In 2014, Facebook bought WhatsApp for $16 billion, making its co-founders — Jan Koum and Brian Acton — very wealthy men. Koum continues to lead the company, but Acton quit earlier this year to start his own foundation. And he isn’t done merely with WhatsApp — in a post on Twitter today, Acton told his followers to delete Facebook.
In a tweeton Wednesday, Acton joined the chorus of voices calling on people to delete the social network. His advice to users to stop using the service is notable because WhatsApp is owned by Facebook.
The "delete Facebook" movement is growing due in part to a massive data scraping scandal in which data firm Cambridge Analytica harvested information on 50 million Facebook users without their knowledge.
Acton left Facebook (FB) in September of last year, and recently announced a $50 million investment in secure messaging app Signal and joined the company's foundation.
Facebook is under fire from the public and politicians in the United States and the United Kingdom over its data privacy practices. The company is taking a financial hit, too—Facebook lost$50 billion in market value this week.
Deleting Facebook may not be a viable option for some, but those who want to detach themselves from the Facebook platform would need to delete apps Facebook owns, too, which include WhatsApp and Instagram.
