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Comment by fredoliveira | Hacker News Reader

From the article (first paragraph, too):

> Brian Acton, who left Facebook a year ago — before going on to publicly bite the hand that fed him, by voicing support for the #DeleteFacebook movement (and donating $50M to alternative encrypted messaging app, Signal)

And:

> And for leaving a cool ~$850M in unvested stock on the table by not sticking it out a few more months inside Zuckerberg’s mothership, as co-founder Jan Koum did.

Sounds like this actor may in fact be worthy of a little sympathy.

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Is it rational though 850 mil. could literally be used to save few thousands of lives if one was so inclined. While FB is evil by HN standards it's pretty meh on global scale of things.

I don't think that at this point we can consider Facebook anything but evil on a pretty global scale.

I would bet at least 60% of population works for something more evil than FB. Yes they are evil but not in a sense lets start a war and kill few 100K innocent people because we need to run pipelines evil.

I think you need a lot more clarity on how the world's workforce is structured. You are forgetting that the vast majority of the world is doing brick and mortar, making your clothes, planting your crops, etc.

The dissemination of wrong information, the contribution to individualism, and the obvious (blatant) disregard for the world population's privacy is really up there on the charts.

I should've specified US.

You left out the part where he expected and tried to get the $850M but FB’s lawyers pushed back and he settled after burning bridges. $50M is 0.7% of his net worth last I checked (maybe it’s changed).

Look, I’m glad they’re not still at Facebook but this is hypocritical posturing. They’re not giving the money back. They’re crying all the way to the bank.

At the level of wealth this guy has, allocating 0.7% to something is a notable action. Once you're at the level he is at your capital allocation is not about accruing material goods. Material goods are just a rounding error, just buy a few houses and park a few mil in a fixed income fund and you are set for material wealth for life. That leaves you several hundred million to deploy for influence and power. The opportunity cost of moving $50M around is huge.

Oh I'm not saying he's a saint, but that things like donating $50M to Signal are nothing to sneeze at or ignore.

$olid insight, friend. You're post is the only one that mentions the word hypocrisy. $uppose FB had hired him when he applied for a job. Now suppose he's a mid level manager with a net wealth of 10-20m instead of the co-founder of a messaging app worth over 1b. I seriously doubt he would have all of these ethical qualm$ and be leaving the company.

It specifically says he didn't settle, because he didn't want to sign an NDA.

Sorry I meant gave up after burning bridges. Their plan was always to bail before monetization kicked in and be able to say they had nothing to do with it. But you don't get a $19B valuation from Facebook for a text messaging arbitrage app without being fully aware of where that money will come from. That's why they didn't forbid it, only required accelerated vesting.

Indeed, or at least certainly more worthy than a writer (clearly doesn't sound like a real journalist) that drops lines like "going on to publicly bite the hand that fed him"

Well, that is what he did, isn't it?

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