One of WhatsApp's former bosses, Neeraj Arora, who used to be WhatsApp's Chief Business Officer, admitted that he deeply regretted his role in selling WhatsApp to Facebook in 2014. He was not the only one who spoke like that, the founder of WhatsApp had said the same thing.
"In 2014, I was WhatsApp's Chief Business Officer. And I helped negotiate a $22 billion sale to Facebook. Today, I regret it," Arora wrote in a thread on Twitter, quoted from iMore.
Facebook is said to have broken promises when purchasing WhatsApp, for example, regarding maintaining user privacy. The revelation of the Cambridge Analytica scandal that shocked the world, opened eyes to the practice of mining user data and involving a sum of money from corporations.
Not only Neeraj, WhatsApp founder Brian Acton said the same thing. Acton, who gave birth to Facebook with Jan Koum, apparently regrets selling WhatsApp to Facebook because he feels it sacrifices user privacy and there is a possibility that WhatsApp is possessed by advertisements.
Facebook certainly wants its huge investment in WhatsApp to return. So various ways of monetization were tried by the world's largest social network, including by advertising, although until now the right method is still being formulated.
"In the end, I sold my company. I sold user privacy. I made choices and compromised. And it always bothered me every day," said Acton.
"I've been sold, I admit that," he added in an interview with Forbes quoted by us.
Acton also decided to step down from Facebook at the end of 2017 because he did not agree with WhatsApp's monetization method. Not only that, he did not take the share of shares worth USD 850 million.
