In 2014, Facebook bought WhatsApp for $16 billion, making its co-founders — Jan Koum and Brian Acton — very rich.
Koum is still leading WhatsApp. Acton, who is worth $6.5 billion according to The Verge, quit WhatsApp earlier this year to start his own foundation — the Signal Foundation. In a Twitter post on Tuesday, Acton told his followers to delete Facebook.
“It is time,” Acton wrote, adding the hashtag #deletefacebook.
It is time. #deletefacebook
— Brian Acton (@brianacton) March 20, 2018
Never bite the hand that feeds you. This tweet is the embodiment of ungratefulness and disloyalty. You guys get 60 billion+ in $FB stock for creating an improved AIM messenger and now turn your back on people that made you rich! Very sad to see
— Alamentarius Optimistic 3/23 was not THE bottom (@alamentarius) March 20, 2018
The time to delete Facebook was when it stopped requiring a .edu email address.
— Dale Giesen (@DaleGiesen) March 20, 2018
Brian Acton, have you heard of the word “Abstain” Facebook users are capable to make their own decisions for themselves. Don’t bite the hand that fed you! #Pathetic
— Lenworth (@Lenworth7) March 21, 2018
After you sir… pic.twitter.com/ZbKlDCU9tt
— Jon Devo (@JonDevo) March 21, 2018
Seriously. I’m so fed up of scandal and breaches. I ‘get’ that our data can be leaked. I ‘get’ that we should never share anything we don’t want everyone to see. I ‘get’ that a free service has to make money. It just feels Facebook is increasingly taking more from us w/o asking.
— Lee Williams (@ItsLeeWilliams) March 21, 2018
Do you guys need me to say it? B/c I will.
Ok, fine.
Aaron Sorkin needs to speed up The Social Network sequel.
— Mr. Anderson (@lionel_anderson) March 21, 2018
Here's a list of companies #Facebook has mergers and acquisitions. The one's that stand out to me are #Instagram #Whatsapp & #OculusVR. Should we stop using these too? https://t.co/ut0Vp6QJA6
— Brian (@BrianVasconez) March 21, 2018
https://twitter.com/CryptoCasca/status/976443049982164992
Should we delete #WhatsApp too?
— Rakesh Pandey (@_rakesh_pandey) March 21, 2018
Acton’s tweet reached more than 21,000 of his followers, Deadline reported. He’s one more voice — and a stakeholder — in a growing movement to delete Facebook as a social media platform.
The movement is gaining momentum after a report that Cambridge Analytica used personal information from 50 million Facebook users without their permission during the 2016 presidential campaign. The data firm was backed by Donald Trump supporter Robert Mercer and once steered by former Trump advisor Steve Bannon.
Apparently, Facebook knew about the data leak in 2015 but the public only found out this weekend. The #deletefacebook has movement.
Facebook saw its stock price plunge on Monday and Tuesday following concerns over data privacy in the wake of the report on user data misuse by Cambridge Analytica. Regulators and politicians are pressuring Facebook to explain its privacy safeguards.
Acton sold Whatsapp to Facebook for $19 billion in 2014 — the largest deal in Facebook’s history.
In February he invested $50 million in Signal, an independent alternative to WhatsApp, according to The Verge.
Another former Facebook executive expressed concern about the company after leaving it.
Chamath Palihapitiya, who joined Facebook in 2007 and became its vice president for user growth, said he feels “tremendous guilt” about the company he helped make.
“I think we have created tools that are ripping apart the social fabric of how society works,” he told an audience at Stanford Graduate School of Business, before recommending people to take a “hard break” from social media.
WhatsApp is now one of the biggest mobile messaging apps with 1.3 billion active monthly users.
Following Facebook’s acquisition of WhatsApp, Acton donated nearly $290 million to the Silicon Valley Community Foundation, Daily Mail reported.
The foundation commissions research and partners donors with nonprofits.
According to Acton’s Twitter, he was turned down for a job at Facebook in 2009. The same year he bought an iPhone and decided the App Store — which at the time had only been around for seven months — was going to rapidly expand, Daily Mail reported.
Acton launched the Signal Foundation in February. It’s a nonprofit that’s developing technology that “protects free expression and enables secure global communication.”
