WhatsApp co-founder may leave Facebook over user data disputes
Jan Koum, founder of the messaging app WhatsApp which was sold to Facebook in 2014 is likely to leave Facebook if his declaration in a post on the social network is anything to go by.
Koun who is a member of Facebook’s board of directors said in the post, “it is time for me to move on.” He did not give a reason for his exit.
It should be recalled that Koun had insisted that strong encryption be built into the messaging service as a demonstration of his respect for the privacy of users.
He explained how deeply he cared about the privacy of communication. Growing up in the Soviet Union during the 1980s — when surveillance was a fact of life — had made him realize the importance of being able to speak freely, he wrote.
“Respect for your privacy is coded into our DNA, and we built WhatsApp around the goal of knowing as little about you as possible,” Koum wrote in a blog post after he had sold WhatsApp to Facebook for $19 billion. “If partnering with Facebook meant that we had to change our values, we wouldn’t have done it.
Now, instead of changing his values, Koum is leaving Facebook
Koum’s exit is the highest-profile departure from Facebook after months of controversy that has roiled the social network. The Silicon Valley company has been under scrutiny for how Russian agents used it to influence voters before the 2016 presidential election and, more recently, for a lack of data protections for its more than 2.2 billion members, a subject that gained attention after revelations that the British political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica had improperly harvested the information of as many as 87 million Facebook users.
According to a company executive, who asked not to be identified because the details of Koum’s departure were confidential, Koum had grown increasingly concerned about Facebook’s position on user data in recent years. Koum was perturbed by the amount of information that Facebook collected on people and had wanted stronger protections for that data, the person said. Koum had discussed leaving the company since late last year, the person added.
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