
Behind the Messy, Expensive Split Between Facebook and WhatsApp’s Founders - hkmurakami
https://www.wsj.com/articles/behind-the-messy-expensive-split-between-facebook-and-whatsapps-founders-1528208641
======
rm999
I've had a tremendous amount of respect for Mark Zuckerberg as a leader, and
have gone out of my way to defend him in the past
([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17128369](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17128369)).
I always envisioned whatsapp as a defensive purchase that would stay true to
its initial vision (perhaps being used to prop up their other products in an
unintrusive manner). But this article makes me realize Mark is s a one-trick
advertising pony like half the other tech leaders out there.

His speil about how he's "connecting the world" is undermined by his clear
attempts to build a monopoly of social+communication, with an inefficient
layer of distracting ads. Imagine a future where every time you want to
electronically communicate with someone you have to spend mental energy
filtering out ads. It's the equivalent of every road having a toll booth,
directly paying into a rich person's bank account. This is the "connecting the
world" Mark Zuckerberg has been trying to hide from those of us who aren't
paying attention.

~~~
mycorrhizal
Maybe I'm just not creative enough, but what is a better alternative?

Let's say you have a subscriber model, but than what kind of world will it be
where only the wealthy have access to these communication technologies and
access to social information.

Or you have a hybrid ad model with the ability to opt out by paying some fee.
Than what kind of world will that be when privacy is a luxury item limited to
how much you can afford.

The best solution I can think of is keeping the current model, but adding
regulation and government oversight to limit some of the most damaging effects
i.e. creating platforms that abuse human psychology to keep people clicking
and make them addicted to these platforms.

I'm genuinely interested in other models people suggest.

~~~
ChuckMcM
In the past the function of the "phone company" was a paid for service which
provided for your communication needs. You didn't have to listen to ads before
you could talk to your friends but you did occasionally get unwanted calls.

This medium reached people rich and poor, all around the world.

The challenge here is greed.

One of the interesting topics in economics is the ability to subvert the
supply-demand curve by extracting economic value without the participants
awareness. In classical economics the equilibrium point is met when the buyer
thinks they are paying too much and the seller thinks they are getting to
little for a good or service. In the idealized experiment the buyer doesn't
have any other choice, nor does the seller have any other customer to turn to.

But in our internet connected world there is an "invisible" (to the buyer)
stream of value which is personal information about the buyer. To date there
hasn't been a good way for the buyer to see or negotiate that value. GPDR
helps that but it doesn't go far enough in some ways.

What GPDR doesn't supply (yet?) is the practical way of enforcing the theft of
personally identifiable information for financial gain. So in your example of
a hybrid ad model, if you 'opt out' and now pay a fee, how do you know that
they aren't still just selling your data? And if they are selling your data to
get extra value out of you being a customer, what recourse do you have when
you discover it? What risk are they taking by pursuing that path and
maximizing their revenue?

EDIT: From the article -- _At the time of the sale, WhatsApp was profitable
with fee revenue, although it is unclear by how much._ (99 cents per year)

~~~
jshen
I don’t know how old you are, but phone calls were really expensive in the
decades before 2000. It’s not something low income people could afford to do
very often.

~~~
ChuckMcM
I expect this depends a lot on where you were living in the decades before
2000 and what you mean by "phone calls".

In much of the US, in the 70's, 80's, and 90's a telephone had a fixed monthly
fee and 'free' calling to any other phone in the local area. Phone penetration
was over 90%[1] in 1970 and rose to over 95% by 1980 suggesting that even
those at 50% below the poverty line in 1980 (roughly 6% of the US population)
had access to a telephone.

So for many living in the US they have probably experienced being able to talk
with all of their friends for "free" as long as they want, and if they were
old enough arguing with siblings about who got to use the phone longest.

Further, in the "current" epoch, the article suggested that WhatsApp was
profitable at 99 cents per year when it was acquired. I would not be surprised
if that it is still the case that such a messaging service does not require
advertising revenue to be cash flow positive. It just needs enough
subscribers.

[1] [https://www.statista.com/statistics/189959/housing-units-
wit...](https://www.statista.com/statistics/189959/housing-units-with-
telephones-in-the-united-states-since-1920/)

~~~
jshen
Most of us had family outside of our area code which meant large bills if we
wanted to talk to them on a regular basis.

~~~
ChuckMcM
I understand, although we can argue about 'Most of us' versus 'Some of us'. My
experience was that my need for out of area calls went up only after I moved
from where I went to high school to where I went to college. And many of my
friends stayed local. There was a great piece in the NY Times about 3 years
ago that talked about how the typical American lives within 18 miles of their
family.(found it
[https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/12/24/upshot/24up-f...](https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/12/24/upshot/24up-
family.html))

Something that came with the Internet, and didn't exist for me prior to its
existence, was a large body of friends who were _not_ local to me. Today, if I
had to go back to metered long distance rather than what we have today it
would absolutely be cost prohibitive! And clearly some people move around more
than others and for them they might have a lot of friends and family outside
of their local calling region back then as well.

The bottom line is that I can see the point you were making but I think we
disagree on the magnitude of its impact on the general population that was
living with phones _at that time._

------
jimmies
>Mr. Koum, a San Jose State University dropout, grew up in Soviet-era Ukraine,
where the government could track communication, and talked frequently about
his commitment to privacy.

Someone said that the people who love America the most are the immigrants who
has to endure the crap back in their home country. I can totally relate to
this. I have lived in a country where my privacy and personal judgment didn't
mean anything. The government could do whatever with your life, and people can
ruin your life and kill your whole family by accusing you of a story they hear
from the vines [1, 2]. Maybe [3] - not from the same country, but it is the
same story.

I make a point to not have Facebook, Messenger, Instagram, Whatsapp (now) -
basically anything that Zuckerberg and co. laid their hands on. I fucking hate
the whole idea of any entity blatantly time and again disrespecting my privacy
and judgments to advance their agenda and make money. The truth is I really
have no control over what it collects from me, what it shows me, what it tells
me, what it advertises to me, what it hides from me. I know if I go with it,
the decision of foregoing my privacy will go back and bite me when I need it
the most. It doesn't matter what they say they stand for; it doesn't matter
how many of my peers are using; it doesn't matter what I miss out; it doesn't
matter how weird people think I am; it doesn't matter what opportunities I
will lose. I have made a decision two years ago to _never_ consider using
Facebook, and I will do my damnest to stay away from Facebook and their
products and I will try my damnest to convince people to do the same.

That's how much distaste I have for Facebook and their platform as a person
who had a taste of injustice. Zuck might be on top of the laws and the world
and has a lot of allies, but it's not like I have not seen that and I have to
fear that. And that's probably the most beautiful thing about America.

1:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nh%C3%A2n_V%C4%83n%E2%80%93Gia...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nh%C3%A2n_V%C4%83n%E2%80%93Giai_Ph%E1%BA%A9m_affair)

2:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_reform_in_North_Vietnam](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_reform_in_North_Vietnam)

3:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lives_of_Others](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lives_of_Others)

~~~
r00fus
Are any of your family or close friends on Facebook? It's highly likely
Facebook still has data on you by cross-correlating your data with theirs and
along with other data streams they purchase and de-anonymize (purchased credit
history) and creating shadow profiles.

I've gotten my wife to quit FB and download her data and request deletion
(GDPR), and I've quit a while back and we run facebook blockers. I still don't
expect to evade FB's ongoing trawl.

------
ironjunkie
That whole sentence where the WhatsApp guys have bigger desks and toilets than
the Facebook guys.

Really feels like it is coming straight from a dystopian future, where the
workers are kept happy with little candies, and the promise to work for a
better world, while also policing each others to see who got it better next
door, while the big bosses are in their towers planning their next move.

If you don't feel like a "sheep" or "token" after realizing that you are
fighting over the size of a toilet or a desk, then you are deep deep into it.

~~~
dunkelheit
That part of the article stood out for me too. These are all status issues and
status is very important for human beings whether they like it or not. It
seems that (despite being very well-compensated) engineers at facebook are
pretty low-status - they are forced to sit all day at shitty desks in giant
loud open spaces. So when whatsapp employees who were used to better working
conditions arrived, it caused a good amount of culture conflict.

------
Djvacto
So, I use WhatsApp as my primary source of communication.

Knowing facebook owned it always made me a little nervous, but given that it
was end-to-end encrypted, I figured Facebook wasn't getting any more from me
then they would from all my facebook-using-friends who would send me SMS's
before.

But I'm worried about how long I can continue to use the service moving
forward, which is sad as this is my main way to communicate with relatives who
live in other countries. And I doubt I can convince an elderly relative to
switch to Signal, as we're still working on teaching her how everything in
WhatsApp works.

I also recently purchased an Oculus. I like it way more than the current Vive
revisions (although I want to have a non-HTC headset and Valve Knuckles as my
next VR set), but the fact that it's owned by facebook unsettles me as well.

~~~
moedersmooiste
I installed Signal a while back and tried to convince as many people as
possible to switch. But only 7 people in my contact list have Signal
installed. Even when communicating with those 7 people i tend to use WhatsApp
because i tend to process all my messages at once without switching apps.

~~~
kolbe
I'm doing the same, and I only have 10 people. They happen to be my favorite
10 people, but still only 10.

I think Signal or something of that nature will be the ultimate endgame for
communication systems. They're way too easy to make, they're cheap to
maintain, and they're hard to monetize without being scummy. This is the
perfect formula for a non-profit to step in. I think the WhatsApp founders
alone could maintain a worldwide textual communication network for the rest of
their lives using a small fraction of their wealth.

~~~
moedersmooiste
It seems to be inevitable that the "scummy" ones finish first. Deskop Linux
could have been more popular than Windows, GIMP more popular than Photoshop
and Signal more popular than WhatsApp if only they where first. But the Open
Source world always lags behind when it comes to developing new stuff for
ordinary consumers.

------
panarky
[http://archive.is/pPWAE](http://archive.is/pPWAE)

~~~
nichochar
Thank you for this... how is something with a paywall so upvoted, it kind of
goes against the spirit of this website.

~~~
dang
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10178989](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10178989)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html)

------
juhq
"WhatsApp also negotiated for nicer bathrooms, with doors that reach the
floor."

This is not a norm in silicon valley/states?

~~~
ttul
I have never understood why North American bathroom stalls don’t just go to
the floor. Jesus Christ how much would it really cost to enable some damn
privacy.

~~~
thieving_magpie
I'm torn on this one. One the one hand I would love that extra privacy.

On the other, I really value knowing if someone is in the stall next to me and
how many people are in the bathroom. If the stalls extend to the ground how am
I supposed to scan for legs? Someone could be hiding in there waiting to
frighten me! I cannot use the bathroom until everyone has left it. Just how am
I supposed to verify that some quick-footed coworker hasn't made their way in
during someone's loud flush?

I cannot stomach this game of chance.

~~~
culturestate
> how am I supposed to verify that some quick-footed coworker hasn't made
> their way in during someone's loud flush

Most places with full-coverage stall doors also have occupancy indicators on
the outside - if you go in and lock the door, it changes from green to red.

~~~
thieving_magpie
I'm going to need an internal panel indicating the occupation of each stall.

------
mlthoughts2018
> "Small cultural disagreements between the two staffs also popped up,
> involving issues such as noise around the office and the size of WhatsApp’s
> desks and bathrooms, that took on greater significance as the split between
> the parent company and its acquisition persisted."

^^ coupled with a photo of outrageously poor open-plan office space.

This is just insane. Like, executives should be ashamed of themselves if they
think developing a company culture means micromanagement of desk space and
bathroom size.

I have to agree with Joel Spolsky that, when you think of things like this, it
makes you start to realize that Facebook _has to_ offer outsized salaries and
RSU grants to its employees, because the culture and workspace is so poor and
surveillance / micro-management oriented that in order to let yourself be
embedded into a hellish workplace like that, you would require greater-than-
market salary.

And frankly, the salaries aren't high _enough_ to offset this, compared with
other companies that don't turn your work life into a micromanagement
panopticon, yet still pay well.

~~~
emtel
I'm a former fb employee, and to say that they "turn your work life into a
micromanagement panopticon" is way off. Overall it's a great place to work as
a software engineer, although it depends a lot on your team. Many employees
have minor frustrations with various things like open plan offices,
oversubscribed bathrooms, lack of parking, etc. I suppose there must be some
employees who quit because of these sorts of issues, but I've never met any.
For most people who work there it's a fantastic opportunity. From what I saw,
people quit for the same reasons people quit any company: Burnout, bad
relationship with direct manager, or desire to move on to something new.

~~~
mlthoughts2018
This seems at odds with the photo in the OP linked article (referenced by the
quote in my comment), as well as any other similar photos of what the physical
work spaces are like.

I mean, it seems like indisputable evidence based on the physical structure of
the work space. I don't see how there's a way to interpret photographic
depictions of the actual Facebook offices in some other way.

It's like saying, "See this picture of a work space that indisputably shows it
to be a grotesque panopticon? ... well, trust me, it's _not_ a panopticon."

Is the picture a forgery or something?

~~~
emtel
I agree, the pictures you've seen on the internet definitely trump my personal
experience. Thanks for setting me straight.

------
stygiansonic
This blog post from Whatsapp is almost 6 years old:
[https://blog.whatsapp.com/245/Why-we-dont-sell-
ads](https://blog.whatsapp.com/245/Why-we-dont-sell-ads) (it was linked to
from the WSJ article)

Almost prescient is the final line:

 _When people ask us why we charge for WhatsApp, we say "Have you considered
the alternative?"_

~~~
icc97
Also they use a quote from that blog post as the title comment:

> we wanted to make something that wasn't just another ad clearinghouse

------
valeg
The clash of cultures... I prefer WhatsApp's one though.

~~~
mrlatinos
Yup, peace and quiet with privacy in mind. Not sure what Facebook employees
don't understand.

~~~
sonnyblarney
" Not sure what Facebook employees don't understand"

It's the part where What's App doesn't actually make any money and as a
standalone business isn't worth a whole lot.

The issue boils down to business model.

It's really easy for WhatsApp founders to take the moral high road when he
doesn't have to bother with trying to make a dime.

The WhatsApp founder is in somewhat of a hypocritical position given that his
$17 Billion dollars comes from FB practices that he is ostensibly
uncomfortable with.

~~~
astrange
WhatsApp was very profitable and efficiently run when they were acquired. I
mean, they only had 35 employees for the world.

~~~
soziawa
They were far from being profitable. They made close to no money, nobody I
know was charged more than the initial fee.

------
pvg
This is one of the weirdly recurring founder stories of 'after you sold
something for good money, you don't get to tell the buyer what to do with it'.

~~~
mason55
Likewise, this is why acquisitions come with golden handcuffs and lockups.

I think everyone handled it well. They fought for what they believed in, they
lost, and they chose to give up money instead of sticking around and being a
pain in the ass. Facebook rightly said "we bought this and control it and
here's what we want to do."

~~~
pvg
I don't think the sources for coverage like this come from Facebook.

------
innagadadavida
Apple should port Messages app to Android and other platforms, this is a great
opportunity for them to capitalize on. It is unlikely though, as the strategy
is to get people to buy iPhones to get Messages.

~~~
skbly7
Blackberry and BBM went this route already, and we know what happened to them.
I think it is high time for Apple to jump the ship and get messages into
Android. :)

~~~
atonse
Why? Having messages be iOS only, is working out perfectly for them.

Most iOS users get annoyed at the android users when they get green bubbles,
instead of getting annoyed at Apple.

As long as that continues to be true, I don't see iMessage ever coming out for
Android.

------
textmode
"When Facebook bought WhatsApp, it never publicly addressed how the divergent
philosophies would coexist.

...

But Mr. Zuckerberg told stock analysts that he and Mr. Koum agreed that
advertising wasn't the right way to make money from messaging apps.

...

Some of the employees were turned off by Facebook's campus, a bustling
collection of restaurants, ice cream shops and services built to mirror
Disneyland.

...

Mr. Zuckerberg wanted WhatsApp executives to add more "special features" to
the app, whereas Messrs. Koum and Acton liked its original simplicity.

...

Mr. Zuckerberg and Ms. Sandberg also wanted Messrs. Koum and Acton to _loosen
their stance on encryption_ to allow more "business flexibility," according to
one person familiar with the matter."

It sounds like Koum and Acton actually had some principles. Among other
things, they wanted to keep the software relatively simple, instead of
continuously increasing its complexity by adding "features". The article
suggests others saw Acton as a "moral compass". It also suggests David Marcus
president of messaging products at Facebook Inc. called his #deleteFacebook
remark "low class" behaviour. How to resolve this apparent contrast?

The article suggests Sandberg reacted to the Acton tweet by called Koum
instead of calling Acton. It sounds like Facebook's legal department had no
leverage (e.g. a non-disparagement clause) over Acton to prevent him from
sharing his true thoughts regarding Facebook Inc. He chose his principles,
including the freedom to express his opinion of Facebook Inc., over the stock
options he forfeited.

If these founders really did have principles, and there are ample indications
that they did (not limited only to what this article discusses), then is this
not admirable? Their stock, compensation and benefits packages were large
enough to make most folks abandon any principles in exchange for a much higher
standard of living.

It also sounds like the WhatsApp staff actually like to engage in cerebral
work, hence their desire for quiet and their dislike for the "Disneyland"
environment at Facebook. Is there an alternative explanation?

Perhaps the lesson here is that "culture clash" may not be so important in
these types of acquisitions, where the primary asset is _users_. These users
can be transitioned to whatever the acquiring company desires.

For example, there could be a culture clash between a proprietary software
company that acquires a company that offers free source code repository
services for free/open source code authors. If the founders acquire
significant, life-changing wealth from the transaction and the primary asset
being acquired is end users, then any clash of principles or work culture is
arguably insignificant.

The analyst quoted in the article calls Koum and Acton "naive" for believing
Zuckerberg would not renege on his promise not to use advertising to generate
revenue. He offers the ever persuasive cliche that Facebook is "not a
charity".

Was WhatsApp a "charity"? It was covering its own expenses and turning a
profit at the time of acquisition. It was saving millions of people money on
SMS and voice calls. When it sold, it generated a lot of wealth for its
investors. Was it not a success. By all accounts it never took money from
advertisers.

While Facebook, like a few other oversized ad-financed tech companies, has the
purchasing power to acquire any emerging competitor for users' attention, one
could argue that WhatsApp had something Facebook does not: principles.

From the article it does not sound like acquring WhatsApp's principles was
ever part of the deal.

------
newscracker
I have a question that the article doesn’t answer. If the original founders
left because of disagreements on advertising as the monetization model for
WhatsApp, are they still holding on to Facebook stock for their $3 billion and
$9 billion net worth (respectively)? Or have they sold those since those
shares are valued because of the advertising that Facebook pushes? The answer
to this would say a lot about their claimed commitment to privacy and their
stance against ads.

My next point is a prediction. WhatsApp will remove end to end encryption as
the default very soon. With Facebook wanting to grow its revenues and profits
(like most other companies), this is too attractive to let it stay as it has
been for the last few years. At least some WhatsApp employees seem to have
some kind of a moral compass on this topic, and I’d expect several of them to
leave when this change is announced later this year or early next year.

~~~
seandhi
> When Mr. Acton departed Facebook, he forfeited about $900 million in
> potential stock awards, according to people familiar with the matter. Mr.
> Koum is expected to officially depart in mid-August, in which case he would
> leave behind more than two million unvested shares worth about $400 million
> at Facebook’s current stock price. Both men would have received all their
> remaining shares had they stayed until this November, when their contracts
> end.

4 billion dollars of the 22 billion was cash. The remaining 18 billion was in
Facebook stock[1]. Most likely, they still have stock in Facebook.

[1]
[https://www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/032515/whats...](https://www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/032515/whatsapp-
best-facebook-purchase-ever.asp)

------
ponderatul
I see why he wouldn't agree even with the least intrusive advertising place.
Because it's just a slippery slope from there. That starting point can be used
in conversations to leverage the 'advertising model' further, and we can end
up with another facebook, easily.

~~~
currysausage
So did he honestly believe FB would just continue to provide WhatsApp to the
world for free, even ad-free, after spending $22bn? Doesn’t sound like it:

> _Messrs. Koum and Acton also negotiated an unusual clause in their contracts
> that said if Facebook insisted on making any “additional monetization
> initiatives” such as advertising in the app, it could give the executives
> “good reason” to leave and cause an acceleration of stock awards that hadn’t
> vested…_

------
inthaiguy
Whatsapp is kind of a competitive failure.

Successful social media platforms launched after Facebook: -

Successful video platforms after YouTube: -

Successful Mobile chat platforms after Whatsapp: \- Viber \- Line \- Wechat \-
Telegram \- Snapchat

~~~
sysstemlord
Whatsapp's key to sucess was its most simple, and most multi platform design
among all competitors. It worked on all phones ranging from S40 to the most
modern OS, and it was the one who invented the concept of no
username/account/manually adding contacts/password login..., but just a phone
number and you're ready to go. Whatsapp has a very clean interface, ad free,
also very efficient messaging delivery. You don't only compete on who's first,
but who does it better. Apple hasn't been first in anything since the
invention of the iPhone, but they are still successful in this domain.

------
kerng
Facebook should really be split up. WhatsApp would have been such a great
alternative to Facebook now - but with that acquisition the consumers are
really the ones on the loosing end.

------
rsoto
If you're getting a paywall as I am, try accessing via Google—just search for
the title. Or if you like it on image format:
[https://i.imgur.com/BzSEEHkg.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/BzSEEHkg.jpg) (it was
originally a higher resolution png).

It seems that the mirror posted here in the comments is somehow incomplete.

------
hn_throwaway_99
I kind of have to wonder what Jan Koum and Brian Acton were thinking (OK, I
don't really wonder - they got paid billions of dollars, who wouldn't do it).

But, of course, if you sell a company for billions of dollars, there is the
obvious expectation that within some time frame your company will earn revenue
and profit to support that valuation. You can't complain "they're adding ads!"
unless you have a credible solution for somehow bringing in billions of
dollars otherwise, and the WhatsApp founders didn't.

~~~
rmsaksida
> _You can 't complain "they're adding ads!" unless you have a credible
> solution for somehow bringing in billions of dollars otherwise, and the
> WhatsApp founders didn't_

What about business features? Pretty much every business in my country
advertises a Whatsapp number, from large companies to mom-and-pops. People
contact them over Whatsapp to ask questions, make complaints, order stuff,
everything. I can't believe Facebook is unable to monetize that.

It seems to me that Facebook is severely biased towards ads because they
already have a platform and it's a market they obviously know well. That
doesn't mean ads are the only way to make money.

~~~
GFischer
Every company I've worked for wants an official WhatsApp business API.

And apparently that's what they proposed to Sandberg, according to the
article, but the financial projections were nowhere near what ads would bring.

~~~
skbly7
I think they are already working in that direction I last checked.
[https://www.whatsapp.com/business/](https://www.whatsapp.com/business/)

I liked the business app especially for shortcuts, auto-replies and other
stuffs. But yes, official APIs is deal-breaker.

NOTE: Many applications and websites somehow are already using custom APIs (or
something). Ex. Airlines sending booking details as WhatsApp message,
flight/bus status and so on.

~~~
GFischer
Yes, the custom APIs exist but are very hacky.

I work for one of the largest travel groups, I'm actually working on flight
notifications, and they don't want to go there - no idea how other airlines or
travel groups do it.

------
m3kw9
When you go public that’s what happens, fb isn’t amazon where it finds new
ways to grow, they saturated their user base due to geo and political factors,
so investors need him to justify the stock price multiple.

------
YorakHunt
I want to side with the Whatsapp founders but really what did you expect?

------
vira28
Irrespective of all these, still FB stocks doing well (or surpassing the past
performance). Anyone noticed that?!!

~~~
trendia
The source of Facebook's revenue is its ad network, not the use of its social
networking capabilities at facebook.com

If you visit a news site and click on an ad that was shown through Facebook's
ad network, then they receive money. Importantly, you don't need to use
facebook.com that much, only enough for Facebook to start tracking you.

If a Facebook user logs into their account just once, then the Facebook
tracking cookie will log their visits to _other_ sites in the ad network,
which is the second largest network next to Google's. If they click on an ad,
then Facebook receives revenue -- it isn't necessary for the user to be
_using_ Facebook in order for Facebook to receive money.

------
yawz
_" The best minds of my generation are thinking about how to make people click
ads."_ \--Jeff Hammerbacher

------
chews
Smoked meat... brought to you by “Sweet Baby Rays”

------
moedersmooiste
If you sell your soul to the devil don't be surprised he comes to collect
it...

------
bhaile
Full article at [https://outline.com/He5ktW](https://outline.com/He5ktW)

~~~
jiveturkey
Is this a mirror, or some kind of summary. If this is a mirror, wow the
article is _very_ poorly edited. Seems like this isn't something so breaking
they couldn't spend an extra couple of hours on it.

It's a bit stilted as well, which doesn't seem like it would be fixed in
editing. I didn't realize WSJ articles were of such low quality. I guess
because I have never gotten through the paywall. ;)

------
dingo_bat
> When Mr. Acton departed Facebook, he forfeited about $900 million in
> potential stock awards, according to people familiar with the matter. Mr.
> Koum is expected to officially depart in mid-August, in which case he would
> leave behind more than two million unvested shares worth about $400 million
> at Facebook’s current stock price. Both men would have received all their
> remaining shares had they stayed until this November, when their contracts
> end.

I cannot believe this. Seriously, I think this article is bs.

~~~
VectorLock
Giving up $400 mil for 3 months? I mean I know they're loaded either way but
come on...

~~~
nicpottier
At some point don't you think you just have enough? What's another $400
million in the bank at that point? I mean maybe you could put that towards
causes you believe in, but that's kind of the only argument I see for staying.

The definition of being rich in my mind is the very concept of being able to
walk away from that kind of money for your own sanity.

~~~
jnwatson
$400 million could help a lot of sick and hungry people. I'd dig ditches by
hand for 3 months to be able to give that money to Doctors Without Borders.

~~~
nicpottier
Dig ditches sure. Do work that you fundamentally disagree with though? I mean
where do your principles come in to the work you are doing? You choose not to
rob banks to support DWB, so you have a line you yourself aren't willing to
cross.

I don't begrudge him one bit for his decision.

------
slowmotiony
Right click on link --> open in private mode to avoid paywall

~~~
cdelsolar
does this provide revenue to the journalists that wrote this article?

~~~
nottorp
From the WSJ subscription FAQ:

When can I cancel?

You may change or cancel your subscription at any time. To change or cancel
your subscription, please contact Customer Service at 1-(800)-JOURNAL
(568-7625) or 609-514-0870. We do not accept cancellations by mail, email, or
by any other means.

With those terms, they can all starve for all I care.

~~~
1123581321
Have you ever called to cancel the WSJ? I have stopped the WSJ three times and
the FT twice (same phone service.) It’s easy to do. They will make a retention
offer but will not do things like hang up on you, require you to have moved
out of your area, make you wait, etc.

Of course I prefer self-service cancellation to be an option, but if the
personal service route is handled well, it’s a small negative in my book, not
a dealbreaker.

~~~
nottorp
Oh wait.

>They will make a retention offer but will not do things like hang up on you,
REQUIRE YOU TO HAVE MOVED OUT OF YOUR AREA

You're stating this like it's a normal requirement for canceling
subscriptions. I understand you're praising WSJ for not doing that but...

Do you accept treatment like this in the US? Are press subscriptions a
lifetime commitment over there? Do I need to indenture my firstborn to any
magazine that I subscribe to as well?

~~~
aroman
I live in the US and have never had any of the experiences you're mentioning.
The conditions the person you replied to mentioned are not typical here.

