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I get why one would feel this way if this was one of Meta’s social media apps, but WhatsApp is one of the biggest messaging apps used in so many countries and p
by maskedinvader 3y ago
I get why one would feel this way if this was one of Meta’s social media apps, but WhatsApp is one of the biggest messaging apps used in so many countries and perhaps also helped kill the telecoms companies paid sms plans to force cheaper sms msging rates, if anything WhatsApp is perhaps the best value Meta has provided to the world, bringing the world closer.
- annadane 3y agoYes but the original founders did that. Zuckerberg took it from them and immediately lied about data sharing, there's a reason why the founders left in disgust
- avalys 3y agoCorrection: The founders sold it to Zuckerberg for billions of dollars. Saying he “took it from them” is outright dishonest.
- annadane 3y agoThey sold it under the condition he wouldn't lie, it was a condition for him to have it, and he lied
- avalys 3y agoSo why didn’t they take the billions of dollars he paid them and sue to have this “condition” upheld?
- GGO 3y agowell he took money under the promise and when FB broke the promise, he walked away and left $850M on the table. https://finance.yahoo.com/news/whatsapp-co-founder-walked-away-142200777.html https://finance.yahoo.com/news/whatsapp-co-founder-walked-aw...
- nilsbunger 3y agoTo punish Facebook for breaking their promise, he ... gave Facebook $850M (by not vesting all his equity) ?
- mcpackieh 3y agoAngry people can be irrational. That's my read.
- thakoppno 3y ago> I’m taking some time off to do things outside of technology, such as collecting rare air-cooled Porsches.
- lost_tourist 3y agoI'll never understand why people don't place value on integrity. I mean day to day people and not stockholders. Zuck controls what happens at Meta, it's not a board decision on stuff like this unless Zuck tells them to do it.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- er4hn 3y agoOne of the co-founders, Brian Acton, has funded most of Signal (~100M USD) in his post WhapsApp life. It is a very hacker mindset solution. Instead of turning to the law to enforce nebulous claims against a megacorp, make a better product with the money you got from said megacorp.
- bboygravity 3y agoPlot twist: Signal turns out to be a CIA honey-pot.
- brewdad 3y agoI know "nothing to hide" is never a strong argument but even if Signal is a CIA honeypot, if it keeps my personal conversations from becoming marketing fodder, sign me up!
- pessimizer 3y agoI'm definitely not a "nothing to hide" guy, but if the CIA wants something on me they're going to find it in 5 minutes. They would only be using a backdoored Signal to get the smart guys; so I guess I have to thank the smart guys for the CIA giving us Signal...
- Firmwarrior 3y ago[flagged]
- DropInIn 3y agoIt's not a condition if it's not in the contract or if it is and is not acted upon. In either of those cases it's just lip service.
- frizlab 3y agoWhatsApp is a company Meta bought, not brought to the world AFAIK.
- midasuni 3y agoExcept that was all done before meta bought it. https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/travel-technology/952359-thoughts-about-my-free-iphone-app-whatsapp.html https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/travel-technology/952359-tho...
- lmm 3y agoBut getting bought by facebook was the only business plan they ever had, so it was facebook that made all that possible.
- eps 3y agoNot true. They were doing perfectly fine charging a fair fraction of their 100 mil userbase $1 a month. They sold because founders wanted an exit.
- hot_gril 3y agoThey probably got initial funding from investors thinking about a future exit. Investors aren't as interested in a company that intends to simply survive on modest profits forever. This is also why startups tend to magically die when big companies aren't doing well.
- Unai 3y agoNot true. They were charging 1€ a year, not a month (at least that's the case in my country). The math doesn't add up.
- MichaelZuo 3y agoKinda surprised the parent made such a mistake since Whatsapp was very well known in tech circles for charging an incredibly low fee pre-FB acquisition. And the parent's HN account dates from 2010...
- eps 3y agoMy bad, it was of course per year. Point still stands that $1/year was a viable business model that covered their burn rate and then some.
- Angostura 3y agoIt also demands full access to the totality of your contacts to work properly. An appalling requirement
- NikolaNovak 3y agoI always feel I'm in a twilight zone with whatsapp. Am I the only person who doesn't want or need to give the app all of my contacts, or even register with just phone number? Phone number is such an intensely and irrevocably identifiable token and so hard to change, that using it for pervasive messaging seems insane to me :-/
- qingcharles 3y agoI hate these apps that absolutely need a phone number. I couldn't pay my bill on my cellphone one month, lost the number and now I can't access either my WhatsApp or Telegram accounts.
- romwell 3y agoI've had my phone stolen while traveling, and I can't say how much I despise any system that uses a phone number for authentication. Go figure, you can't get a SIM card sent to you from the US to Europe, meaning that you potentially lose: * Access to messenger apps and chat history * Access to your bank account (with a special nod to Citi) * Access to your email account if it uses "2FA" with a phone (looking at you, Google) * etc Given that my bank cards and laptop were stolen along with the phone, I've had a Very Fun Time™ dealing with all these systems.
- smallerfish 3y agoYou can port your phone number to a voip provider if you will be out of the country for a while. Use a sip phone app, and the "transport layer" sim that you happen to use will have nothing to do with the phone number that is intermingled with your identity.
- username135 3y agoIt still boggles my mind that they paid SO much for it
- Barrin92 3y agowell it is by far the most used messenger app in the world with 2+ billion users so in that sense it seems prescient but i'd agree it's still questionable how they'll monetize it.