WhatsApp Co-Founder Says He Quit Facebook, Alleging Zuckerberg Wanted To Weaken User Privacy

Facebook just can’t catch a break right now, though it seems its corporate greed is the root of all its recent problems. This also includes the recent departure of Instagram’s founders from the company.

And now, a former employee -- the co-founder of WhatsApp no less -- is spilling the beans on why he left Facebook.

WhatsApp co-founders Brian Acton (L) and Jan Koum (R) - Images courtesy: Reuters

In an exclusive interview with Forbes, WhatsApp co-founder Brian Acton talks about why he left the company last year. He quit to join Signal at the time, followed by the resignation of his co-founder Jan Koum a few months later. What really stoked the fires of curiosity however was a tweet by Acton in support of the #deleteFacebook movement, in the wake of the Cambridge Analytica scandal.

In the interview, Acton says he left Facebook because he was under pressure from CEO Mark Zuckerberg and COO Sheryl Sandberg to monetise WhatsApp. Not any small argument either.

It seems Zuckerberg was prepared to weaken the end-to-end encryption of WhatsApp, all so that he could serve users targeted ads within the app. Effectively, that would have let companies have your WhatsApp data. And we all know how well Facebook regulates the sharing of your personal data.

Acton was incensed by the demands, instead choosing to quit the company entirely, leaving his approximately $850 million in stock behind. With WhatsApp’s company-wide focus on privacy, and Facebook’s overarching goal to monetise everything, the two would always be butting heads over encryption. It's also why Jan Koum also left WhatsApp soon after his partner.

“At the end of the day, I sold my company,” laments Acton. “I sold my users’ privacy to a larger benefit. I made a choice and a compromise. And I live with that every day.”

So the question is, now that the two biggest pro-privacy fighters at WhatsApp have departed, is the app mercy to Zuckerberg's monetisation plan? Itss tempting to say yes, given its recent troubles and backlash concerning privacy Facebook isn't likely to compromise WhatsApp's encryption in favour of targeted ads. Then again, setbacks haven't stopped Zuckerberg before. After all, he didn’t give up on Internet.org until pretty much the whole of India was up in arms, and even then it took a ban from the courts to put the idea to death.

But if he's going to monetise WhatsApp, here's to hoping he at least makes a public announcement first, so we can all move to Telegram, or Signal, or whatever else.