In 2014, Facebook bought the messaging system Whatsapp for $22B; it was a weird fit, because Whatsapp founders had decried Facebook's surveillance-based business model and targeted advertising, and had promised its users "No ads, no games, no gimmicks."
Late last year, the cofounders of Whatsapp left Facebook, saying little at the time -- but then, in the midst of the Cambridge Analytica scandal, Brian Acton, one of the founders, tweeted "It is time. #deletefacebook."
Acton has said little in public since, but in a long, revealing interview with Forbes's Parmy Olson, he frankly discusses the bad decision he made to trade his vision for the company he'd built for billions, and how he should have understood that Facebook would never keep its promises to preserve Whatsapp's autonomy and privacy protections. He also reveals that when he left the company, he declined an offere of $850,000,000 in unvested stock in exchange for signing a nondisclosure agreement that would have kept him from discussing any of this.
The interview is a revealing look at the internal culture of Facebook, particularly how the company's senior management kids itself -- and the employees -- that taking actions that make its products simultaneously worse and more profitable is actually good for the company's users.
It's really clear from the interview that Whatsapp users should expect to have their activity tracked and used as part of Facebook's overall, creepy surveillance.
I stopped using all Facebook products a few years ago. I don't visit Facebook pages, I block its beacons, and I migrated my family off of Whatsapp for group messaging. Read the rest
