WhatsApp Cofounder Says: I Sold My Users’ Privacy to Facebook

Brian Acton, one of the co-founders of the popular messaging app WhatsApp, said he "sold my users' privacy" when Facebook acquired the company. Facebook acquired WhatsApp for $19 billion in cash and stock in 2014, its biggest acquisition ever. "I sold my users' privacy to a larger benefit," Acton told Forbes. "I made a choice and a compromise. And I live with that every day."   This isn't the first time Acton has criticized Facebook: Earlier this year, he tweeted "#deleteFacebook" in the fallout from the Cambridge Analytica scandal, when Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg admitted as many as 87 million users' information was exposed to data firm Cambridge Analytica.  That wouldn't be so odd if he weren't one of two people who sold WhatsApp to Facebook for more than $19 billion four years earlier. 

It is time. #deletefacebook

— Brian Acton (@brianacton) March 20, 2018

Acton lost as much as $850 million for leaving Facebook six months before that tweet, in Sept. 2017, because the final tranche of his stock option grants hadn't vested yet. Since then, he has been silent about his departure, but has now opened up in an interview with Forbes.  A lot of what the interview reveals is hardly surprising. Acton left Facebook as the social media company was insistent on monetizing WhatsApp through ads and by selling businesses tools to engage with users — and eventually track them, too. Facebook was also reluctant to accept end-to-end encryption, a feature that Acton thought was crucial for WhatsApp for protecting users' privacy. Despite his call for people to abandon Facebook, though, Acton is quite reserved in his assessment of the social media giant. "They are businesspeople; they are good businesspeople. They just represent a set of business practices, principles and ethics, and policies that I don’t necessarily agree with,” he told Forbes. The reasons why he and co-founder Jan Koum sold WhatsApp to Facebook in 2014 aren't very hard to guess, either — Zuckerberg simply threw a ton of money at them. "He (...) made us an offer we couldn't refuse," Acton said. Earlier this week, Instagram's co-founders Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger announced they are leaving Facebook. While they didn't give a reason for their depature, The Wall Street Journal reported that it came amid clashes with Zuckerberg. Facebook has been mired in controversy since the 2016 elections. U.S. intelligence agencies have said that Russian actors used Facebook and Instagram to wage a campaign of disinformation in the election. In February, the Department of Justice issued indictments against 13 Russian nationals of breaking U.S. laws to interfere in the 2016 election. And earlier this year, Zuckerberg was forced to testify before Congress after Cambridge Analytica, which worked on the presidential campaigns of President Trump and Ted Cruz, had stolen data from as many as 87 million Facebook users. After the Cambridge Analytica scandal, the founder of WhatsApp, the global messaging service Facebook acquired in 2014, Jan Koum, said he was leaving the company. According to reports at the time, Korum expressed concern over Facebook's "attempts to use its personal data and weaken [WhatsApp's] encryption." You Might Also Like: Instagram’s Founders Have Reportedly Leaving Facebook.