WhatsApp Co-Founder Brian Acton data privacy war with Facebook has turned out murky when Facebook Executive David Marcus gave a fitting reply to the latter’s claim on Forbes.
In an interview to Forbes a few days ago, Acton said that after acquiring his company for $19 billion, Mark Zuckerberg and his team were planning to monetize the app by putting the data privacy of users at risk.
Marcus gave a befitting reply to Acton yesterday by accusing him of slowing down the progress of the messaging app. He added in his statement that Facebook has a practice of retaining the founders and their teams after it acquires a company. But in the case of WhatsApp, it was Acton who acted in the urgency of leaving the company as his stifling ideas were not being entertained by the class A officials of the world’s number one social media platform.
Cybersecurity Insiders has learned that Facebook’s team wanted to show targeted ads in WhatsApp and enable businesses to communicate with users in direct messages. But Acton was against these actions as he believed that such tricks will put a red flag on WhatsApp’s core functionality of end-to-end encryption.
“Since Zuckerberg and his team would never abandon their plan to monetize the messaging service, I chose to leave the company”, said Brian Acton to Forbes.
Note 1- As soon as the Cambridge Analytica data scandal emerged early this year, Brian was the first person to tweet “Delete Facebook” sparking rumors that most of the users of the Menlo Park-based company will abandon the use of the site within 3 months due to privacy concerns.
Note 2- After selling WhatsApp to Facebook, Acton is said to have donated nearly 290 million USD to the Silicon Valley Community Foundation. With the residue $5.5 billion, Acton founded a non-profit organization named “ Signal Foundation” which helps develop open sources privacy technology that protects free expression and enables secure global communication.
