A year ago, Signal benefited greatly from WhatsApp’s woes. Recommended by Edward Snowden and Elon Musk, the app had gained millions of users within days.
Signal instant messaging founder and CEO Matthew Rosenfeld, also known as Moxie Marlinspike, hands over. By the time a replacement is found, Brian Acton, co-founder of WhatsApp and executive chairman of Signal, becomes interim CEO.
The latter had sold WhatsApp, an application initially renowned for its respect for privacy, to Facebook in 2014 for $ 22 billion. He finally left Mark Zuckerberg’s firm in 2017 when the monetization of instant messaging had just been launched by Facebook. Jan Koum, the other co-founder of WhatsApp, had followed suit a few months later and had also slammed the door of the American giant.
Signal has gained millions of users thanks to WhatsApp
If Brian Acton did not appreciate that Facebook was exploiting the personal data of WhatsApp users for profit, seeing him temporarily at the head of Signal is an odd nod of fate. And for good reason, Signal greatly benefited a year ago from the woes of WhatsApp. The application had been at the origin of a controversy by imposing on its users a modification of its general conditions of use which made possible the transfer of personal data with Facebook in order to make WhatsApp an intermediary between Internet users and traders.
The move sparked global panic among WhatsApp users who flocked to other apps, like Signal and Telegram, to keep their personal data better protected. Signal, messaging recommended by Edward Snowden and Elon Musk, had gained several million users in a few days.