WhatsApp had no plans to vie with Facebook, co-founder says
The FTC alleges that Meta has created an illegal social networking monopoly thanks to its purchases of WhatsApp and Instagram more than a decade ago, and is seeking a breakup of the company. — Pixabay
WhatsApp co-founder Brian Acton said that his messaging company had no plans to build social networking features to compete with Facebook before he sold the company to Mark Zuckerberg, a claim that bolsters Meta's defence as it faces US federal antitrust allegations.
"We had no ambition to build Facebook-like functionality like a feed or any Facebook-like features,' Acton said Tuesday during testimony at a federal courthouse in Washington. He also said that WhatsApp could have stuck with a subscription business instead of selling targeted ads if the service had remained independent.
Acton's comments came as part of the US Federal Trade Commission's antitrust trial against Meta Platforms Inc, which is in its sixth week. The agency alleges that Meta has created an illegal social networking monopoly thanks to its purchases of WhatsApp and Instagram more than a decade ago, and is seeking a breakup of the company. Meta has disputed the allegations and argued that it faces vast competition from several rivals, including TikTok and Apple Inc, that the FTC is overlooking.
Meta's acquisition of WhatsApp is a key part of the case, with FTC lawyers arguing that Meta viewed the messaging app as a legitimate social networking competitor before buying it in 2014 after a US$19bil offer. While WhatsApp didn't offer social-networking features at the time – it was a private messaging app akin to texting – lawyers for the FTC have said that several rival messaging apps were pushing into social networking around that time. It also surfaced private messages and emails from Meta executives fretting that WhatsApp may do the same.
"The biggest competitive vector for us is for some company to build out a messaging app for communicating with small groups of people, and then transforming that into a broader social network,' Meta chief executive officer Zuckerberg wrote to the company's board of directors in February 2013, back when the company was called Facebook.
Zuckerberg courted WhatsApp co-founder Jan Koum for over a year before the deal while Meta tracked the growth and feature sets for several mobile messaging apps, including WhatsApp, documents show.
Lawyers for Meta, meanwhile, have argued that WhatsApp had no plans to push into social networking, or launch a competitive advertising business. A handwritten note from Acton that read "No Ads! No Games! No Gimmicks!' was displayed in court earlier in the trial, and former employees and board members have testified that there were no plans for such features. Acton was called to the stand Tuesday by Meta in an effort to hammer home this point.
During his testimony, Acton was asked by an FTC lawyer whether Meta included advertising value in its offer for WhatsApp. He said he didn't know what exactly went into Meta's calculation, but assumed that advertising would be a component, given its business. Acton also acknowledged under FTC questioning that WhatsApp would have continued its push to add features had it not been acquired by Meta.
Separately, he said he had opposed Facebook's launching a business version of WhatsApp, since it would dilute end-to-end encryption, and that the commercial offering was introduced after he left the company. Part of the FTC's case has focused on trying to prove that the deals led to consumer harm that would not have happened had WhatsApp or Instagram stayed independent.
In response to questions from Meta's lawyer, Acton said Meta had offered a "fair valuation' for WhatsApp given the size of its audience. Acton also noted the success of its subscription model in seven countries in 2014 and said he believed there was an opportunity for WhatsApp to make even more money off subscriptions by raising prices.
Acton has had a colourful history with his former employer since leaving Meta in 2018. He made billions by selling his business – he's now worth US$4.5bil (RM19.22bil), according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index – but eventually left the company after Meta started formulating plans to monetise the app via advertising.
Acton thought that doing so would jeopardise the privacy of WhatsApp users, and he has since signalled some regret about selling the app. After Facebook's Cambridge Analytica privacy scandal in 2018, Acton tweeted "#DeleteFacebook'. – Bloomberg
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The Star
18 hours ago
- The Star
Human coders are still better than AI, says this expert developer
Your team members may be tempted to rely on AI to help them write code for your company, either for cost or speed rationales or because they lack particular expertise. But you should be wary. — Pixabay In the complex 'will AI steal my job?' debate, software developers are among the workers most immediately at risk from powerful AI tools. It's certainly looking like the tech sector wants to reduce the number of humans working those jobs. Bold statements from the likes of Meta's Mark Zuckerberg and Anthropic's Dario Amodei support this since both of them say AI is already able to take over some code-writing roles. But a new blog post from a prominent coding expert strongly disputes their arguments, and supports some AI critics' position that AI really can't code. Salvatore Sanfilippo, an Italian developer who created Redis (an online database which calls itself the 'world's fastest data platform' and is beloved by coders building real-time apps), published a blog post this week, provocatively titled 'Human coders are still better than LLMs.' His title refers to large language model systems that power AI chatbots like OpenAI's ChatGPT and Anthropic's Claude. Sanfilippo said he's 'not anti-AI' and actually does 'use LLMs routinely,' and explained some specific interactions he'd had with Google's Gemini AI about writing code. These left him convinced that AIs are 'incredibly behind human intelligence,' so he wanted to make a point about it. The billions invested in the technology and the potential upending of the workforce mean it's 'impossible to have balanced conversations' on the matter, he wrote. Sanfilippo blogged that he was trying to 'fix a complicated bug' in Redis's systems. He made an attempt himself, and then asked Gemini, 'hey, what we can do here? Is there a super fast way' to implement his fix? Then, using detailed examples of the kind of software he was working with and the problem he was trying to fix, he blogged about the back-and-forth dialogue he had with Gemini as he tried to coax it toward an acceptable answer. After numerous interactions where the AI couldn't improve on his idea or really help much, he said he 'asked Gemini to do an analysis of (his last idea, and it was finally happy.' We can ignore the detailed code itself and just concentrate on Sanfilippo's final paragraph. 'All this to say: I just finished the analysis and stopped to write this blog post, I'm not sure if I'm going to use this system (but likely yes), but, the creativity of humans still have an edge, we are capable of really thinking out of the box, envisioning strange and imprecise solutions that can work better than others,' he wrote. 'This is something that is extremely hard for LLMs.' Gemini was useful, he admitted, to simply 'verify' his bug-fix ideas, but it couldn't outperform him and actually solve the problem itself. This stance from an expert coder goes up against some other pro-AI statements. Zuckerberg has said he plans to fire mid-level coders from Meta to save money, employing AI instead. In March, Amodei hit the headlines when he boldly predicted that all code would be written by AIs inside a year. Meanwhile, on the flip side, a February report from Microsoft warned that young coders coming out of college were already so reliant on AI to help them that they failed to understand the hard computer science behind the systems they were working on –something that may trip them up if they encountered a complex issue like Sanfilippo's bug. Commenters on a piece talking about Sanfilippo's blog post on coding news site Hacker News broadly agreed with his argument. One commenter likened the issue to a popular meme about social media: 'You know that saying that the best way to get an answer online is to post a wrong answer? That's what LLMs do for me.' Another writer noted that AIs were useful because even though they give pretty terrible coding advice, 'It still saves me time, because even 50 percent accuracy is still half that I don't have to write myself.' Lastly, another coder pointed out a very human benefit from using AI: 'I have ADHD and starting is the hardest part for me. With an LLM it gets me from 0 to 20% (or more) and I can nail it for the rest. It's way less stressful for me to start now.' Why should you care about this? At first glance, it looks like a very inside-baseball discussion about specific coding issues. You should care because your team members may be tempted to rely on AI to help them write code for your company, either for cost or speed rationales or because they lack particular expertise. But you should be wary. AIs are known to be unreliable, and Sanfilippo's argument, supported by other coders' comments, point out that AI really isn't capable of certain key coding tasks. For now, at least, coders' jobs may be safe… and if your team does use AI to code, they should double and triple check the AI's advice before implementing it in your IT system. – Inc./Tribune News Service
The Star
19 hours ago
- The Star
Cuts hit contract workers
Meeting of minds: Anwar receiving a courtesy call from Muhammad Shahrul in Putrajaya. — Photo courtesy of Anwar's Facebook page PUTRAJAYA: The move by PETRONAS to trim its workforce by about 10% involves mostly contract workers, says Prime Minister Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim. 'It mostly involves contract (positions),' Anwar said when asked to comment on reports that PETRONAS would cut about 5,000 employees as part of a 'right-sizing' process. Anwar, who is also Finance Minister, said this after performing Friday prayers with over 500 congregants at Surau Al-Ikhwan, Jalan Pinggiran Putra, near here yesterday, Bernama reported. Also present was Selangor Mentri Besar Datuk Seri Amirudin Shari. On Thursday, PETRONAS president and group chief executive officer Tan Sri Tengku Muhammad Taufik Tengku Kamadjaja Aziz was reported to have said that the national oil and gas company would cut about 10% of its workforce as part of its right-sizing and restructuring process. He also denied that the state-owned company would exit its business in Canada. PETRONAS had previously stated that it needs to right-size its workforce to ensure the company's sustainability in the decades to come. It has nearly 50,000 employees, according to its website. Separately, Anwar said he would contact his Thai counterpart, Paetongtarn Shinawatra, regarding the border dispute between Thailand and Cambodia. Anwar said that as the Asean Chair, Malaysia took note of the developments in both countries. 'We will issue a statement (on the outcome of the discussion with Paetongtarn) later,' he told reporters. On May 28, Thai and Cambodian troops were involved in a brief skirmish in Thailand's Ubon Ratchathani province and Cambodia's Preah Vihear province, which resulted in the death of a Cambodian soldier. Cambodia has since announced its intention to bring the border dispute to the International Court of Justice. Thailand, meanwhile, has reportedly reiterated its commitment to resolving the issue peacefully in accordance with international law, as well as existing agreements and memoranda with Cambodia. Earlier, Anwar received a courtesy call from the new Malaysian Ambassador to the United States, Tan Sri Muhammad Shahrul Ikram Yaakob. Anwar said that they discussed, among others, measures to strengthen bilateral ties between Malaysia and the United States, including strategic efforts to attract quality and high-impact foreign investments. 'Among (the topics) touched on included strengthening Malaysia-US ties as well as efforts to attract quality and high-impact foreign investments from the country,' he said in a Facebook post today. The Prime Minister also wished Muhammad Shahrul all the best on his appointment, while stating his confidence in the former to elevate Malaysia's aspirations, image and reputation to the highest level. On June 3, His Majesty Sultan Ibrahim, King of Malaysia, presented the instrument of appointment to Muhammad Shahrul in a ceremony at Istana Negara.
Borneo Post
a day ago
- Borneo Post
DBKU seeks Net Carbon Friendship City partnership with Aberdeen
Hilmy (right) presents a souvenir to Dr Cameron during the visit. – Photo via Facebook/Dewan Bandaraya Kuching Utara KUCHING (June 6): Kuching North City Commission (DBKU) is looking to establish a Net Carbon Friendship City relationship with the Aberdeen City Council in Scotland, reaffirming its commitment to low-carbon city initiatives and sustainable urban development. According to a statement posted on DBKU's official Facebook page, the intention was conveyed by Kuching North Datuk Bandar Dato Hilmy Othman during a courtesy visit to the Lord Provost (Mayor) of Aberdeen City, Dr David Cameron, at Aberdeen today. During the visit, both parties exchanged views and information on initiatives aligned with the Net Zero Cities concept, aimed at advancing toward low-carbon cities. Also present were DBKU deputy director (Community Services) Rudzaimeir Malek and Energy Industries Council (Asia Pacific) Senior Business Development manager Awang Mu'awaludin. Aberdeen City has formulated its Net Zero Aberdeen Routemap, which outlines its pathway to achieving net zero emissions by 2045. The Routemap includes six empowerment strategies: the Mobility Strategy, Buildings and Heat Strategy, Circular Economy Strategy, Energy Supply Strategy, Natural Environment Strategy, and Empowerment Strategy. Hilmy is part of the Sarawak delegation led by Deputy Minister of Energy and Environmental Sustainability Sarawak Datuk Dr Hazland Abang Hipni, who attended the Energy Export Conference 2025 in Aberdeen on June 3 to 4. Other members of the delegation include Deputy State Secretary (Economic Planning and Development) Dato Sri Dr Muhammad Abdullah Zaidel; State Financial Secretary Dato Sri Dr Wan Lizozman Wan Omar; Senior State Counsel Dr Jady@Zaidi Hassim; SEDC Energy chief executive officer Robert Hardin; Sarawak Energy Berhad senior vice-president Siti Aishah; and Sarawak Energy Berhad general manager (Sustainability) Mohamad Irwan Aman. Aberdeen DBKU Net Carbon Friendship City
