Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg may have apologized and testified in front of US lawmakers, and agreed to fix Facebook's privacy problems, but behind the scenes it may be a completely different story.
Whatsapp CEO and Co-founder Jan Koum has announced he's leaving Facebook (Whatsapp's parent company), and there's a report claiming that he's quitting to oppose Facebook's increasing demand for accessing Whatsapp user data for monetization.
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In his official statement as WhatsApp CEO, Jan Koum posted an emotional message on his verified Facebook page.?"It's been almost a decade since Brian (Acton) and I started WhatsApp, and it's been an amazing journey with some of the best people," Koum posted on?Monday. "But it is time for me to move on."?
Responding to Koum's post in the comments was none other than Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg himself, saying that he would miss working with him.?"I'm grateful for everything you've done to help connect the world, and for everything you've taught me, including about encryption and its ability to take power from centralized systems and put it back in people's hands," wrote Zuckerberg. "Those values will always be at the heart of WhatsApp."
While Jan Koum hasn't really revealed why he's leaving his role at Whatsapp and Facebook, a Washington Post report claims?the sudden move is due to Koum's disagreements with "Facebook's attempts to use [WhatsApp]'s personal data and weaken its encryption."
WhatsApp messages between two users or in a group are encrypted, making them pretty much indecipherable to everyone but the sender and the recipient. Also, WhatsApp doesn't have any ads.
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Both these WhatsApp attributes are in direct conflict of how Facebook operates -- it wants access to user data to better profile them and make it lucrative for advertisers to target them by spending money.
As you know, Facebook had bought WhatsApp for $19 billion in 2014, without any clear plan on how the service would make money.?Both Jan Koum and Brian Acton, WhatsApp's two co-founders, were firmly opposed to allowing any ads to run on WhatsApp. With Koum leaving Whatsapp, maybe that arrangement is finally coming to an end.
Later today, Mark Zuckerberg will take the stage at Facebook's annual F8 developer conference, and explaining to over 5000 Facebook developers (a majority of whom will also be WhatsApp users) on the gameplan for WhatsApp which doesn't sound like it's coming at the expense of user's data privacy will be tricky at best.