WhatsApp co-founder and CEO Jan Koum has announced plans to leave the company, saying he will take time off to focus on personal non-tech things. The announcement comes one day ahead of the F8 developers conference and follows a string of privacy-related controversies growing at parent company Facebook. READ: WhatsApp
WhatsApp co-founder and CEO Jan Koum has announced plans to leave the company, saying he will take time off to focus on personal non-tech things. The announcement comes one day ahead of the F8 developers conference and follows a string of privacy-related controversies growing at parent company Facebook.
READ: WhatsApp co-founder Brian Acton calls for deleting Facebook
In late March, the other WhatsApp co-founder, Brian Acton, published a tweet featuring the tag #deletefacebook. Acton isn’t involved with WhatsApp anymore, having left it in November to later join Signal Foundation.
Koum, however, remained to serve as WhatsApp’s CEO, a role he will be stepping down from, according to a post he published on Facebook.
The post, below, doesn’t express any problems with Facebook or betray any issues that may be taking place behind closed doors. Koum doesn’t reveal any future career ambitions, either, instead saying he’ll focus on relaxing for a while:
Immediately following the post, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg posted a comment thinly disguised as praise that mostly drives home the company’s apparent role in helping decentralize power. The comment reads:
Despite Koum’s chummy tone, sources speaking to WaPo claim he’s leaving the company due to “clashing” with Facebook. Koum reportedly takes issue with the company’s attempts to “weaken [WhatsApp’s] encryption” and “use its personal data.”
SOURCE: Facebook
