WhatsApp Cofounder Brian Acton on Why He Left $850M Behind • Hacker News Board

Re: WhatsApp Cofounder Brian Acton on Why He Left $850M Behind

#381

Post by b3n » Thu, Sep 27, 2018, 6:40 AM UTC

xibalba wrote: post #167

Acton is being incredibly disingenuous and it is disappointing. When you sell your company to another for $19B, you should surely know that the expectations for monetization will be very heavy indeed. Well beyond Acton's suggested metered-user model. I'm certainly no great fan of Facebook, but anyone who thinks that they deserve to use a service free of charge and also avoid advertising is extremely entitled and disc…

> [...] anyone who thinks that they deserve to use a service free of charge and also avoid advertising is extremely entitled and disconnected from reality. There is no free lunch.

We are using Hacker News, free of charge, without advertising. Or for a bigger example, most Wikipedia users have never donated and yet use the service with zero advertising. Or there's Signal, as mentioned in the article, and countless other examples.

Perhaps there is a free lunch after all.

Re: WhatsApp Cofounder Brian Acton on Why He Left $850M Behind

#382

Post by steve1977 » Thu, Sep 27, 2018, 6:51 AM UTC

mattnewport wrote: post #7

This article seems a little unfair to the WhatsApp founders when it suggests they should have known that any assurances Facebook made to them as part of the acquisition were obviously lies. Sure in 2018 it might be obvious to most of us that nothing Facebook says or promises can be trusted but I don't think that was necessarily as obvious when the acquisition happened and they can be forgiven for thinking they weren'…

It was obvious you couldn't trust Facebook back in 2008 already.

Re: WhatsApp Cofounder Brian Acton on Why He Left $850M Behind

#383

Post by lucasjans » Thu, Sep 27, 2018, 7:04 AM UTC

b3n wrote: post #381

xibalba wrote: post #167

Acton is being incredibly disingenuous and it is disappointing. When you sell your company to another for $19B, you should surely know that the expectations for monetization will be very heavy indeed. Well beyond Acton's suggested metered-user model. I'm certainly no great fan of Facebook, but anyone who thinks that they deserve to use a service free of charge and also avoid advertising is extremely entitled and disc…

> [...] anyone who thinks that they deserve to use a service free of charge and also avoid advertising is extremely entitled and disconnected from reality. There is no free lunch. We are using Hacker News, free of charge, without advertising. Or for a bigger example, most Wikipedia users have never donated and yet use the service with zero advertising. Or there's Signal, as mentioned in the article, and countless oth…

Or perhaps not. Perhaps there's value in the community that rewards its owners in other ways.

Re: WhatsApp Cofounder Brian Acton on Why He Left $850M Behind

#384

Post by scns » Thu, Sep 27, 2018, 7:08 AM UTC

394549 wrote: post #26

cowpig wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is such a thing as business ethics. Facebook's complete disregard for them should not be the norm, even if it, sadly, might be more often than not.

>> What year would it be ok to be naive enough to think that any for profit company’s main motivation is not to make as much money possible? > There is such a thing as business ethics. > Facebook's complete disregard for them should not be the norm, even if it, sadly, might be more often than not. It's alarming how businesses' lack of business ethics is getting normalized by comments like the grandparent's. We should…

Maybe we should stop ascribing these decisions to faceless corporations, they are made by humans.

Re: WhatsApp Cofounder Brian Acton on Why He Left $850M Behind

#385

Post by puranjay » Thu, Sep 27, 2018, 7:16 AM UTC

waterhouse wrote: post #169

madrox wrote: post #163

I'm sure Acton and Koum told themselves they were also keeping the power to be in control. I'm sure they went into it thinking they could avoid this end. The brain is a powerful rationalizer when it sees generational wealth within reach. The indignant tone of the comments here make me laugh. There are very few things I can imagine readers of HN not doing for a billion dollars. People may say otherwise, but until they…

Not saying you're not mostly right, but there is the case of Jean-Baptiste Kempf, maintainer of VLC, who apparently turned down tens of millions to put ads into VLC. (I suppose that is two orders of magnitude smaller than a billion.) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15372048

I donated money to VLC the day I learned about this. I had no idea this software I use and love every day was maintained by a single guy.

Props to him. I don't think I would have been able to resist an 8 figure offer

Re: WhatsApp Cofounder Brian Acton on Why He Left $850M Behind

#386

Post by scns » Thu, Sep 27, 2018, 7:23 AM UTC

retsibsi wrote: post #374

sushisource wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also fail to see how driving a minivan makes you a better person. I don't understand why we fetishize the rich who live like they aren't. I get not overconsuming, but if you're gonna buy a car might as well make it a nice one - the impact is basically the same.

Luxury goods cost money that could otherwise be used to help the vulnerable and suffering. Of course there's no point foregoing the fancy car if you're going to spend 100% of your money on yourself anyway. But even when it's not a clear, direct tradeoff -- 'hmm, should I buy the Ferrari or give $100k to charity?' -- I think most people give some of their money away, and the proportion depends on how financially comfo…

this is not true, counterintuitively the less well-off donate more.

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2001/dec/21/voluntarysec...

Re: WhatsApp Cofounder Brian Acton on Why He Left $850M Behind

#387

Post by samat » Thu, Sep 27, 2018, 8:05 AM UTC

lpolovets wrote: post #325

Here's an interesting post about the departure from the perspective of a Facebook exec: https://www.facebook.com/notes/david-marcus/the-other-side-o...

“About connecting people”. Well, and getting as many eyeballs on the newsfeed ads as (in)humanely possible. Does that count as connecting people?

Re: WhatsApp Cofounder Brian Acton on Why He Left $850M Behind

#388

Post by ac4tw » Thu, Sep 27, 2018, 8:36 AM UTC

rstuart4133 wrote: post #347

ac4tw wrote: post #336

I find the article interesting from a cryptographic perspective--specifically have they implemented searchable encryption or such a "encrypted environment" where they able to capture more than meta-data. These quotes specifically: The challenge was WhatsApp’s watertight end-to-end encryption, which stopped both WhatsApp and Facebook from reading messages. While Facebook didn’t plan to break the encryption, Acton says…

They are not that interesting. You have no way to verify if their statements about encryption are true, so you'd be nuts to bet much on assuming they are. WhatsApp being sold to an advertising company is just one fine example of why it's nuts. In fact given the recent bill's introduced into the Australian parliament, it's irrelevant if they are true. The bill allows the government to demand they produce a version of…

Actually a fellow on HN the other day demonstrated that you could decompile their APK and inspect the code, so you can make a pretty solid attempt to verify product statements if you have the skill and the time.

Also, I think we're cross talking about their statements--I can't divine anything specific from what they say, but their answers (esp. Sandbergs non-answer) seem supportive of other things I've seen claiming the encryption they're using is leaking business analytical information to FB on purpose (effectively undermining the lay understanding of end-end encryption).

BTW That situation in Australia is saddening.

Re: WhatsApp Cofounder Brian Acton on Why He Left $850M Behind

#389

Post by lrvick » Thu, Sep 27, 2018, 10:05 AM UTC

mycall wrote: post #369

krrrh wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s pretty likely that Acton weighed what he could do with the money when it came to pursuing his values post-Facebook. His role in co-founding the Signal foundation and substantial donation to its existence is good evidence of this. A small portion of his fortune could pay for Signal to be free and continue to improve for decades if managed well.

How secure is Signal considered?

It is a walled garden network that demands you tie your phone number to your account making anonymity very hard. Moxie also has an obsession with keeping the network centralized, going so far as to threaten to campaign against attempts to release independently verified and signed clients via projects like F-Droid.

There is not even a path for users that opt out of Google Play Services on Android to install official builds without turning on "enable untrusted sources" and thus opening yourself up to Man In The Disk style attacks.

Signal is modeled very similar to whatsapp where you have to trust a central company to not sell your metadata, and central employees to not backdoor you under coercion.

I don't know what their real agenda is but it is not anonymous encrypted and decentralized communication.

Instead I would suggest looking at Matrix.org/Riot.im which are building anonymous, federated, end to end encrypted messaging where you can use any client that adheres to their published specifications.

Re: WhatsApp Cofounder Brian Acton on Why He Left $850M Behind

#390

Post by lrvick » Thu, Sep 27, 2018, 10:14 AM UTC

dasil003 wrote: post #38

mattnewport wrote: post #7

This article seems a little unfair to the WhatsApp founders when it suggests they should have known that any assurances Facebook made to them as part of the acquisition were obviously lies. Sure in 2018 it might be obvious to most of us that nothing Facebook says or promises can be trusted but I don't think that was necessarily as obvious when the acquisition happened and they can be forgiven for thinking they weren'…

Nah, 2014 makes no material difference. It's not the recent scandals that have somehow revealed Facebook to be the spiritual successor to Microsoft's "embrace and extend" strategy; this has been obvious for at least a decade. Maybe the public didn't realize it yet, but anyone in tech, especially a successful founding team would have been well aware. That said, I'm not going to demonize these guys. Brian Acton clearly…

So he repents from creating a walled garden that abused its power and is now funding another walled garden that has the same ability to abuse its power instead of supporting any of the federated alternatives.

I am not convinced Brian learned the right lessons here.