Brian Acton, founder of WhatsApp along with Jan Koum, returns to lash out at Facebook, advising to unsubscribe from Mark Zuckerberg's social network
If there is an exemplary story of a father who disowns a son, it is certainly that of Brian Acton and WhatsApp. Acton, an American programmer born in 1972, after working for Apple, Adobe and Yahoo in 2009 founded with colleague Jan Koum the most famous and used instant messaging service in the world. Which a few years later, in 2014, sold to Facebook Inc. for the sum of $ 19 billion.
For some time now, however, Acton no longer agrees at all with the path taken by WhatsApp and Facebook. The first time the WhatsApp dad lashed out at Facebook was during the Cambridge Analytica scandal: on March 21, 2018, Acton simply tweeted to the world, "It is time. #deletefacebook." That is to say, "It is time. Delete yourself from Facebook." The result was practically nil, almost no one unsubscribed from Facebook or WhatsApp, and if they did, it was certainly not because Acton said so. In fact, Facebook is still the most used social network in the world and WhatsApp is the most used messaging service in the world, so Acton's efforts do not seem to have led to great results.
Why you should unsubscribe from Facebook
Now, however, the good Brian returns to the charge reiterating the need to give up the use of Mark Zuckerberg's social network and the various WhatsApp and Messenger in the name of privacy. During a lecture he gave at Stanford University (located in the heart of Silicon Valley and from which Tech companies draw heavily when looking for young people to hire), referring to Facebook, Apple and Google and their difficulty in moderating comments, Acton reiterated the concept: "These companies are not equipped to make decisions like this. And we give them the power. That's the crooked side of it. We subscribe to these sites. We buy their products. Unsubscribe from Facebook, okay?"
Somebody, more than one actually, pointed out to him that neither he nor Koum had much qualms about pocketing $19 billion from Facebook with the sale of WhatsApp. But Acton defends himself by saying that he couldn't do anything else: "I had 50 employees and I had to think about them and the money they could get from this sale. I had to think about the investors and I had to think about my minority stake. I didn't have full control and I couldn't say no, even if I wanted to."