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.
As the most popular messaging application in the world, WhatsApp is one of the largest treasure troves of user data not yet exploited for targeted advertising thanks to its end-to-end encryption. Facebook must be itching to start injecting ads into WhatsApp and to scan messages for optimal targeting.
If the WhatsApp guys cared about the privacy of their users they wouldn’t have sold their company to Facebook in the first place. Seriously, if someone pays 19 billions for your company even though it barely makes a profit you’re an idiot if you don’t think they’ll monetize it in any way they can.
I can certainly understand why you’d take that deal but FFS, stop pretending you give a shit about your users privacy because you don’t. You cared more about being set for life.
Edited 2018-05-01 08:21 UTC
Probably not many are thinking about their users, customers, and privacy issues, when you’re being offered billions for a product that cannot be monetized as-is. Obviously they know at that point what the future holds. If the guy sincerely did not know what he’s driving his company into, then he’s one of the worst CEOs ever.
Edited 2018-05-01 09:17 UTC
To be devils advocate for a moment; CEOs (specifically the ones that innovate) are very good at self deluding, its part of why some end up billionaires…taking pretty dumb/wild risks that happen to pay off (see Elon Musk), ignoring honest criticism on their paths. They probably were honestly convinced that they protected their product, because they have the ‘best people’ looking over contracts. “All those other companies facebook screwed over? they just werent as good as us! We’re different!”. I mean, why stick around otherwise, to watch their hard work get dismantled?
Also, facebook probably masterfully crafted the contract, I am sure there were clauses like “…to better integrate into the facebook family of products” or time based ones like “Our team of experienced and devoted developers will handle all updates after 3 years, and will definitely keep with the ‘spirit’ of WhatsApp, honest”.
Well, yes but companies have investors. Tell an investor that your company is not profitable in a foreseen future yet you rejected a multimillion offer.
Then you can at least be honest and not pretend that nothing will change with regards to how your App works and what the data is used for.
One thing that quite annoys me is when people assume other people’s motivations. Maybe you should apply Hanlon’s Razor a little more liberally.
He can care about privacy on some level, but all the sale means is that he’s ultimately a businessman, not some idealized champion of privacy. There’s a difference between having a personal interest in a cause, and being a champion of a cause.
He could have been bored, or felt that he had achieved his vision for the product or gotten as far as he could, and felt the size of the reward justified his moving on and doing something else. These startup types are usually hyper-active and are constantly looking for some new boundary to push or creative/entrepreneurial endeavor to undertake. It’s not hard to imagine a billion dollar paycheck being sufficient motivation for them to decide the reward is better than the risk of maintaining the status quo.