🔗 WhatsApp Cofounder Brian Acton Explains Why He Felt He Had To Sell To Facebook

Ryan Mac for BuzzFeed:

While Acton didn’t discuss the specifics behind Zuckerberg’s push to monetize WhatsApp during his talk at Stanford, he spoke critically of business models that incentivize companies to prioritize profits over people’s privacy.

“The capitalistic profit motive, or answering to Wall Street, is what’s driving the expansion of invasion of data privacy and driving the expansion of a lot of negative outcomes that we’re just not happy with,” he said. “I wish there were guardrails there. I wish there was ways to rein it in. I have yet to see that manifest, and that scares me.”