
WhatsApp founder: I sold out, but I walked away from $850M when I quit FB - startupflix
https://boingboing.net/2018/09/27/broken-promises.html/amp
======
josho
Instead of an article about an article the real interview is on Forbes
[https://www.forbes.com/sites/parmyolson/2018/09/26/exclusive...](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/#3632c18b3f20)

~~~
titanomachy
> 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.”

Wow. That's rather troubling.

EDIT: WhatsApp still claims to use end-to-end encryption. It was probably just
a case of Sandberg not knowing the answer.

~~~
warp_factor
To be honest, I'm not convinced she knows the technicality behind e2e
encryption. I never understood what is the value she is bringing to facebook
(beside marketing herself very well)

~~~
titanomachy
I think you're right, actually. The WhatsApp UI still claims it's end-to-end
encrypted and has a key verification feature.

~~~
ThetaOneOne
I wouldn’t put bald face lieing beyond facebook, but this doesn’t seem like
something important enough for facebook to care about.

~~~
dymk
You have any proof to back that up, or are you just going to spread FUD and
hope the echochamber agrees with you?

------
denzil_correa
WhatsApp (and Instagram) itself was an acquisition via surreptitious data
harvesting through Onavo - the free VPN app meant to "protect" users browsing
data [0, 1].

> Facebook uses an internal database to track rivals, including young startups
> performing unusually well, people familiar with the system say. The database
> stems from Facebook’s 2013 acquisition of a Tel Aviv-based startup, Onavo,
> which had built an app that secures users’ privacy by routing their traffic
> through private servers. The app gives Facebook an unusually detailed look
> at what users collectively do on their phones, these people say. The tool
> shaped Facebook’s decision to buy WhatsApp and informed its live-video
> strategy, they say. Facebook used Onavo to build its early-bird tool that
> tips it off to promising services and that helped Facebook home in on
> Houseparty.

Apple has now forced Facebook to remove it from the App Store [2]. I'm not
sure if data harvesting has stopped. It might have even increased.

[0] [https://outline.com/tkzkVb](https://outline.com/tkzkVb)

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14970877](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14970877)

[2] [https://www.theverge.com/2018/8/22/17771298/facebook-
onavo-p...](https://www.theverge.com/2018/8/22/17771298/facebook-onavo-
protect-apple-app-store-pulled-privacy-concerns)

~~~
kopo
Just pointlessly trying to exist way past its date of expiry.

Facebook reminds me of Edison pushing his DC power distribution model on
everyone. Telling the world nothing else will work. Trying to get them to
build an Edison Power station every second block. Coasting on momentum built
and wasting everyone's time. Spending huge resources buying
out/maligning/litigating the competition. But it all fails. Few people ever
needed DC power distribution. At the end of that story Edison says after a
series of humilations in public and finally loosing control of his company "I
have come to the conclusion that I never did know anything about Electricity".

That moment for Mr.Zuckerberg is fast approaching.

------
titanomachy
I'm impressed by Acton and Koum. They built a $22bn company, scaled to
hundreds of millions of users, became the dominant chat app in the world...
all with a tiny team of engineers. Before Facebook acquisition, they were
laser-focused on quality and infrastructure instead of gimmicks.

Maybe they made a mistake by selling, but I wouldn't have turned down total
financial freedom for me and my family forever.

Whatever. I'll switch to Signal, and watch out for the next thing that these
guys work on.

~~~
ThetaOneOne
No doubt, A small team can sometimes accomplish amazing things when they don’t
have oversight. It’s too bad that the quality will probably stay stagnate.

------
antisocial
I hope not to see any moral policing here for selling out. It is difficult to
walk away from that kind of money.

Hope not to see indifference caused by false equivalencies.

False equivalencies suck out oxygen and leave no room for nuances or
discussions.

I am encouraging my social network to switch from Whatsapp to Signal, but I'll
go cold turkey whether they switch or not.

~~~
degenerate
Anyone dissing Acton for 'selling out' is the biggest hypocrite imaginable.
You. Would. Too. And even afterward, he fought as long as he reasonably could
to keep the promises offered by FB a reality. Once that became too much of a
burden for him, he finally gave up and walked away. I think he put in a great
fight.

~~~
wepple
So I won’t diss him for selling out for two reasons: A) Id possibly so some
questionable things for $1b and B) he looks like he did put up a fight.

That said, we all lost when WhatsApp was acquired by FB. I don’t think I stand
a chance migrating friends off the platform, so despite closing my FB account
a long time ago, they’ve still got me. So should we so quickly say “it’s fine,
we’d all do the same”? It’s fine to not want to be a hypocrite, but isn’t this
an enormously broken model we could be critical of?

The tech youth of today mostly dream of starting up some fancy company,
selling out for billions, and throwing their users under the bus en masse, no?

------
mhjas
I just don't get the narrative. I can appreciate walking away from, and not
being part of, something you don't like. But at that point the damage was
already done. Seemingly they main thing that was achieved here was making the
cost of the acquisition $850M cheaper for Facebook.

~~~
wepple
I read the $850m being well after acquisition. It was an attempt at hush
money, and he didn’t sign on. He’s a multi-billionaire, and values being able
to speak opening over a bit more money.

~~~
timerol
In support of that point, from the article: "He also reveals that when he left
the company, he declined an offere [sic] of $850,000,000 in unvested stock in
exchange for signing a nondisclosure agreement that would have kept him from
discussing any of this."

------
interfixus
Always strikes me as somewhat amusing - or not really - how someone like mr.
Doctorow apparently feels a pressing need to publish under full live Google
supervision, here in the guise of amp, fonts, and gstatic.

------
fipple
If he felt so bad be should have stayed and gotten the money for charity.

~~~
auggierose
My thoughts too. Get the money, and do something useful with it. It was an
expensive and still pretty meaningless gesture. Now, maybe he didn’t want to
spend more time at FB and bought his freedom with that money. Perfectly fine,
but please don’t spin it like some morally applaudable act.

~~~
mtgx
He already did. He'd gotten a few billion dollars out of the acquisition by
then. He invested $50 million of that into the Signal Foundation, and I would
hope he will invest more in the future.

~~~
fipple
Even taking the $850m and setting it on fire is $850m that Facebook doesn’t
have to buy the next Instagram.

------
garryterm
Yup, you sold out, made billions, secured your life, then bit the hand that
feeds you and then pretend to stand for something. Donate the entire pay off
from Facebook to privacy groups and then I will listen to you.

------
lefstathiou
I have a theory: I believe tweeting #deletefacebook was a firable offense and,
upon being fired, he lost whatever vesting remained. He didnt knowingly do
this. Almost every company has similar terms in place. I certainly wouldnt
hand over another billion dollars to someone who did that my company after I
paid him $15bn.

~~~
warp_factor
Acton was not fired, he tweeted #deletefacebook after he already quit:

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

