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Jan Koum to leave after broad clashes with Facebook
- adventured 9y agoKoum has also liquidated the bulk of his Facebook position at this point. He's sitting on $8.4 billion in cash and $2 billion in remaining Facebook stock (he previously gave 12.6 million shares of Facebook to the Silicon Valley Community Foundation; worth $2.1 billion at today's price). Looking forward to what he does next. He certainly has the resources to do almost anything that catches his attention.
- crunchlibrarian 9y agoThese sorts of disagreements and exits happen all the time, but they are usually kept quiet and excuses are made. It's unusual to see this done quite publicly, apparently hand in hand with a journalist. I'm guessing he wanted to spark some debate.
- saagarjha 9y agoOf course, that's why the article was written. Here's the first line in it: > The billionaire chief executive of WhatsApp, Jan Koum, is planning to leave the company after clashing with its parent, Facebook, over the popular messaging service’s strategy and Facebook’s attempts to use its personal data and weaken its encryption, according to people familiar with internal discussions. So obviously it's meant to spark some sort of discussion on Facebook's attempts to remove security features so that it can monetize the app better.
- zapita 9y agoI don't see any evidence that Koum collaborated with the author of this piece. It's more likely that the article is entirely based on leaks and rumors, like the majority of Silicon Valley gossip articles.
- mark212 9y agoIt could also be a "no really, I'm leaving" announcement to end debate internally. He leaks it publicly and baldly and now there's no going back.
- JumpCrisscross 9y ago> Facebook’s attempts to use its personal data and weaken its encryption What’s this about weakening WhatsApp’s encryption?
- mundo 9y agoYeah, the article is super-vague about that: > In 2016, WhatsApp added end-to-end encryption, a security feature that scrambles people’s messages so that outsiders, including WhatsApp’s owners, can’t read them. Facebook executives wanted to make it easier for businesses to use its tools, and WhatsApp executives believed that doing so would require some weakening of its encryption. Not sure what this means. "Weaken" is kind of a confusing term, FB either has access to the message content to feed in to adsense's gaping maw or they don't.
- JumpCrisscross 9y ago> FB either has access to the message content to feed in to adsense's gaping maw or they don't There is a lot of grey area in between. How metadata is treated, whether encryption is turned on by default, what about the messages are encrypted, how they're encrypted, et cetera.
- Pyxl101 9y agoI don't understand why allowing businesses to use WhatsApp would require weakening its encryption. Can anyone parse the meaning of this, or speculate about why that would be necessary? It makes no sense to me. Are they perhaps implying some kind of central analysis of sent messages for targeting purposes?
- jlarocco 9y agoMy guess is that Facebook wanted to build in some kind of MITM attack so that businesses could see a log of their employee messages.
- zaphar 9y agoIf I were to speculate, and it would definitely be speculation, I would say it was adding some sort of key escrow for encrypted chats in the Enterprise. It's not uncommon for escrow to be a requirement in Enterprise encryption products.
- esbafb8 9y agoThis is no joke. It reminds me of when Skype used to be secure then somehow a backdoor was introduced following (or before?) the acquisition by Microsoft. History repeats itself, and humans have yet to learn from the past.
- tptacek 9y agoIn this case, strong E2E encryption was introduced after the acquisition (though presumably it had been in the works previously).
- esbafb8 9y agoOK! I was referring to this and it was before the acquisition indeed: https://news.softpedia.com/news/Skype-Provided-Backdoor-Access-to-the-NSA-Before-Microsoft-Takeover-NYT-362384.shtml https://news.softpedia.com/news/Skype-Provided-Backdoor-Acce...
- zero_intp 9y agoPardon my skepticism, but Microsoft has most definitely advertised to the TLAs that Skype communications are available for review.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- saagarjha 9y agoIt might be pertinent to see Koum leaving as a sort of canary. Koum promised to keep WhatsApp secure, and it's clear that with his departure he feels that he can no longer do this anymore.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- untog 9y agoIt might be. But it's also just over four years since Facebook bought WhatsApp. Were his FB shares on a four year vesting plan? I don't mean to be too negative, but I'm still very disappointed they sold to FB in the first place. There was no need to do so - WhatsApp's business was sustainable. And surely they must have considered this possibility?
- colmvp 9y agoI mean... 19 Billion... it's hard to pass that up.
- KSS42 9y agoFB tripled in the last 4 years. So, a 4 year vesting period would have been a good thing for Koum!
- untog 9y agoOh, I know. On a human level I can't blame anyone for making that choice. But then exiting with a big pile of cash while complaining about what Facebook is doing feels a bit... eh.
- jonny_eh 9y agoWhat else should he do? He took billions of $ along with a promise that he'll keep control. FB lied, so now he's leaving. I can't blame him here. Money can easily buy a bit of naïvety.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- muglug 9y ago> Eighteen months later, the promise not to share data evaporated. Facebook pushed WhatsApp to change its terms of service to give the social network access to the phone numbers of WhatsApp users, along with analytics such as what devices and operating systems people were using. Hmm... doesn't sound like the Facebook we all know and love.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- amasad 9y agoHe's actually already left as per his Facebook post: https://www.facebook.com/jan.koum/posts/10156227307390011 https://www.facebook.com/jan.koum/posts/10156227307390011
- a_d 9y agoSmall tribute to Jan: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14249880 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14249880
- Flenser 9y agoThe first comment I see is: > Mark Zuckerberg > Jan: I will miss working so closely with you. I'm grateful for everything you've done to help connect the world, and for everything you've taught me, including about encryption and its ability to take power from centralized systems and put it back in people's hands. Those values will always be at the heart of WhatsApp. Given what's discussed below about the business wanting to introduce features for Enterprise that would weaken encryption it's interesting to see this. Although Zuck only talks about encryption, not e2e encryption. It also strikes me as if he's talking as much to people viewing it as to Jan, and Jan didn't reply, whereas he has with other comments.
- some_account 9y agoIt's because it's corporate billshit coming from master sociopath Mark Zuckerberg.
- btbuildem 9y agoUgh. Another one bites the dust, I guess.
- justonepost 9y agoNews at a 11, Startup founder leaves a year or two after being acquired by much larger company. Say it ain't so.
- andr 9y agoThis is huge. While WhatsApp is not as big in the US, it is the de facto messaging platform in most of Europe and even Latin America. It uses the Signal encryption protocol. If this fact changes, people deserve to know. It feels like there have been surprisingly few internal leaks from Facebook employees, compared to the rest of FAANG. Now would be a good time for someone to blow the whistle.
- saagarjha 9y agoNot to mention much of Southeast Asia as well.
- dominotw 9y agoAnd in south america. Basically in all 'emerging markets'.
- tim333 9y agoWhatsapp made a smart decision to make a java app that worked on non smartphones. Hence it being app of choice in places where many people didn't have smartphones.
- komali2 9y agoPerhaps because Line and WeChat reign supreme there?
- saagarjha 9y agoI was generally referring to the Indian subcontinent and neighboring areas. I'd say Line and WeChat are more popular in eastern Asia.
- philliphaydon 9y agoI have more people on LINE in singapore than what’s app. People love stickers. Thailand/Cambodia seem to use line more too. These are SEA countries. The main things I use what’s app for is when delivery Drivers or companies message me to say they are on the way or check if I’m home so they change deliver.
- paxy 9y agoWorth noting that the other founder, Brian Acton, already left Facebook last September (and in fact tweeted #DeleteFacebook recently), so it is pretty obvious that the relationship between the two groups has been less than perfect. I'm pretty certain that they didn't want to sell WhatsApp in the first place, and knew the privacy risks that having Facebook as an owner would bring...but of course $19 billion is enough to settle a lot of issues. I personally consider WhatsApp to have the same level of security/privacy as Messenger. If you need E2E encrypted messaging use Signal instead.
- walterbell 9y agoWith that money, a new messenger can be created, preferably one that uses an open E2E-encrypted protocol that supports decentralization.
- mark212 9y agowhich seems precisely why Acton donated $50 million to the Signal Foundation and is taking an active role in a parallel for-profit entity.
- cevn 9y agoWhy not just use Signal? Didn't moxie implement the e2e in whatsapp anyways?
- saagarjha 9y agoWhile Signal is a good start, you do lose the advantage WhatsApp: its entrenched market dominance and network effect.
- derrasterpunkt 9y agoMarket dominance and network effects come and go.
- randomsearch 9y agoNetwork effects with messaging are weaker. If you convince just one of your friends to hop onto signal, it can be useful - make it someone you message a lot and go from there. A few months ago I had just one person I used it for. Now it’s in double figures and growing. Every hacker who gives a damn should install signal and encourage others to use it. There’s just no downside.
- submeta 9y ago> Koum and Acton were openly disparaging of the targeted advertising model. In a WhatsApp blog post in 2012, they wrote that “no one wakes up excited to see more advertising; no one goes to sleep thinking about the ads they’ll see tomorrow.” They described online advertising as “a disruption to aesthetics, an insult to your intelligence, and the interruption of your train of thought.” So very true.
- ggg9990 9y agoBut their WhatsApp business model was not self sufficient. They were charging $1/year which is less than the operating cost of the servers and bandwidth.
- saagarjha 9y ago> They were charging $1/year which is less than the operating cost of the servers and bandwidth Are you sure of this? If they have a billion users, they're earning a billion dollars a year off of this. Considering that they don't need to store messages for an extended period of time, or run analytics, do they really need all that much?
- downandout 9y agoMost people weren't actually paying. Apparently, the vast majority of users were granted free lifetime memberships (see comments here [1] and article here [2]). When Facebook acquired it, it only had $10 million in annual revenue [3] against 450 million users. Clearly, most users were jumping on board during times when it was made available for free. [1] http://www.idownloadblog.com/2013/07/16/whatsapp-goes-free/ http://www.idownloadblog.com/2013/07/16/whatsapp-goes-free/ [2] http://www.iphoneincanada.ca/recommendations/whatsapp-messenger-is-currently-free-in-the-app-store/ http://www.iphoneincanada.ca/recommendations/whatsapp-messen... [3] https://www.recode.net/2014/10/28/11632404/facebook-paid-19-billion-for-whatsapp-which-lost-138-million-last-year https://www.recode.net/2014/10/28/11632404/facebook-paid-19-...
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- dep_b 9y ago> Facebook’s attempts to use its personal data and weaken its encryption Finally they found a way to start me looking into alternatives. Spoken messages was already a regression for me, then they added a terrible VoIP service people accidentally kept using but those were just minor niggles. This is the point where I might start thinking into bailing out.
- dapreja 9y agoI really hope signal vets a UI redesign (at least for android)
- cryodesign 9y agoWhat wrong with the UI in your view?
- ggg9990 9y agoActually, I’m surprised a guy with $8 billion in his pocket worked a day job at Facebook this long.
- stevenwoo 9y agoOthers have speculated he was waiting to be fully vested in stock options. The other possibility that I don't know if true or not was perhaps he had a contract that he did not want to break - I have worked at a startup that got bought and they fired the founders as soon as their contracts were up.
- paxy 9y agoThere are always contracts and vesting periods.
- shamino 9y agoDo I think it's noble that Koum is leaving because of his convictions? Yes. Do I think this is a good sign for Facebook's stock? Yes.
- saagarjha 9y ago> Do I think this is a good sign for Facebook's stock? Yes. Why? Is having a person on the board that provides a moral check on the others a hazard to Facebook's stock price?
- shamino 9y agoIt can be. Now they can start advertising on WhatsApp and begin to release that revenue giant.
- saagarjha 9y agoWith recent regulation, it might be better in some scenarios to not push advertising on some platforms, or at least have some sort of pushback before it's implemented so that it's done in a way that doesn't open them up to fines.
- rokhayakebe 9y agoIs having a person on the board that provides a moral check on the others a hazard to Facebook's stock price Absolutely. You and I can agree it is a good social thing, but when it comes to revenue and growth that can be a huge impediment.
- kentosi 9y agoI'm saddened by this new, but more so for Android. WhatsApp was my main counterpoint for anyone using iMessage as a trump card for getting an iPhone with its end-to-end encryption and the status indicator that the other user is typing something.
- pmontra 9y agoI guess that people buy iPhones because they want iPhones, not because of iMessage, at least here in Europe. If they would insist in using only iMessage they would message only a few of their friends. Everybody I know uses WhatsApp, both on iPhones and Androids and only one person ever bothered to confirm the certificate for the end to end encryption. We did it because both of us are tech guys. It's definitely not at the top of the priorities of the average person.
- abhishekjha 9y ago>ever bothered to confirm the certificate for the end to end encryption. Wait, you need to do that manually? Most of times whatsapp just tells me that somebody's keys has changed and that's all.
- pmontra 9y agoYou have to verify the key. In the chat with a friend, tap the three dots menu, View contact, Encryption. You see that the description ends with Tap to verify. Tap. You get a QR code that your friend must scan. Now you know that you're encrypting the messages with your keys and nobody is MITMing you. You have to do it again when somebody reistalls whatsapp or moves to anothwr phone. If it's you, you have to do it for everyone. Guess why so few people does it. Also, the GUI does very little to direct people to verify the keys and confirm that the communication channel is safe.
- cft 9y agoUse Telegram. Russia blocked it since they refused to hand over private keys to the government. Interestingly they never blocked WhatsApp.
- cft 9y ago4 year vesting anniversary seems to have been in Feb 2018
- vthallam 9y agoI mean what did they expect when they were selling it to Facebook? It's far too compelling for facebook to not to milk Whatsapp users/data in some way. There could have been some balance of power if the 2-3 most used forms of communication across the world are not under a single company which loves advt revenues.
- golemiprague 9y agoI see all those discussions but nobody explains the alternatives, how do you make money on such a platform without using user data? More specifically, how do you make money in the growing stage when you want to provide it for free?
- stjohnswarts 9y agoI predict they want to ad advertising but won't break the encryption for snooping purposes. If they hook it to the FB account they can just use the ad preferences that their AI picks out from FB interactions. Even if not everyone has FB account, a majority probably do.
- arikrak 9y agoFacebook spent close to $22B on WhatsApp in total so they can't just keep it forever as a zero-revenue messaging service. Either they'll put ads in it or they'll try to tack on other services, like WeChat does.
- GFischer 9y agoThere are millions of companies waiting for WhatsApp to have a B2C API to spam users. Every company I've worked for wanted this.
- neerkumar 9y agoSad news. WhatApp really feels to me as the future of social networks and its massive numbers tend to prove it. 1:1 chat and phone calls to communicate to your friends, groups to keep in touch with people you are less close to, and status in the extremely rare case that you want to briefly show something to all of your contacts (but without all the problems of FB: your contacts are all people you actually know fairly well, no like and similar bullshits that create so many problems, no pictures stored forever, etc.). At the same time, I already saw many people switching to telegram. It seems impossible for whatsapp to decline given its current numbers, but who knows really.
- s73v3r_ 9y agoIsn't that AOL Instant Messenger, then, just on phones?
- yazaddaruvala 9y agoFWIW, as a protest, I always report Facebook ads in Messenger. You should do it too :)
- perl4ever 9y agoThe only Facebook ads that really upset me is when it says my FB friend "liked" something. Facebook should not use a "like" as an endorsement like that. Apart from the fact that it could be an accidental click, liking a particular post or event or thing is completely different from endorsing the company in general for all time.
- a_d 9y agoIf true, and still a big if, since the journalist seems to be conjecturing -- this might have implications for Facebook's future acquisitions. Acquiring social networks that get to scale is an integral part of Zuck's strategy. It is a fairly smart strategy since one company cannot successfully lead or copy all the innovation - and social networks are very "taste-dependent" products. Zuck understands that Facebook is a big incumbent, and as with any incumbent there would be 'anti-incumbent' products. He was just willing to buy these products without too much fuss. His willingness to overpay for these companies has been a part of a long-term dominance strategy. Maybe he has one or two misses like Snap; but by and large, his sense for "pricing" these companies and a no-nonsense "Corp Dev" approach could be thought of as a competitive advantage (plus he has proven that he can do it repeatably). The lawyers don't get involved until much later - he "leads" from the front when doing these deals. It is not very common in large-company-land. If Jan Koum, who is very highly respected (he is truly a no-bullshit product/management person) leaves for the "wrong" reasons, it might have long-term implications for other companies that Zuck wants to buy in the future. Thus leaving an opening in the market for an 'anti-incumbent' offering to thrive.
- RestlessMind 9y agoI don't think a normal founder would refuse $19B acquisition offer - it is a very big number. I don't know anything about Jan Koum, but he has already pocketed his billions. So whatever signal he gives by leaving is pretty clouded.
- joering2 9y agoThe old saying goes: "if you can put a price on your morals, then most likely you didn't have any morals in the first place"
- randomsearch 9y agoI understand your sentiment, but it isn’t just him he’s making the decision for - he would have turned down the money for his employees too. IMO that’s much harder to do than turning down more riches for yourself.
- onetimemanytime 9y ago>>“no one wakes up excited to see more advertising; no one goes to sleep thinking about the ads they’ll see tomorrow.” Fair, but where did that $19 BILLION came from? $19B for a company making $20m a year
- beagle3 9y agoThe company making $20m/year was seen as a threat by a bigger company making, at the time, $2000m/year. So the bigger company, worth something like $100B at the time, decided it was worth forking $19B to eliminate that threat. It's that simple.
- onetimemanytime 9y ago>>So the bigger company, worth something like $100B at the time, decided it was worth forking $19B to eliminate that threat. Missed the point. They hated ads but they got the money ads made possible. FB with no ads can't even pay for hosting
- Steeeve 9y agoIt's been what? 3 1/2 years? He was probably under contract to stay for 3 years and he now has a big pile of money and the power to do what he wants. So he gloriously exits on principal and plays hero for a day while thumbing his nose at the company that made him rich for the decisions that made him rich.
- confounded 9y agoWell... that’s what I’d do. What would you?
- Steeeve 9y agoI'd take a long hard look at myself, my current opportunity, and what I want to do. It would be hard to walk away from the opportunity to occasionally influence someone like Zuck, or the opportunity to occasionally influence the global end user base of Facebook. I'm not saying what he did is a bad thing. It's th human thing. More saying that his position isn't all that newsworthy. It's pretty easy to take a pot shot on your way out the door. If changing minds was his real goal, staying and making change happen from the inside is much more realistic.
- tgragnato 9y agoI get what you think. Although it’s near impossible to change things when you meet the combination of people who do not listen and money.
- tim333 9y agoWell, he could have just said so long, thanks for the cash, I'm off to get a big yacht. I think he does care about the stuff he's complaining about.
- liberte82 9y agoHe at least did the honorable thing by issuing a public warning on his way out. I bet the Facebooks learn from these experiences and start requiring NDAs for their acquisitions. Anyway, someone can just build another Whatsapp.
- itslennysfault 9y agoIs there any valid reason to use WhatsApp over Signal? I've been gradually trying to move my WhatsApp friends over to Signal so I can stop using a Facebook owned product. This news just reinforces my belief that I shouldn't trust any product owned by Facebook.
- confounded 9y agoOnly the user-base, and slicker UA/UX. If the people you want to chat to are happy moving, you’re all good. I’m in this position and haven’t had any problems.
- randomsearch 9y agoI’d say Signal has almost caught up with WhatsApp UX and is developing much faster, so it will overtake at some point (I’d say within a year).
- GFischer 9y agoTo make switching more enticing, it should have a killer feature that users care about. Feature parity isn't enough.
- confounded 9y agoEnough for what?
- rajacombinator 9y agoTaking a huge buyout then trashing your acquirer for PR points a few years later seems in poor taste. They knew exactly what they were getting into when they accepted the FB megabucks.
- s17n 9y agoPresumably he feels that Zuck is reneging on his verbal agreements made during the acquisition process. Speaking out publicly is the appropriate recourse.
- soziawa 9y agoZuck fucked them and the regulators over when he promised to keep WhatsApp independent. The sale would have never gone through if he hadn't promised that.
- zero_intp 9y agoThis is the truth, FB is being fined by EU regulators for dissembling.
- shubidubi 9y agoFacebook is in a really low point. All the recent privacy events and the fact that a 19B accusation fonder does not want to stay with them are red flags. My feed has become empty at the past months, fewer people are liking/commenting on my posts and I check my account much less than I used to be. I wonder how they gonna get out of this downward spiral before they become another Google+.
- batiudrami 9y agoIs the bad press actually costing them revenue though? News feed impressions are down sure, but revenue is up, and so are monthly active users. Google+ was never anything like Facebook. We don't have a fallen social network to compare Facebook to, because we have never had a social network as big or as intertwined in our lives as Facebook.
- isostatic 9y agoMySpace would be a closer analogy but still a couple of orders of magnitude off Geocities arguably suffered the same fate
- mankash666 9y agoWe ought to be practical here - Facebook is a for profit enterprise and WhatsApp was their most expensive purchased. They're obviously under investor pressure to make that a good buy.
- pritambarhate 9y agoIt's strange that WhatsApp hasn't launched micropayments, e-commerce and wallets yet. In India PayTM (https://paytm.com/ https://paytm.com/) has kind of won this space. Google has launched Tez (https://tez.google.com/ https://tez.google.com/). PayTM and Tez have given lots of cashback deals to people to install and keep the apps on their phones. WhatsApp is already there on everybody's phone. I have heard WeChat is doing something similar in China for a number of years already. I think WhatsApp is loosing a very good revenue opportunity by not moving quickly in this space. It gives them alternative business model too. Two main properties (FB and Instagram) depend on ads, WhatsApp can bring the revenue from wallets and e-commerce. I think it's better to have a diversified revenue model.
- sah2ed 9y agoI remember reading somewhere that they were trialing payments in a bid to monetize small businesses that have come to depend on their platform to reach customers. I believe this was in India or so. Anyway, they clearly are taking payments and India seriously as they still have some open positions: [0] Product Manager, Monetization https://www.whatsapp.com/join/?dept=product-management&id=a0I1H00000LC0BxUAL https://www.whatsapp.com/join/?dept=product-management&id=a0... [1] Head of India, WhatsApp https://www.whatsapp.com/join/?dept=whatsapp&id=a0I1H00000LJmwzUAD https://www.whatsapp.com/join/?dept=whatsapp&id=a0I1H00000LJ...
- tim333 9y agoI thought that too. I think I'd trust them more than paypal et al.
- TACIXAT 9y agoI want to build this payment system for the US so badly. I think all the major players are distracted by losing money on P2P transfers.
- anuraj 9y agoWhatsApp is much more monetizable than Facebook. It is a giant transaction switch that can become the biggest payment and commerce network on the planet. Zuckerberg would do well to unwind and eventually shutdown Facebook which will anyway die a natural death and concentrate on WhatsApp.
- unlimit 9y agoI find it very naive that Mr Koum had hoped it would be otherwise. I was just a matter of time.
- cft 9y ago4 year FB stock vesting anniversary was in Feb 2018
- Moodles 9y agoAren't vesting schedules typically quarterly incremental rather than everything after four years though? If that's the only evidence of him delaying his morality for financial reasons, I think that's pretty harsh.
- simonebrunozzi 9y agoHe probably got a very custom deal.
- banachtarski 9y agoI understand this goes against the current ethos but honestly, you can't provide an essentially free service and expect things to just keep running sustainably. Nobody has proven that a social network can be run successfully without advertising and analyzing user data. I wonder what Mr. Koum offered as a counter-proposal for keeping the lights on at what should be an exorbitant cost with their userbase. My guess is, not enough, if anything. Note: I do not work for facebook, nor am I huge on any social media, although I am a "light" user of both facebook and twitter.
- ssss11 9y ago...selling advertising via selling your users’ data for analysis is the easiest way to pay for the services but it’s at the cost of the users‘ basic privacy. There must be a better way (albeit more difficult for the software company). How about users actually paying for it? I’d pay a small amount
- banachtarski 9y agoOk WHY then, has nobody tried said better way. Why won't anyone invest in it? The point I'm trying to make is that it's unproven. Maybe you're willing to pay a small amount (and what amount is that exactly). What about the rest of the world? I think people "want" there to be an easy solution to this and are just pointing out problems without considering whether such a solution even exists.
- zero_intp 9y agosignal?
- banachtarski 9y agoWhat about it? They are funded by non-profit. Unless you're suggesting you're going to get anything near the feature set of current for-profit social networks. No major common features = no adoption by the general public. I'm talking face filters, gifs, emojis, stickers, videos, reactions, and the list goes on.
- tonylemesmer 9y agoPresumably he's entered some kind of non-compete clause in his contract with FB. Great opportunity for someone to start a competitor no?
- timvisee 9y agoThe article mentions that privacy has always been a big priority as Koum says. I can't take that seriously though, as things like encryption were horribly bad in the beginning. In fact, there was no encryption at all. I can't call that "privacy focused".
- reitanqild 9y agoWell. As much as I don't like what WhatsApp has become under Facebook I think you are unfair to them in the same way that I think people are unfair to Telegram today. Early Whatsapp still respected privacy. They didn't datamine us or spam us. And they where working long term to make it better. I've no doubt encryption has been worked on well before they were bought. Same with Telegram now: they seem to be working hard to provide a good messenger. Their crypto is not as good as Signals (AFAIK) but unlike new WhatsApp they don't plan to datamine me for profit. And I think they are working hard behind the scenes to make encryption even better and possibly decentralize the serber infrastructure.
- igravious 9y agoIn the interests of competition and data protection Facebook should never have been allowed to swallow Instagram and WhatsApp and Microsoft should have been prevented from acquiring Skype and LinkedIn. Network effects are too strong online to allow mergers of this sort and the potential for abuse too great from both state and non-state actors, not to mention invasion of privacy issues. The bar for mergers and acquisitions ought to be way higher in this domain. If regulation does not fix this I believe these tech companies ought to be divested of these products. Ultimately paid federated services and free & open source software are the only true countermeasures to these very real threats. I would nearly go so far as to say that we should all chip in to make this become reality.
- talltimtom 9y agoLots of people have bee saying that WhatsApp was a better alternative to messenger because of better privacy. Looks like Facebook is listening and want to “solve” that issue.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]