WhatsApp co-founder says, ‘Never intended to be Facebook,’ defends Meta in antitrust trial

Brian Acton, co-founder of WhatsApp, told a US federal court on Tuesday that the messaging platform never intended to build social networking features like Facebook. This claim bolsters Meta’s defence in the ongoing antitrust trial brought by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC).

“We had no ambition to build Facebook-like functionality like a feed or any Facebook-like features,” Acton stated during his testimony in Washington. He further suggested that WhatsApp could have remained viable as a subscription-based service rather than resorting to advertising, had it not been acquired by Facebook (now Meta).

The testimony comes during the sixth week of a landmark antitrust trial in which the FTC accuses Meta Platforms Inc. of monopolising the social networking space through its acquisitions of WhatsApp and Instagram. The agency is seeking to break up Meta, alleging the company stifled competition by absorbing potential rivals.

A central argument in the FTC’s case is that Meta saw WhatsApp as a looming threat in the social networking arena, despite the app being a private messaging service at the time of its $19 billion acquisition in 2014. Citing internal messages, the agency has portrayed Meta executives, including CEO Mark Zuckerberg, as concerned that WhatsApp could evolve into a broader social platform.

In one 2013 email to Facebook’s board, Zuckerberg warned of the risk posed by messaging apps transforming into full-fledged social networks. “The biggest competitive vector for us is for some company to build out a messaging app for communicating with small groups of people, and then transforming that into a broader social network,” he wrote.

However, Meta’s legal team is pushing back against this narrative. During Tuesday’s session, they presented a handwritten note from Acton himself, emblazoned with the message: “No Ads! No Games! No Gimmicks!” as evidence of WhatsApp’s core philosophy before the acquisition. Acton, who was called as a witness by Meta, affirmed that there were no plans to incorporate social media features or an advertising model into the app’s roadmap.

Under questioning from FTC lawyers, Acton admitted he was unaware of the specific factors behind Meta’s offer but assumed that advertising potential factored into the valuation. He also acknowledged that WhatsApp would have likely continued expanding its feature set independently, though not in a way that mimicked Facebook’s platform.

Acton also expressed concern over Meta’s decision to launch a business version of WhatsApp, criticising it for potentially compromising the app’s end-to-end encryption. This commercial arm of WhatsApp was developed after Acton’s departure from the company in 2018, a move he said he opposed while still at Meta.

Despite the later divergence in values, Acton acknowledged that Meta’s offer represented a “fair valuation” given WhatsApp’s user base at the time. He highlighted the app’s success with its subscription model in several countries, suggesting there was scope to increase revenues through that route.

Since his exit, Acton has publicly distanced himself from his former employer, most notably tweeting “#DeleteFacebook” in the wake of the Cambridge Analytica scandal in 2018. Although he profited significantly from the sale — his net worth is estimated at $4.5 billion, according to Bloomberg — he has expressed regret over the deal, particularly as Meta moved towards monetising WhatsApp through ads.

The case,Federal Trade Commission v. Meta Platforms Inc., is being heard in the US District Court for the District of Columbia.

(With inputs from Bloomberg)