2 years in (2011), I joined the team as Chief Business Officer.
And in 2012/13, we were approached by Zuck & Facebook about an acquisition.
We declined and decided to keep growing instead.
But then…
In 2014, I was the Chief Business Officer of WhatsApp.
And I helped negotiate the $22 billion sale to Facebook.
Today, I regret it.
Here’s where things went wrong:
2 years in (2011), I joined the team as Chief Business Officer.
And in 2012/13, we were approached by Zuck & Facebook about an acquisition.
We declined and decided to keep growing instead.
But then…
• Full support for end-to-end encryption
• No ads (ever)
• Complete independence on product decisions
• Board seat for Jan Koum
• Our own office in Mountain View
• Etc.
International communication.
For people (like myself) with family in multiple countries, WhatsApp was a way to stay connected—without paying long-distance SMS or calling fees
And Facebook (said they) supported our mission & vision.
Brian even wrote this famous note:
- No mining user data
- No ads (ever)
- No cross-platform tracking
FB and their management agreed and we thought they believed in our mission.
In 2014, WhatsApp was acquired by Facebook for $22 billion (in cash & stock).
But by 2017 and 2018, things started to look very different…
https://t.co/vNVuYY5ygp
https://t.co/8jRJUrdB7j
It is time. #deletefacebook
— Brian Acton (@brianacton) March 20, 2018
But it’s a shadow of the product we poured our hearts into, and wanted to build for the world.
And I am not the only one who regrets that it became part of Facebook when it did.
Nobody knew in the beginning that Facebook would become a Frankenstein monster that devoured user data and spat out dirty money.
We didn’t either.
And where we go from here.
An amazing piece by @dseetharaman to start the conversation:
https://t.co/VcZwkoYHyG
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The entire discussion around Facebook’s disclosures of what happened in 2016 is very frustrating. No exec stopped any investigations, but there were a lot of heated discussions about what to publish and when.
In the spring and summer of 2016, as reported by the Times, activity we traced to GRU was reported to the FBI. This was the standard model of interaction companies used for nation-state attacks against likely US targeted.
In the Spring of 2017, after a deep dive into the Fake News phenomena, the security team wanted to publish an update that covered what we had learned. At this point, we didn’t have any advertising content or the big IRA cluster, but we did know about the GRU model.
This report when through dozens of edits as different equities were represented. I did not have any meetings with Sheryl on the paper, but I can’t speak to whether she was in the loop with my higher-ups.
In the end, the difficult question of attribution was settled by us pointing to the DNI report instead of saying Russia or GRU directly. In my pre-briefs with members of Congress, I made it clear that we believed this action was GRU.
The story doesn\u2019t say you were told not to... it says you did so without approval and they tried to obfuscate what you found. Is that true?
— Sarah Frier (@sarahfrier) November 15, 2018
In the spring and summer of 2016, as reported by the Times, activity we traced to GRU was reported to the FBI. This was the standard model of interaction companies used for nation-state attacks against likely US targeted.
In the Spring of 2017, after a deep dive into the Fake News phenomena, the security team wanted to publish an update that covered what we had learned. At this point, we didn’t have any advertising content or the big IRA cluster, but we did know about the GRU model.
This report when through dozens of edits as different equities were represented. I did not have any meetings with Sheryl on the paper, but I can’t speak to whether she was in the loop with my higher-ups.
In the end, the difficult question of attribution was settled by us pointing to the DNI report instead of saying Russia or GRU directly. In my pre-briefs with members of Congress, I made it clear that we believed this action was GRU.
