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Comment by SimonPStevens | Hacker News Reader

Funny how times change...

Some quotes from a What's App blog post from 4 years ago titled "Why we don't sell ads"[0]

  "Remember, when advertising is involved you the user are the product."

  "Your data isn't even in the picture. We are simply not interested in any of it."

  "When people ask us why we charge for WhatsApp, we say "Have you considered the alternative?"

So they aren't showing ads themselves, but they are shipping your data out to another entity that is. Seems worse to me.

[0] - https://blog.whatsapp.com/245/Why-we-dont-sell-ads?

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$22B gives you enough bang for acquihiring a team and also their moral values.

The vilified philosopher Groucho Marx once said:

"Those are my principles, and if you don't like them... well, I have others."

Sad but very common these days...

Interesting question is if you sell out your app for a ton of cash, there isn't any structural issue preventing remaking it in the pre-sold out version (well maybe the original authors sign a doc that says they won't but others don't). So in theory you all can move another service with morals intact. But that is "hard" because your friends don't feel like moving. So the moralist says to their friends, "fine but I won't chat on whatsapp" and then they find their friends like them but not enough to change the app they use. So the moralist now has no friends (or they are always grumpy because their friends chose convienience over privacy) and they have to vent that frustration on the people who sold out.

It is a really interconnected set of issues, where the simplest person to blame is often not the actual problem.

Out of curiosity - will you compromise a little bit[1] on your principles if someone offers you 19 Billion USD? Honestly, I would. And I think almost all the people in the world would. So I don't see anything funny / surprising here.

[1] - going from "won't show ads" to "ship data to someone else who will show ads" is not a big step. Just for perspective, some people are literally willing to kill others for far less.

Then you don't have principles, you have exorbitant prices for your labor. Principles can change, yes, but if they do so only because there is a reward involved, then you are no different than my cat near dinner time. In fact, my cat may have more principles as he wont stop puking on the rug no matter the bribe I give him.

No matter what people tell themselves everyone has their price.

Define price. There are many worlds that we all live in without money. In many worlds and cultures, that 'price' is your honor or the price of your soul. And the value of those types of things is often worth more than any amount of money. Cincinnatus is a good example of this, though there are many many others. When you read about the lives of monetarily wealthy people, they will often tell you that the money does not matter after a certain point. That family and friends matter. I agree with you that we all have a price, but for a lot of folk, that price is not measured in dollars, but in lives, in the soul, or in honor.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucius_Quinctius_Cincinnatus

Oh come on. Look, I don't like it either but we're talking about an awful lot of money. This is a pretty tired argument but the fact remains that if your scruples bother you you could take those billions and feed the hungry/house refugees/fund your own private messaging startup for the few people out there who care about privacy. The last part is sad, but really, most people just can't be arsed.

I usually find that any arguments following the phrase "come on" are garbage.

If you'll sell out millions of people who trusted you, and then pat yourself on the back for mailing a check to "help" another group of people you'll never know, then more power to you if that helps you sleep at night.

> I usually find that any arguments following the phrase "come on" are garbage.

lmao this is really quite true.

Have you no honor or sense of duty then? What the hell is money anyways? Will your wife or husband really care if you make a dollar more or a million more? Will your true friends give a damn if you treat them to dinner every night and not be allowed to return the favor? What does your daughter mind if the book you read her before bed is engraved with gold? Does the extravagance of your son's wedding make any difference in his love for you? What a shallow life you must live if all you can think of is money. I'll grant, giving those dollars to the poor is a noble deed, but where did they come from, at what cost? Raise the taxes, encourage your representatives and senators to give much more to the poor and none of us have to pay for it with our souls.

You're talking about "honor and sense of duty" as if these people took 19 billion dollars to kill off 1 million innocent children or something.

A single person didn't even make this decision. If you were the original creator of WhatsApp, no matter how "honorable" you are, you'll still get Ned Stark'd and everybody else will vote for $19 billion dollars over your silly "duty to the customers."

Welcome to the real world.

19B is a HUGE number, which literally changes lives. If my spouse and kids find out that I earned that much by switching my stance from "allowing no ads" to "allowing ads", then they would totally support me.

Not just them, every single person I know (friends, family, coworkers..) would support my decision. And I have a fairly large social circle. So in that sense, changing one's stance is completely "normal"; whereas refusing 19B just so that "you won't have to serve ads" seems "abnormal".

If I were in the position of WhatsApp, I would prefer not to sell user info on principle...but I might also have other principles that say I could do enough good in the world with $19B that it overcomes the evil of selling out a messaging app to Facebook.

I get where you're coming from, but I think you're ignoring the utilitarian argument that can be made in this kind of situation.

> Then you don't have principles

I'd say if you reject any offer at any price, you don't have principles. You have dogmas.

Let's concoct a toy. You own 100% of a company. A suitor offers to buy it for $100bn. Not negotiable is that they will use 1,000 child laborers post-acquisition.

One could say refusing the $100bn to "save" the thousand from child labor is principled. More compelling, at least for me, is that one turned down the opportunity to go to Mars or rid the world of the guinea worm and possibly other bugs or cure this or that in exchange for feeling good about delaying the hiring of a thousand children.

Both calculi can become dangerous if taken too far. The balance arises in price.

>Let's concoct a toy. You own 100% of a company. A suitor offers to buy it for $100bn. Not negotiable is that they will use 1,000 child laborers post-acquisition.

>[by] refusing the $100bn ... one turned down the opportunity to go to Mars or rid the world of the guinea worm and possibly other bugs or cure this or that

The buyer that had the $100bn to spend also had those opportunities but was willing to exchange them for buying your company. So claiming the decision not to sell is somehow reducing e.g. the number of trips to Mars seems disingenuous.

"And although he once had principles he abandoned them to live as a lapdog to a wealthy daughter of the revolution." -- Rent

So this raises an interesting point. You could claim that everyone has a price, which may well be true. And if that is the case we should change the focus from just switching to the next new platform that promises [security/privacy] as a short term thing until someone offers them enough money. Instead we should focus on [building/using] something where no-matter the price offered the operators don't physically have the ability to hand over the data.

Stop using mobile phone numbers as account Id's might be a good start.

I say this solution is better - "changing the focus from just switching to the next new platform that promises [security/privacy] as a short term thing until someone offers them enough money".

Anything else (removing profits from equation) will be fighting against human nature to enrich oneself.

Reminds me of a great joke.

Man to woman: "Will you sleep with me for a million dollars?" Woman:"Yes" Man:"I don't have a million. How about one dollar?" Woman:"Of course not. What kind of a woman do you think I am?" Man:"I think we have already answered that question. Let us now see if we can agree on a price"

I guess their excuse is that then they were still an independent company. But everyone should know that this is Facebook's modus operandi now.

"Relax everyone, we're just introducing this new type of tracking technology to improve our services and your security! It's not like we're going to use it for ads or anything like that - that's crazy talk. Just trust us."

Two years later:

"So, everyone, you know that tracking technology we launched earlier? Yeah, we're going to use it now to *improve you ad watching experience"! (you've already forgotten we promised not to do it, right? Okay, good.)"

The price also changed.

I don't think they ship your data elsewhere - I think they allow the users to opt-in for more communication by others, as said, e.g. the users bank.

Though I have to admit, the opt-in is not mentioned as such.

Edit: F*CK. It's opt out. https://www.whatsapp.com/faq/general/26000016

That won't be legal in some european countries...

You either die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become the villain.

Whatsapp founders mind voice - We just turned our users in to product because thats the best way to get billions in our bank account.

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