One of the most used apps in the world is WhatsApp, service that is not original Facebook, but of a group of technicians who devised it in 2009. In 2014, however, Mark Zuckerberg changed the rules of the game by announcing its purchase for 19 billion dollars, one of the most probe sales in the world of technology.
The story of how it goes WhatsApp we currently know it, but what we do not fully know is what some executives think about the present app and that is why Neeraj Arora, ex Chief Business Officer (CBO) de WhatsApp, He has told how this deal was and what things he promised Facebook for the service.
regret the sale
Through a post by LinkedIn, Arora pointed out that Facebook approached back then WhatsApp Inc. to try to buy the application in 2012, with an immediate rejection by the company.
However, for 2014, they came with new promises, including full support for end-to-end encryption (no one can read your chats, not even the company), never ads, full independence in decision-making and that CEO Jan Koum can continue on the board. To this were added two requirements of the app: not to extract user data and that there is no tracking of information between the different platforms of Facebook.
But despite these agreements, Arora He indicates that he is sorry.
“In 2014, I was the commercial director of WhatsApp and helped negotiate the sale of 19 billion to Facebook. Today I regret it,” he said. Arora.
“Hoy, WhatsApp It is the second largest platform in Facebook (even bigger than Instagram or FB Messenger). But it is a shadow of the product that we poured our hearts into and wanted to build for the world,” he says. “No one knew at first that Facebook it would become a Frankenstein monster, gobbling up user data and spitting out dirty money. Us neither”.
The former CBO refers to the different scandals he has had Facebook regarding user data. The most notorious case is Cambridge Analytica, which even led Brian Acton, one of the app’s founders, to call for a boycott of the company.
Cambridge Analytica used the data of 265,000 users through surveys, but accessed the friends of each of those accounts. It is estimated that 87 million users were used as a broadcast channel for the Republican counter-campaign in the elections that determined Donald Trump the winner.
We recommend METADATA, RPP’s technology podcast. News, analysis, reviews, recommendations and everything you need to know about the technological world. To hear it better, #StayHome.
–
