Ex-Facebook security chief Alex Stamos weighs in on WhatsApp row

Alex Stamos, Facebook’s
former chief security officer.
Getty

• Facebook’s former security chief Alex Stamos said it
  was “foolish” to expect WhatsApp to remain largely revenue-free
  after Facebook paid $19 billion for the messaging service in
  2014.
• It followed a scathing interview with WhatsApp
  cofounder Brian Acton. He told Forbes about the clashes
  he had with Facebook bosses over monetizing WhatsApp.
• Stamos said he wasn’t picking sides, however. “There
  are people I respect on both sides,” he said in a 13-part tweet
  thread.

The fallout from WhatsApp cofounder Brian Acton’s
explosive Forbes interview continues.

Facebook’s former security chief Alex Stamos, who only left the
building last month, weighed in with his views on Wednesday after
Acton lifted the lid on clashes he had with Facebook bosses over
monetizing WhatsApp.

Acton said he and cofounder Jan Koum protested vehemently against
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s attempts to push advertising on to
WhatsApp.

But Stamos said it was unrealistic to expect WhatsApp to remain
largely revenue-free after Facebook paid $19 billion for the
messaging service in 2014. In a tweet storm, which was focused on
WhatsApp’s decision to introduce end-to-end encryption, Stamos
said:

“I think it is easy to underestimate how radical WhatsApp’s
decision to deploy E2E was. Acton and Koum, with Zuck’s blessing,
jumped off a bridge with the goal of building a monetization
parachute on the way down.

“FB has a lot of money, so it was a very tall bridge, but it is
foolish to expect that FB shareholders are going to subsidize a
free text/voice/video global communications network forever.
Eventually, WhatsApp is going to need to generate revenue.”

Stamos made clear, however, that he was not taking sides in a row
that turned personal this week. “There are people I respect on
both sides,” he said in a 13-part Twitter thread, which you can read here.

Acton’s most explosive anecdote involved Zuckerberg. During his
interview with Forbes, Acton recalled a meeting, in which he
asked if Facebook’s insistence on introducing ads meant he could
exit and take his full allocation of stock. “This is probably the
last time you’ll ever talk to me,” Acton remembered Zuckerberg
saying to him.

Soon after the scathing interview went live, Facebook executive David Marcus
published a lengthy blog post attacking his former colleague
Acton, calling him “a whole new standard of low-class” and
accusing him of working to slow down certain business objectives
while he was at the company.

Marcus, who is one of Facebook’s most powerful executives and
heads up the company’s blockchain efforts, insisted that no one
at Facebook had asked him to write the post.