to put away dealers and criminals, not to be one.

Z: You sound just like me. I know what you're going through and feeling.
You're scared.

A: I'm not.

Z: Yes, you are. Everyone goes through that the first time. I did. The sooner
you match what's in your head...with what's in the real world...the better
you'll feel.

Z: In this business...you gotta have dirt on you to be trusted. When all this
is behind you, a whole other world will open up for you.

Z: I walk a higher path, son.

Z: I have the keys to all the doors.

------
honkycat
Smart guys.

At some point in the very near future you are going to end up rotting in a
grave. 850M will not do you a lick of good then.

Live your life, don't obsess over the zeros.

------
Johnny555
Why are people acting like this is a big deal? His net worth is $3.6B (not
sure if that includes the $850M he walked away from).

Giving up $850M when you already have $2B doesn't seem like much of a
sacrifice, and is unlikely to change his life _at all_.

Giving up $850K when you have $2M would be a bigger sacrifice than giving up
$850M when you already have $2B.

~~~
throwaway5250
I'd say it's a big deal because $850M donated to a worthy cause (e.g.,
GiveWell) could have made a big difference in the world. I've suffered far
more for far less.

~~~
Johnny555
If you're going to call him out for not staying at FB long enough to get the
$850M to donate it somewhere, why not also call him out for not donating most
of his $3B fortune? Surely he could scrape by on even a paltry $1B.

What's the difference from telling someone to stick it out long enough to vest
more stock versus telling him to just donate some portion of his already vast
fortune?

~~~
retsibsi
It would be good if he did either or both of those things. The original
question was why giving up $850,000,000 is a big deal when you're already
super-rich. The answer is that, even if it won't affect your living standards,
it's still worth $850,000,000 to the people you could use it to help.

------
saadsg
David Marcus responded to Brian's interview (Defended Zuck heavily):
[https://www.facebook.com/notes/david-marcus/the-other-
side-o...](https://www.facebook.com/notes/david-marcus/the-other-side-of-the-
story/10157815319244148/)

------
sho
Right. I have been in a disturbing number of these fucking companies.

The value attached to "I am going to absolutely lose my shit if I have to put
up with this for another second" is underrated IMO.

He had FU money already. They tried to put more on him. He balked. QED. Mental
health is a thing.

------
louwrentius
Please note that it's a lot easier to walk away from $850M if you already own
billions.

------
sidcool
A genuine question. How are ads possible in WhatsApp if it's end to end
encrypted?

~~~
Marsymars
The ads won't be targeted based on your messages. They'll just be targeted
based on all the other info FB has on you.

~~~
Markoff
what if you don't use Facebook and only use WhatsApp? not much information
besides contacts and rough location

~~~
Marsymars
They can do quite a lot with your phone number and contacts:
[https://gizmodo.com/facebook-is-giving-advertisers-access-
to...](https://gizmodo.com/facebook-is-giving-advertisers-access-to-your-
shadow-co-1828476051)

------
qubax
I'm so sick of the self-righteous moralizing and bullshit by the tech elites
and the news companies that help push that narrative.

Brian Acton didn't create whatsapp to "do good". Facebook wasn't created to
"do good". Google wasn't formed to "do good". People create companies to make
money. Why is this so hard for people to understand?

The guy spent 3 years creating a silly messaging app and growing a userbase
and sold it for $20 billion. It's like winning the lottery. Maybe he feels
guilty. But stop with the patting of one's back and pretending to fallen
saints.

He knew well enough what selling whatsapp ( a company that didn't make a
single penny ) to facebook for $20 billion meant. Monetization. I would have
also sold a shitty messaging app I worked on for 3 years to FB for $20
billion. But I wouldn't go around pretending I was a saint who got hoodwinked
afterwards.

Besides, even if the guy didn't sell to FB, he would have had to monetize and
sellout eventually because he had venture capitalists to satisfy.

These slimeballs are trying to eat the cake and have it too.

~~~
makecheck
We live in a society that requires money just to survive. How can _any_
venture not have money as a goal?

Therefore, it’s always _at least_ about money but probably _more_ than that.
And when you consider the time investment and risk associated with a startup,
it might be a loss if you’re only considering the money.

------
nailer
Anyone get the feeling that Acton is, for want of a better term, one of us?

I feel like you'd see him here on HN advocating for the moral tech choices
he's actually made, at great personal expense?

------
smitrendfelt
Would be re$pectable if this fellow used his FB winning$ in a con$tructive way
or return them to Zuck.

Whining about thing$ after FB made you a billionaire just makes you look like
you need a therapi$t.

------
simplecomplex
Why do any of you care about this?

------
abledon
anyone notice the picture they used. The founder are standing behind an
artistic rendition of a fiery bird... somewhat akin to phoenix. Which is
written in elixir. Which is what whatsapp was written in.

------
annadane
It's quite interesting how so many comments here are pro Facebook, anti
Whatsapp founders. How big is Facebook's astroturfing department? (Just a
theory. But it seems a bit glaring to not point it out.)

~~~
omegbule
My thought is most of the commenters don't see the big picture of what
happened but just what they want to see.

------
mciak
The Four Seasons is technically in East Palo Alto -.-

------
mcguire
He left $850M on the table? After $3.8B? Wow.

------
vipulved
Post-acquisition morality is tiring.

~~~
UpshotKnothole
The moral pangs suffered by the filthy rich, concerning the means by which
they became wealthy is as old as time. Sadly it works. How many people
remember Alfred Nobel as the “merchant of death” and how many remember him for
the Nobel Prizes? If they were more than trivially bothered they’re always
free to divest themselves of their fortunes.

------
cryptozeus
What does whatsapp uses right now to make money? From what i know i dont see
any ads there

~~~
beagle3
WhatsApp up until now was not pivoting to a full social network. That, on its
own, was worth a lot to Facebook ; if WhatsApp did and was successful, it
would have cost Facebook much more than 20B, perhaps closer to 100B in value.

Now that FB got their money’s worth of “WhatsApp not competing”, they want to
actually profit of it.

Also, whatsapp’s Interaction and name database (“metadata”) is super useful to
Facebook. Likely not $1B useful, but still a database FB would otherwise pay
millions for.

------
ilovecaching
You must be either the most naieve person on the planet or a complete moron to
sell your company to an advertising company and not expect them to put
advertising in your product. Of course he wasn’t noble enough to turn down the
money in the first place and turn his product into a big buisness by himself.
WhatsApp was literally just a user grab based on a ToDo list app idea released
at the right time. Guy should spend Facebooks money on some therapy and move
on with his life.

~~~
wdr1
> You must be either the most naieve person on the planet or a complete moron
> to sell your company to an advertising company and not expect them to put
> advertising in your product.

I know both Acton & Koum from Yahoo!. To describe either as "naive" or "a
complete moron" is ridiculous. If that is the depth of your thought, it would
explain why you're writing angry comments on a message board while they are
retired billionaires.

~~~
anoncoward111
I mean, there are plenty of billionaires who make ridiculous statements from
time to time. Donald Trump being one of them, for example.

WhatsApp's founders are awesome! But Acton shouldn't be surprised that FB
behaved as they did. He is smart and knows that publicly he should act
surprised.

~~~
cptskippy
> I mean, there are plenty of billionaires who make ridiculous statements from
> time to time. Donald Trump being one of them, for example.

I think it was established during the election that he isn't a billionaire. He
also makes ridiculous statements on a weekly if not hourly basis, so "from
time to time" is misleading.

~~~
anoncoward111
I think your analysis is like disagreeing about the salinity of different
oceans. Either way, they're all pretty damn salty compared to potable water.

------
nasredin
SavedYouAClick: because he is a billionaire.

I am amazed at just the plain stupidity of some of the writers of well nown
papers.

~~~
cgtyoder
Even if you're a billionaire - $850M is not chump change. I would have a non-
trivial time walking away from that much money no matter how much I was worth.

~~~
LitFan
I would hope that someone worth 3.6 billion would have a much easier time
walking away from 850 million than someone worth 1 million would walking away
from 200 thousand.

To violate one's moral code should surely be worth more than 200k, if they're
already taken care of financially.

------
coldcode
You sell something for billions of dollars to a giant entity who makes money
by selling user data, you should realize they will want to make money to pay
for those billions. Most of the time such a purchase results in the original
founders departing. You may as well leave at first opportunity. You can always
build something else, now with your own money.

~~~
jaas
This comment doesn't add anything that isn't explained in the article more
than once by Acton himself.

