Another day, another bad news for Facebook. This time, Jan Koum, CEO of WhatsApp, announced his decision to leave the company that he co-founded and resigned from Facebook's board of directors. According to the Washington Post, Koum's announcement follows clashes with Facebook over data privacy and WhatsApp's business model.
Koum and Brian Acton founded WhatsApp in 2009. They eventually sold the popular application to Facebook for $ 19 billion in 2014, to the point where Koum negotiated a role on the board of directors of Facebook. Acton resigned from the company last year to create his own non-profit organization.
"It's been almost a decade since Brian [Acton] and I started WhatsApp, and it was an amazing journey with some of the best people, but it's time for me to move on." , wrote Koum on his Facebook profile.
"I take a little time to do things that I like outside of technology, like the collection of rare air-cooled Porsches, work on my cars and play the ultimate Frisbee. And I will always encourage WhatsApp - just from the outside. "
Koum and Acton built WhatsApp as a privacy-focused communication app, and the couple swore that Facebook's acquisition would not compromise their vision. The deployment of end-to-end encryption seemed to support their promise, but there were concerns when the company started sharing more user data, including phone numbers, with its new parent later that year.
According to "people familiar with internal discussions," the introduction of end-to-end encryption was a topic of contention for Facebook. Social network leaders wanted to make sure companies could use their tools on the email service, and WhatsApp executives thought it meant weakening encryption. Facebook had eliminated WhatsApp's $ 0.99 annual subscription and allowing businesses to chat with customers was one of the ways it wanted to monetize the service.
While the Cambridge Analytica scandal would not have helped things - and led to Acton tweeting his support for the #deletefacebook campaign - Koum would have made his decision to leave before the revelations. The Post wrote that he was finally "worn out by the differences in approach."
The first comment on Koum's Facebook post comes from the CEO of the company, Mark Zuckerberg. "I'm thankful for everything you've done to connect the world and everything you've learned, including encryption and its ability to take the power of centralized systems and put it back into the hands of These values will always be at the heart of WhatsApp. "
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