[anonporridge]

* step 1: Make bucket of money selling your private comm app to FB.

* step 2: Publicly declare your regret for that decision.

* step 3: Take leadership of big competitor to previous app.

* step 4: Goto step 1 for double profit and to continue tearing down functioning attempts at large scale private communications platforms.

[gonehome]

The only reason Whatsapp was bidded up to an insane 19 Billion sale value was because Acton did not want to sell. Note that it's not insane in terms of value (in hindsight this was clearly a good buy for FB), but insane when considering that value for your small 30 person company.

That's a crazy sale price, I'd like to see you turn it down.

It can be true that he didn't want to sell and regrets it and just couldn't reject that offer, the opportunity costs available to you at the level are nuts. This is a risk with centralized services, it's why we need systems that don't require benevolence: https://zalberico.com/essay/2020/07/14/the-serfs-of-facebook...

Most people don't have principles valued at 19B.

I think Urbit is a potential way to get there, but a lot of the web3 ownership model points in this direction.

[ayngg]

Also turning down money for yourself is one thing, but turning it down for your employees and everyone else involved is different.

[gonehome]

Agreed - at that level you're talking nearly 100M for each employee? Maybe more?

Even if I'm off by a magnitude (and I think I'm not) - that's life changing money for everyone that helped him build Whatsapp.

[nicoburns]

Even on a purely ethical level, selling the company has to pretty bad to offset the amount of good you can do with that amount of wealth.

[btdmaster]

Try Matrix: https://joinmatrix.org.

[gonehome]

Matrix doesn't solve these issues, see: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29882848

That said, I think Matrix is cool and appreciate what they're trying to do. I just think without solving the upstream problems you won't be able to succeed beyond a niche audience.

[UncleMeat]

For all its flaws in Facebook integration, WhatApp is the single most impactful system ever in getting people to use secure communication. 1B+ people started using end-to-end encrypted communications overnight when WhatsApp enabled e2ee. This move pushed the entire industry towards adoption of e2ee.

Yes, they sold to Facebook. Yes, Facebook is doing everything it can to get the contents of WhatsApp communications so they can monetize. But it is impossible to not see the change they made on the landscape of communication privacy.

[nicoburns]

From my perspective, it's also remarkable that WhatsApp managed to enable e2e while already being owned by facebook. It probably won't last, but to me that demonstrates a commitment to security and privacy on the part of the WhatsApp team.

[lupire]

> Yes, Facebook is doing everything it can to get the contents of WhatsApp communications so they can monetize.

Like what?

[stereoradonc]

e2e is a mirage if its blessed by the three letter agencies.

[_heimdall]

There's a step between 1 and 2 that you missed - choose to quit from FB and leave $800,000,000 in stock on the table

[anonporridge]

That's an important part of getting step 3 to happen.

You need proof of regret, and $800 million seems to have been enough. Cheap money if you can make step 4 happen such that it nets more than 0.8 billion.

[lupire]

Really? You would give up $800M for a bizarre outside chance of.. getting a second chance at $800M?

[UncleMeat]

Signal is a nonprofit. Going to be hard to net $800m on that.

[lupire]

Acton didn't "take leadership" of Signal, he funded its development.