Why Facebook might be about to ruin WhatsApp

'Respect for your privacy is coded into our DNA,' WhatsApp founder Jan Koum said when Facebook acquired his company. His departure means this may be about to change

In 2012, two years before Facebook bought WhatsApp for $19 billion, the founder of the messaging app explained his feelings towards advertising by quoting Fight Club: “Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don’t need.”

Jan Koum – who this week stepped down as WhatsApp’s chief executive amid privacy and data concerns – described why the targeted advertising model used by other technology firms like Facebook was an “insult” to users and distracted from the core purpose of his firm’s aim to keep people connected.

“These days companies know literally everything about you, your friends, your interests, and they use it all to sell ads,” he said in a blogpost. “At every company that sells ads, a significant portion of their engineering team spends they day tuning data mining, writing better code to collect your personal data… remember, when advertising is involved, you the user are the product.”

When Mr Koum subsequently sold WhatsApp to Facebook in 2014, many users were rightly concerned that the social network giant would force the messaging app to compromise these principles in the pursuit of profit. At the time WhatsApp had less than $20 million in revenue, gained through a 99 cents fee it charged its users under the proviso it would not sell its users’ data or put adverts on the platform.

Mr Koum, who grew up in the USSR during the 1980’s, said his experience of being monitored by the KGB secret service meant private communication would always be central to WhatsApp's mission.

“Respect for your privacy is coded into our DNA... If partnering with Facebook meant that we had to change our values, we wouldn’t have done it,” Mr Koum said in a blog titled Setting the Record Straight. “Instead, we are forming a partnership that would allow us to continue operating independently and autonomously. Our fundamental values and beliefs will not change. Our principles will not change.”

Fast forward four years, and Mr Koum’s decision to leave the world’s largest messaging platform has led to suspicions that all this is about to change. His departure comes as Facebook is reeling from a data scandal that has drawn to attention the company’s data collection practices and placed online privacy under the scrutiny of its more than one billion users.

Citing sources close to the matter, The Washington Post reported that Mr Koum’s decision to leave was the result of an irreconcilable clash over Facebook’s desire to use users’ data for the purpose of advertising, in part by weakening the end-to-end encryption that protects messages from being read by anyone other than the intended recipient.

When contacted by The Independent, a Facebook spokesperson did not offer additional comment about whether WhatsApp users should be concerned about their personal data being shared. Instead, the spokesperson referred to Facebook posts by Mr Koum and Mark Zuckerberg.

In a Facebook post announcing his departure on Monday, 30 April, Mr Koum did not give specific reasons for leaving the company he helped found, beyond pursuing some hobbies.

“I’m taking some time off to do things I enjoy outside of technology, such as collecting rare air-cooled Porsches, working on my cars and playing ultimate frisbee,” Mr Koum said, in a post that stood in strong contrast to his bold and idealistic screeds of the past.

Mr Zuckerberg made a point of referencing encryption in his public response, saying: “I’m grateful for everything you’ve done to help connect the world, and for everything you’ve taught me, including about encryption and its ability to take power from centralized systems and put it back in people’s hands.”

Privacy advocates have noted that despite any official word about Mr Koum's departure, the underlying conflict is clear. Simon Migliano, head of research at privacy ranking site Top10VPN, points to the fundamental incompatibility between Mr Koum's convictions and Facebook's relationship with data.

"While there are no barbs about the breach in the departing note from Koum, it's hard not to see the co-founder's departure as a man walking away from a situation that's increasingly irreconcilable with the high stock his company places on privacy," Mr Migliano tells The Independent.

For many WhatsApp users, privacy is one of the key reasons for using the service over other alternatives like Facebook Messenger, Google Chat and Slack. For its founder Mr Koum, it was an unshakeable matter of principle to protect people from the invasiveness of the digital age.

And while it’s still unclear what Facebook intends to do with WhatsApp now that Mr Koum has left, its business model points to the corruption of these values and the dilution of its true purpose to serve simply as a messaging app.