WhatsApp founder: I sold out, but I walked away from $850M when I quit FB

Instead of an article about an article the real interview is on Forbes <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.forbes.com&#x2F;sites&#x2F;parmyolson&#x2F;2018&#x2F;09&#x2F;26&#x2F;exclusive-whatsapp-cofounder-brian-acton-gives-the-inside-story-on-deletefacebook-and-why-he-left-850-million-behind&#x2F;#3632c18b3f20" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.forbes.com&#x2F;sites&#x2F;parmyolson&#x2F;2018&#x2F;09&#x2F;26&#x2F;exclusive...</a>

WhatsApp (and Instagram) itself was an acquisition via surreptitious data harvesting through Onavo - the free VPN app meant to &quot;protect&quot; users browsing data [0, 1].<p>&gt; Facebook uses an internal database to track rivals, including young startups performing unusually well, people familiar with the system say. The database stems from Facebook’s 2013 acquisition of a Tel Aviv-based startup, Onavo, which had built an app that secures users’ privacy by routing their traffic through private servers. The app gives Facebook an unusually detailed look at what users collectively do on their phones, these people say. The tool shaped Facebook’s decision to buy WhatsApp and informed its live-video strategy, they say. Facebook used Onavo to build its early-bird tool that tips it off to promising services and that helped Facebook home in on Houseparty.<p>Apple has now forced Facebook to remove it from the App Store [2]. I&#x27;m not sure if data harvesting has stopped. It might have even increased.<p>[0] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;outline.com&#x2F;tkzkVb" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;outline.com&#x2F;tkzkVb</a><p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=14970877" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=14970877</a><p>[2] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.theverge.com&#x2F;2018&#x2F;8&#x2F;22&#x2F;17771298&#x2F;facebook-onavo-protect-apple-app-store-pulled-privacy-concerns" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.theverge.com&#x2F;2018&#x2F;8&#x2F;22&#x2F;17771298&#x2F;facebook-onavo-p...</a>

I&#x27;m impressed by Acton and Koum. They built a $22bn company, scaled to hundreds of millions of users, became the dominant chat app in the world... all with a tiny team of engineers. Before Facebook acquisition, they were laser-focused on quality and infrastructure instead of gimmicks.<p>Maybe they made a mistake by selling, but I wouldn&#x27;t have turned down total financial freedom for me and my family forever.<p>Whatever. I&#x27;ll switch to Signal, and watch out for the next thing that these guys work on.

I hope not to see any moral policing here for selling out. It is difficult to walk away from that kind of money.<p>Hope not to see indifference caused by false equivalencies.<p>False equivalencies suck out oxygen and leave no room for nuances or discussions.<p>I am encouraging my social network to switch from Whatsapp to Signal, but I&#x27;ll go cold turkey whether they switch or not.

I just don&#x27;t get the narrative. I can appreciate walking away from, and not being part of, something you don&#x27;t like. But at that point the damage was already done. Seemingly they main thing that was achieved here was making the cost of the acquisition $850M cheaper for Facebook.

Always strikes me as somewhat amusing - or not really - how someone like mr. Doctorow apparently feels a pressing need to publish under full live Google supervision, here in the guise of amp, fonts, and gstatic.

If he felt so bad be should have stayed and gotten the money for charity.

Yup, you sold out, made billions, secured your life, then bit the hand that feeds you and then pretend to stand for something. Donate the entire pay off from Facebook to privacy groups and then I will listen to you.

I have a theory: I believe tweeting #deletefacebook was a firable offense and, upon being fired, he lost whatever vesting remained. He didnt knowingly do this. Almost every company has similar terms in place. I certainly wouldnt hand over another billion dollars to someone who did that my company after I paid him $15bn.