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Comment by tapia | Hacker News Reader

Since Facebook bought Whatsapp I have been upset exactly because of this. I remember having read this post at the time and considered that that was exactly the right way to go. I started using Whatsapp and paying for it in that moment. I convinced many family members and friends to start using it because of this. Then, when they got enough users, they just decided that none of what they promised was important.

Since then, I have actively trying to convince my contacts to move away from WhatsApp, but it is really hard now. This clearly shows that no matter how much trust a company might inspire at a given time, nothing prevents that ten years from now, when everyone is dependent on their technology, they will not change the rules. And nobody will be able to do anything. (Next: Apple, maybe?)

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If a company isn't willing to sell a thing, but they are willing to sell the company, then they sell the thing. Just not yet.

> (Next: Apple, maybe?)

I doubt it. Apple doesn't make a dime from user data. Really, the only use they have for it, is usability/A-B testing, and crash dumps (which have been quite useful for me, as a developer).

If FB brought Apple (maybe ten years ago, but today? Fat chance), then that would be a different matter, entirely.

In a way, it's quite fortunate that Apple was considered too radioactive to buy, when it wasn't doing so well.

They do makes lot of money from user data. App Store ads are driven by what your activity. Traffic data for Apple Maps comes from your phone. Spying on competition by knowing what apps are installed, that helps them drive their products. Etc.

They have different data policy for sure than google or Facebook, but they do get your data, and they use it to make more money.

Well their value proposal is not to sell that information.

Apps store ads? They have less data than others, and use it differently, but it’s very much selling access to you, like other types of ads.

Do you mean ads inside the App Store app itself or ads inside apps downloaded from the AS?

Search ads inside app store. Apple limits amount of data it's using about you, but they use your data to deliver those ads to you.

They let you control also using your personal data for it, but they use well known industry dark pattern - you need to opt out. Which is very cynical, given that they force others now to get explicit opt-in from users.

Note - I'm not saying that Apple is as bad others. But they totally do use your data to make more money.

Thanks!

As of now, I think this is a reasonable analysis when it comes to Apple. Although the point of the parent is still valid: regardless of what ideals/promises a company upholds today, they could always change tomorrow (for a variety of reasons beyond the acquisition scenario).

A company that I've been wondering about is Netflix. And a reason why I haven't protested their various price increases over the years is because I'm hoping that they continue to be successful on the subscriptions alone.

> If FB brought Apple (maybe ten years ago, but today? Fat chance)

FB’s market cap wasn’t equal to AAPL’s Jan 2010 market cap until sometime in 2014.

> Really, the only use they have for it, is usability/A-B testing, and crash dumps (which have been quite useful for me, as a developer).

Purely out of curiosity + interest, do they do A/B testing with their software? I can see them A/B testing something ancillary like their online store, but I can't remember an instance where they A/B tested new features or designs or anything like that in their actual user software.

I don't know if they do for shipping products. I have talked to engineers (back when they talked to us peons), and they did it pre-release.

If they started small and suddenly started making 80% of revenue on user data, they might suddenly find themselves becoming a data mining company. On the other hand, they might really come through and prove that they will stick to valuing user privacy even when the possible paycheque is so big.

Culturally, we aren't taught to think critically enough about how businesses operate. In an environment that espouses entrepreneurship to the max, we don't spend enough time talking about if companies lie to us or not, how do they plan to monetize, etc.

There's just no way that Facebook wasn't planning to monetize this platform when they wrote this article. Frankly, situations like this should be treated like deceptive advertising practices.

Just like in the political arena, there are very few consequences to just flat out lie to people, and that's unacceptable.

This article was written before FB acquired whatsapp back when it was still its own company.

That being said, it was "only" 20 months later that FB acquired it, so it's hard to believe that the ideals discussed in this article were no longer in the founders' minds when they accepted the deal.

IIRC, the WhatsApp founders had an agreement with Zuckerberg to keep WhatsApp ad-free. I'm not sure whether that agreement was written, or merely verbal. Nevertheless, Zuck appeared to honor that agreement for a time.

But of course, all roads at Facebook lead to ads – and they were pressured relentlessly to monetize. This is why they both left Facebook, and even left a large pile of $$ on the table:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/parmyolson/2018/09/26/exclusive...

Didn't they refuse facebooks offer multiple times, which is why the actual price of acquisition ended up being something crazy (like $20 billion?)

If anything, one could argue that makes it even _more_ clear that they knew what FB was intending to do with whatsapp and that it wasn't aligned with their principles.

I've also been trying to convince my contacts to move away from WhatsApp. I'm met with lots of resistance, including "but all my friends use it" and "lol I don't care about privacy". I've had a hard time building an argument that's convincing for them.

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