Former business officer of WhatsApp Neeraj Arora has expressed regret over the mammoth deal negotiated between the instant messaging platform and the social media giant Meta, then known as Facebook, in 2014.
Writing a long post on Twitter and LinkedIn, Arora who was instrumental in negotiating the $22 billion deal between WhatsApp and Facebook, said he “regrets” that WhatsApp became part of Facebook, adding “he is not the only one” who feels this way.
Facebook’s acquisition of WhatsApp in 2014 was one of the biggest deals in the technology industry – larger than any of Meta’s peers like Google, Microsoft or Apple ever did.
However, over the years, WhatsApp employees, including its founders, have expressed dismay over how the company changed its direction since being acquired by the Mark Zuckerberg-led company.
“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,” wrote Arora on the micro-blogging site. “And I am not the only one who regrets that it became part of Facebook when it did,” he added.
Arora later co-founded social media platform HalloApp where he is now the QA test lead.
Narrating how Facebook (now Meta) had promised the founders — Jan Koum, Brian Acton — of supporting their vision for WhatsApp, he said, “As we began talking through the acquisition, and made our stance very clear: No mining user data, No ads (ever), No cross-platform tracking. FB and their management agreed and we thought they believed in our mission. Of course, that’s not what happened,” Arora said.
He concluded his post by saying tech companies need to admit when things go wrong and that people need to talk about how perverse business models cause well-intentioned products and ideas to go wrong.
He said for Silicon Valley to evolve, people “need to talk about how perverse business models cause well-intentioned products, services, and ideas to go wrong”.
Coming into existence in 2004, Facebook/Meta initially began as a social media platform. However, over the years, the company added multiple companies under its banner including the widely popular photo sharing platform Instagram, becoming the world’s most valuable companies.
It has also faced worldwide criticism for mining user data through unauthorised ways, raising concerns over online data privacy.
In March 2020, the company came under major backlash after the Facebook–Cambridge Analytica data scandal came to light. The British political consulting company, Cambridge Analytica, had obtained personal data of millions of Facebook users through third-party apps.
