Hacker News Reader

This blog post from Whatsapp is almost 6 years old: https://blog.whatsapp.com/245/Why-we-dont-sell-ads (it was linked to from the WSJ article)

Almost prescient is the final line:

When people ask us why we charge for WhatsApp, we say "Have you considered the alternative?"

Also they use a quote from that blog post as the title comment:

> we wanted to make something that wasn't just another ad clearinghouse

from the link

"These days companies know literally everything about you, your friends, your interests, and they use it all to sell ads."

I am not surprised there was a culture clash. I am more surprised that they sold to FB, and that it lasted so long with the difference in vision.