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WhatsApp co-founder accuses Facebook of trading privacy for revenue

94 points by uladzislau 8y ago

rock_hard 8y ago
The people who take money just to then talk shit about the people whom their got their money from...that’s really the lowest class of human being. I mean would you want to work with such person?
- ggm 8y ago
  But what if he is right?
  - rock_hard 8y ago
    Then why not return the money or burn it in public protest? If I would feel like him I would not want that money...I would want to put some weight behind my critism...
- bleriot 8y ago
  I’d think that the person who abuses customer privacy would be much lower class than that. I’d much rather work with someone like the WhatsApp founders than a Zuckerberg.
- erikpukinskis 8y ago
  That doesn't make sense to me. You're saying if you sell someone something, you have a lifelong moral obligation to never criticize them? You must have meant a weaker version of that but just the general form of it doesn't feel right.
cuddlecake 8y ago
I just want to say, if I were in his position, I would also trade my company for sweet millions of dollars. But at least I would not constantly call out the people I sold it to, as if my words had any meaning at that point. Also, it's frustrating to me, to see how it's seemingly impossible to care about the users AND have enough users bringing in revenue at the same time so that you are never in a position where big companies try to blackmail you with sweetsane amounts of money into giving them access to data. Edit: After reading the responses, I must correct myself. The turmoil within the human soul is much more nuanced, rendering "stop flame, whin0r" an inadequate response. The only thing I know is that I'd probably have done the same, as I reckon most would have.
- derefr 8y ago
  I see nothing hypocritical about good people taking payment from evil people. “Payment” means that the resources of the payer go down, and the resources of the payee go up. Now Facebook have less money that they can use to influence the world in stupid/evil ways, and the WhatsApp founders have more money they can use to influence the world in good ways. And, in exchange, since Facebook now owns the service of WhatsApp, they have the adopted duty of popularizing it—a service that inherently resists the kind of centralized analytical approaches Facebook uses to make money, and steals users away from Facebook in ways that makes it harder for Facebook to track those same isers. Win/win for the WhatsApp founders’ perspective; lose/lose from Facebook’s perspective. It’s a wonder they went for it. (It’s sort of like if Google were to acquire Brave: all they’d get is a browser that steals Chrome users and inherently prevents Google from tracking them, that nobody would accept if it was turned into not-that, because that’s its whole thing.)
  - ggm 8y ago
    What they do with the money would be interesting. I suspect some of it will go back into things I value in secure crypto and interpersonal communications. Or open source. Even Andreessen did some good with his filthy lucre.
    - turkeytotal 8y ago
      Brian has done that with Signal Foundation: https://signal.org/blog/signal-foundation/ https://signal.org/blog/signal-foundation/
      - ggm 8y ago
        Hooray! I use signal. So I'm benefiting.
  - Zanni 8y ago
    It really doesn't though. Facebook paid for WhatsApp because it was worth more to them than money. Their resources and influence have increased.
walrus01 8y ago
The irony of this being published on The Daily Mail, one of the English language publishing world's absolute shoddiest sensationalist tabloids.
- ggm 8y ago
  Yes. I doubt they understand the mindset of somebody who strive to write secure communications and then sold out to an avowed 'privacy is dead' company. A mindset I also fail to understand entirely but I suspect differently to the paper.
- ddebernardy 8y ago
  It's not. This is just a reblog without attribution of news that had been circulating for 3 days now. The Stanford event where he said that appears to have occurred on Wednesday. https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/ryanmac/whatsapp-brian-acton-delete-facebook-stanford-lecture https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/ryanmac/whatsapp-brian-...
- AnabeeKnox 8y ago
  Daily Mail is a bad newspaper but it's nowhere near being "world's absolute shoddiest sensationalist tabloids". If you don't live in the UK then I think you have no idea how bad many newspapers are in other countries. Specifically the Daily Mail has to abide by the UK press regulation body, which limits its ability to publish fake stories. Try travelling abroad and seeing what some non-UK newspapers are like!
spinach 8y ago
A product that is 'free' for it's users from a company that wants to be extremely profitable seems to be a fundamentally flawed business plan.
jaabe 8y ago
I installed signal, only three of my contacts use it. One is a journalist, one is an artist/designer who does a lot in the crypto space and the last is a fellow enterprise architect. The first two are also active WhatsApp users. I’m as concerned about Facebook as everyone else, but you can’t seem to get around the fact that it’s the modern yellow pages. It’s the only platform,l everyone has, and it’s just incredible hard to get around that.
- ggm 8y ago
  I use signal with far more people. and I continue to suggest my WhatsApp relationships to move over but I also use WhatsApp because of weight of numbers. But for lasting interpersonal comunications I would like to use signal more. Their model makes it harder to have multiple devices in one account id as "me" and seem to make it hard to recruit non SIM enabled tablets and laptops.
- tluyben2 8y ago
  I did the same thing; I had more luck installing Telegram after that. WhatsApp works well (not really; the 'phone always has to be connected' thing is extremely annoying, but as in; everyone has it) still but we definitely need alternatives. I managed to not use Facebook for years now; I have an account but did not login for years. Unfortunately everyone has Messenger and a subset of them has WhatsApp (in my circles) and a very small subset has Telegram; Signal I really hear nothing about but the offering sounds compelling. In parts of Asia Wechat is mandatory; I know it's not a popular (in the west) opinion, but I find Wechat the most user friendly out of them all; it always works (even on incredibly bad and dropping connections) and it just has everything under one roof. But for obvious reasons it is also the worst offering. Cannot be avoided in China though.
- on_and_off 8y ago
  I tried Signal but I was disappointed by its UX. It is not horrible, but a bit below the other messaging apps I have been using. Which is an issue : hard to push my non techies relatives to move to something that they will find harder to use. I have one contact on Signal btw.
ddebernardy 8y ago
Better article on the same topic from 3 days ago: https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/ryanmac/whatsapp-brian-acton-delete-facebook-stanford-lecture https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/ryanmac/whatsapp-brian-...
tannhaeuser 8y ago
Should be pretty concerning coming from an insider. Now could we finally campaign for public authorities and eg. German state TV broadcasters (ZDF) to #deletefacebook?
- erikpukinskis 8y ago
  You want public authorities to delete their Facebook accounts?
laurynas-s 8y ago
With the proposed 1$/yr/user it is going to take around 19 years to become profitable (with 1bn paid users). Facebook obviously wants a return earlier. The founder did take those billions, so not sure what he was expecting to happen, ads looks like the only business model to turn profit quickly in this sort of business. Besides, there are so many people using WhatsApp in developing countries that wouldn't pay if they can get something similar for free and competition in chat apps is big.
- em500 8y ago
  > ads looks like the only business model to turn profit quickly in this sort of business. Tencent makes relatively little from ads in Wechat. They earn most from games and payment fees.
  - scarface74 8y ago
    Because selling loot boxes and other in app consumables is so much more ethical....
- dtech 8y ago
  I never understand why ads and subscription fee needs to be an exclusive or for how the big players monetize. I'd happily give Google $5/month for Gmail, $10/month for YouTube (I already do), $10/month for google search etc or $40/month for their complete package if they remove ads and respect privacy then. It's less than other "semi-essential" services I have to use like my ISP or car and if they make more than that of me from advertisements the advertising/marketing market must be bonkers.
  - hgjwq 8y ago
    If you can afford $40/month to use Google, then they can make much more than that simply showing you ads.
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
Zombiethrowaway 8y ago
The minute you take investors money, whether seed, convertible debt, series A, then you are not the only boss anymore. You KNOW you will not be able to be independant and stick it to the man. That's a very important decision, very early. And once you make it, you can't change it. The decision to agree to sell to FB was made when they took their first seed money.
banachtarski 8y ago
I'm sure the hivemind will downvote this to oblivion but when I see this sort of thing, my gut reaction is that the communication is so dramatic and such an attention grab... As an aside, given the actual events that led up to FB getting the negative limelight, it seems like the ire IMO be directed at the transmission of propaganda/lies via ads, not privacy.
kemyd 8y ago
I remember his words from an interview "I sold the privacy of my users for a huge profit. I made a decision that compromised my principles, and I must live with that every day." This guy should have his own character in the next season of Silicon Valley series. Give your billions to the poor and move on you poor guy
- iKevinShah 8y ago
  > Give your billions to the poor and move on you poor guy How exactly is gonna help the people and the guy? It's not that people are not gonna be tracked by tech giants after he donates his billions or something.
  - pmart123 8y ago
    Honestly, I kind of agree. If he feels so bad about it, donate the money somewhere. Right now, he is having his cake and eating it too.
  - brador 8y ago
    He could invest the billions into making viable alternatives that respect user privacy.
    - seba_dos1 8y ago
      As Conversations showed in the XMPP land, just a single full-time developer paid from his work on the client can make a huge difference. The foundations are strong (XMPP and Matrix), what you need now is some resources. XSF is notoriously understaffed.
- scarface74 8y ago
  What he think was going to happen when he sold to a company that made its money by advertising based on user’s personal information? He’s either naive or disingenuous.
baxtr 8y ago
Interesting article. But there is no real reason why to leave Facebook. I get the whole privacy thing but that’s nothing new, is it?
ykevinator 8y ago
Vanity platform users get what they deserve.
jmsflknr 8y ago
Earlier discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19385516 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19385516
notacoward 8y ago
This is how most people resolve cognitive dissonance. He wants the money and a clear conscience about the decision that brought it. The only way he can have both is if he'd been tricked, so even though that's not what happened that's the narrative he prefers. What he probably doesn't realize yet is that he has just created a new counterpoint to his perception of himself as an honest and ethical person. The cycle will continue until he learns to take responsibility for the moral consequences of his own actions. I wish him the best of luck on that journey.

94 points by uladzislau 8y ago

The people who take money just to then talk shit about the people whom their got their money from...that’s really the lowest class of human being. I mean would you want to work with such person?

ggm 8y ago
But what if he is right?
- rock_hard 8y ago
  Then why not return the money or burn it in public protest? If I would feel like him I would not want that money...I would want to put some weight behind my critism...
bleriot 8y ago
I’d think that the person who abuses customer privacy would be much lower class than that. I’d much rather work with someone like the WhatsApp founders than a Zuckerberg.
erikpukinskis 8y ago
That doesn't make sense to me. You're saying if you sell someone something, you have a lifelong moral obligation to never criticize them? You must have meant a weaker version of that but just the general form of it doesn't feel right.

cuddlecake 8y ago

I just want to say, if I were in his position, I would also trade my company for sweet millions of dollars. But at least I would not constantly call out the people I sold it to, as if my words had any meaning at that point. Also, it's frustrating to me, to see how it's seemingly impossible to care about the users AND have enough users bringing in revenue at the same time so that you are never in a position where big companies try to blackmail you with sweetsane amounts of money into giving them access to data. Edit: After reading the responses, I must correct myself. The turmoil within the human soul is much more nuanced, rendering "stop flame, whin0r" an inadequate response. The only thing I know is that I'd probably have done the same, as I reckon most would have.

derefr 8y ago
I see nothing hypocritical about good people taking payment from evil people. “Payment” means that the resources of the payer go down, and the resources of the payee go up. Now Facebook have less money that they can use to influence the world in stupid/evil ways, and the WhatsApp founders have more money they can use to influence the world in good ways. And, in exchange, since Facebook now owns the service of WhatsApp, they have the adopted duty of popularizing it—a service that inherently resists the kind of centralized analytical approaches Facebook uses to make money, and steals users away from Facebook in ways that makes it harder for Facebook to track those same isers. Win/win for the WhatsApp founders’ perspective; lose/lose from Facebook’s perspective. It’s a wonder they went for it. (It’s sort of like if Google were to acquire Brave: all they’d get is a browser that steals Chrome users and inherently prevents Google from tracking them, that nobody would accept if it was turned into not-that, because that’s its whole thing.)
- ggm 8y ago
  What they do with the money would be interesting. I suspect some of it will go back into things I value in secure crypto and interpersonal communications. Or open source. Even Andreessen did some good with his filthy lucre.
  - turkeytotal 8y ago
    Brian has done that with Signal Foundation: https://signal.org/blog/signal-foundation/ https://signal.org/blog/signal-foundation/
    - ggm 8y ago
      Hooray! I use signal. So I'm benefiting.
- Zanni 8y ago
  It really doesn't though. Facebook paid for WhatsApp because it was worth more to them than money. Their resources and influence have increased.

walrus01 8y ago

The irony of this being published on The Daily Mail, one of the English language publishing world's absolute shoddiest sensationalist tabloids.

ggm 8y ago
Yes. I doubt they understand the mindset of somebody who strive to write secure communications and then sold out to an avowed 'privacy is dead' company. A mindset I also fail to understand entirely but I suspect differently to the paper.
ddebernardy 8y ago
It's not. This is just a reblog without attribution of news that had been circulating for 3 days now. The Stanford event where he said that appears to have occurred on Wednesday. https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/ryanmac/whatsapp-brian-acton-delete-facebook-stanford-lecture https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/ryanmac/whatsapp-brian-...
AnabeeKnox 8y ago
Daily Mail is a bad newspaper but it's nowhere near being "world's absolute shoddiest sensationalist tabloids". If you don't live in the UK then I think you have no idea how bad many newspapers are in other countries. Specifically the Daily Mail has to abide by the UK press regulation body, which limits its ability to publish fake stories. Try travelling abroad and seeing what some non-UK newspapers are like!

spinach 8y ago

A product that is 'free' for it's users from a company that wants to be extremely profitable seems to be a fundamentally flawed business plan.

jaabe 8y ago

I installed signal, only three of my contacts use it. One is a journalist, one is an artist/designer who does a lot in the crypto space and the last is a fellow enterprise architect. The first two are also active WhatsApp users. I’m as concerned about Facebook as everyone else, but you can’t seem to get around the fact that it’s the modern yellow pages. It’s the only platform,l everyone has, and it’s just incredible hard to get around that.

ggm 8y ago
I use signal with far more people. and I continue to suggest my WhatsApp relationships to move over but I also use WhatsApp because of weight of numbers. But for lasting interpersonal comunications I would like to use signal more. Their model makes it harder to have multiple devices in one account id as "me" and seem to make it hard to recruit non SIM enabled tablets and laptops.
tluyben2 8y ago
I did the same thing; I had more luck installing Telegram after that. WhatsApp works well (not really; the 'phone always has to be connected' thing is extremely annoying, but as in; everyone has it) still but we definitely need alternatives. I managed to not use Facebook for years now; I have an account but did not login for years. Unfortunately everyone has Messenger and a subset of them has WhatsApp (in my circles) and a very small subset has Telegram; Signal I really hear nothing about but the offering sounds compelling. In parts of Asia Wechat is mandatory; I know it's not a popular (in the west) opinion, but I find Wechat the most user friendly out of them all; it always works (even on incredibly bad and dropping connections) and it just has everything under one roof. But for obvious reasons it is also the worst offering. Cannot be avoided in China though.
on_and_off 8y ago
I tried Signal but I was disappointed by its UX. It is not horrible, but a bit below the other messaging apps I have been using. Which is an issue : hard to push my non techies relatives to move to something that they will find harder to use. I have one contact on Signal btw.

ddebernardy 8y ago

Better article on the same topic from 3 days ago: https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/ryanmac/whatsapp-brian-acton-delete-facebook-stanford-lecture https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/ryanmac/whatsapp-brian-...

tannhaeuser 8y ago

Should be pretty concerning coming from an insider. Now could we finally campaign for public authorities and eg. German state TV broadcasters (ZDF) to #deletefacebook?

erikpukinskis 8y ago
You want public authorities to delete their Facebook accounts?

laurynas-s 8y ago

With the proposed 1$/yr/user it is going to take around 19 years to become profitable (with 1bn paid users). Facebook obviously wants a return earlier. The founder did take those billions, so not sure what he was expecting to happen, ads looks like the only business model to turn profit quickly in this sort of business. Besides, there are so many people using WhatsApp in developing countries that wouldn't pay if they can get something similar for free and competition in chat apps is big.

em500 8y ago
> ads looks like the only business model to turn profit quickly in this sort of business. Tencent makes relatively little from ads in Wechat. They earn most from games and payment fees.
- scarface74 8y ago
  Because selling loot boxes and other in app consumables is so much more ethical....
dtech 8y ago
I never understand why ads and subscription fee needs to be an exclusive or for how the big players monetize. I'd happily give Google $5/month for Gmail, $10/month for YouTube (I already do), $10/month for google search etc or $40/month for their complete package if they remove ads and respect privacy then. It's less than other "semi-essential" services I have to use like my ISP or car and if they make more than that of me from advertisements the advertising/marketing market must be bonkers.
- hgjwq 8y ago
  If you can afford $40/month to use Google, then they can make much more than that simply showing you ads.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]

Zombiethrowaway 8y ago

The minute you take investors money, whether seed, convertible debt, series A, then you are not the only boss anymore. You KNOW you will not be able to be independant and stick it to the man. That's a very important decision, very early. And once you make it, you can't change it. The decision to agree to sell to FB was made when they took their first seed money.

banachtarski 8y ago

I'm sure the hivemind will downvote this to oblivion but when I see this sort of thing, my gut reaction is that the communication is so dramatic and such an attention grab... As an aside, given the actual events that led up to FB getting the negative limelight, it seems like the ire IMO be directed at the transmission of propaganda/lies via ads, not privacy.

kemyd 8y ago

I remember his words from an interview "I sold the privacy of my users for a huge profit. I made a decision that compromised my principles, and I must live with that every day." This guy should have his own character in the next season of Silicon Valley series. Give your billions to the poor and move on you poor guy

iKevinShah 8y ago
> Give your billions to the poor and move on you poor guy How exactly is gonna help the people and the guy? It's not that people are not gonna be tracked by tech giants after he donates his billions or something.
- pmart123 8y ago
  Honestly, I kind of agree. If he feels so bad about it, donate the money somewhere. Right now, he is having his cake and eating it too.
- brador 8y ago
  He could invest the billions into making viable alternatives that respect user privacy.
  - seba_dos1 8y ago
    As Conversations showed in the XMPP land, just a single full-time developer paid from his work on the client can make a huge difference. The foundations are strong (XMPP and Matrix), what you need now is some resources. XSF is notoriously understaffed.
scarface74 8y ago
What he think was going to happen when he sold to a company that made its money by advertising based on user’s personal information? He’s either naive or disingenuous.

baxtr 8y ago

Interesting article. But there is no real reason why to leave Facebook. I get the whole privacy thing but that’s nothing new, is it?

ykevinator 8y ago

Vanity platform users get what they deserve.

jmsflknr 8y ago

Earlier discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19385516 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19385516

notacoward 8y ago

This is how most people resolve cognitive dissonance. He wants the money and a clear conscience about the decision that brought it. The only way he can have both is if he'd been tricked, so even though that's not what happened that's the narrative he prefers. What he probably doesn't realize yet is that he has just created a new counterpoint to his perception of himself as an honest and ethical person. The cycle will continue until he learns to take responsibility for the moral consequences of his own actions. I wish him the best of luck on that journey.