‘I am not the only one who regrets that it [WhatsApp] became part of Facebook when it did.’
Neeraj Arora, who was WhatsApp’s chief business officer until 2018 said, today, he regrets selling the app to Meta, formerly known as Facebook. In a series of Tweets, Arora, who was instrumental in negotiating the mammoth $14 billion deal wrote, “I am not the only one who regrets that it [WhatsApp] became part of Facebook when it did.”
Arora says “Zuck & Facebook” had approached WhatsApp not once, but twice for acquisition. The first time when it happened— this was in 2012-2013 – the team declined the offer and “decided to keep growing instead.” It is possible that Meta might not have been able to convince him and others at WhatsApp, at that time, or agree to some or all of their terms and conditions in order for the sale to go through. WhatsApp for instance wouldn’t allow mining of user data, ads –not then, not ever— and cross-platform tracking.
The second time was different. This was in early 2014. Arora says Meta approached them with an offer that made it “look like a partnership.” WhatsApp was allegedly promised full support for end-to-end encryption and a complete independence on product decisions, among other things. Basically “FB and their management agreed, and we thought they believed in our mission.”
The deal was struck, and the rest is history.
“But by 2017 and 2018, things started to look very different,” Arora says.
While not explicitly mentioned, it’s no secret that WhatsApp’s two cofounders, Jan Koum and Brian Acton, left Meta over disagreements with Mark Zuckerberg about plans that would involve monetising WhatsApp with ads, at some point. To be clear, WhatsApp still doesn’t show any ads, but Meta has started pushing to get more and more businesses selling goods and services and interacting with customers on the app.
But perhaps the biggest blow came in 2018, with the Cambridge Analytica scandal, one of, if not the biggest data breach that Meta has ever seen. During the height of the scandal, Acton, who now funds the popular encrypted messaging app called Signal, had famously tweeted “#deletefacebook”.
Arora says, “nobody knew in the beginning that Facebook would become a Frankenstein monster that devoured user data and spat out dirty money,” adding “we didn’t either”.
He continues by saying, “today, WhatsApp is Facebook’s second largest platform (even bigger than Instagram or FB Messenger). But it’s a shadow of the product we poured our hearts into and wanted to build for the world.”
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Arora along with Michael Donohue, who was WhatsApp’s engineering director until 2019, launched HalloApp last year. The app, which is available on Android and iOS, bills itself as a private social network and is built on some of the same guiding principles behind WhatsApp. It offers encrypted group and individual chats with close friends and family that you can only find if you have their phone number. There are no ads or algorithms sorting posts or group chats, either. Eventually the team plans to monetise the service with a subscription.
