Obviously you can't be sure he's sincere, but he's on record as saying he regrets that sale.
* 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Like what?