WhatsApp co-founder Brian Acton still thinks deleting Facebook is a good idea
Last year amid the uproar on Facebook’s role the Cambridge Analytica scandal, WhatsApp co-founder Brian Acton urged users to delete their Facebook accounts. “It is time.#deletefacebook”, Acton, who left Facebook nearly two years ago in September 2017, wrote in a tweet last year in March. Now, nearly a year and a half after his tweet, Acton is still defending his decision of urging users to get off Facebook.
Acton, who since leaving Facebook has co-founded the Signal Foundation with Moxie Marlinspike whose aim is to develop open source privacy technology that enables secure global communication, was speaking at Wired’s 25th summit when he said that he still stands by his decision of leaving Facebook.
“If you want to be on Facebook and you want to have ads thrust in front of you, go to town,” Acton said, as reported by The Verge.
“At the time, there was pressure unfolding against Facebook…I was like, maybe it’s time. But then I realized a fatal flaw in Facebook is they don’t have tombstones. When you disappear, you disappear. So I left my tombstone on Twitter,” he added.
During his interview, the WhatsApp co-founder also expressed his skepticism in Facebook’s and its founder, Mark Zuckerberg’s, ability to focus on encryption. “if he wants to make it happen, he will. But he has been known to change his mind,” Acton said as per the report.
He also said that it will be a difficult task for Facebook to integrate all of its services under one protocol and promote interoperability – something that Zuckerberg had announced in a blogpost in the beginning of this year.
“Mark has has set himself up with a very tall order and I think it’s going to be years in the making…The proof is really going to be in the pudding,” he said, as reported by CNET.
Notably, this not the first time that the WhatsApp co-founder has stressed on the need to…well…delete Facebook. Last year while speaking with an undergraduate computer science class at Standford, Acton not only talked about Facebook but also how big tech companies struggle with content moderation. “Apple struggles to decide what’s a good app and what’s a bad app. Google struggles with what’s a good website and what’s a bad website. These companies are not equipped to make these decisions. And we give them the power,” Acton had said at the time.
“That’s the bad part. We buy their products. We sign up for these websites. Delete Facebook, right?,” he added.
