Former WhatsApp executive regrets sale to Facebook: 'Didn't know it would become Frankenstein'

Neeraj Arora, WhatsApp’s former chief business officer, said no one could foresee that Facebook would “devour user data and spit out dirty money”. (Image credit/LinkedIn)

A former executive of WhatsApp has expressed regret about its sale to Facebook in 2014, amid the conversation about Twitter’s deal with Elon Musk.

Neeraj Arora was WhatsApp’s chief business officer during the negotiations for its sale. In a Twitter thread, he said no one knew Facebook would become a “Frankenstein monster that devoured user data and spat out dirty money”.

In 2014, I was the Chief Business Officer of WhatsApp.

And I helped negotiate the $22 billion sale to Facebook.

Today, I regret it.

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Here’s where things went wrong:

— neeraj arora (@neerajarora) May 4, 2022

Facebook went on to become embroiled in a controversy surrounding the safety of user data. In 2014, data of a staggering 87 million Facebook users was breached. UK-based political consultancy firm Cambridge Analytica had allegedly played a key role in it.

Arora said during acquisition talks with Facebook, WhatsApp executives had made it clear that there should be no mining of user data, cross-platform tracking and advertisements.

“FB (Facebook) and their management agreed and we thought they believed in our mission,” he added. “Of course, that’s not what happened.”

Arora spoke about WhatsApp co-founder Brian Acton's tweet urging people to delete Facebook, after shocking details of the Cambridge Analytica scandal emerged in 2018.

The former executive lamented that WhatsApp had been reduced to a “shadow of the product we poured our hearts into”.

“And I am not the only one who regrets that it became part of Facebook when it did,” he continued.

Arora sought accountability from tech firms. “In order for the Tech ecosystem to evolve, we need to talk about how perverse business models cause well-intentioned products, services, and ideas to go wrong,” the former WhatsApp executive said in his tweet thread.

Arora had exited WhatsApp soon after Acton left the company in 2018. He is now associated with a platform called HalloApp.