Whatsapp co-founder Jan Koum leaving Facebook amid user data disputes

Koum has given no reason for this departure, but it is believed he had grown increasingly concerned about Facebook's position on user data in recent years

When Jan Koum, a founder of the messaging app WhatsApp, sold the service to Facebook in 2014, he explained how deeply he cared about the privacy of communication. Growing up in the Soviet Union during the 1980s — when surveillance was a fact of life — had made him realise the importance of being able to speak freely, he wrote.
 
“Respect for your privacy is coded into our DNA, and we built WhatsApp around the goal of knowing as little about you as possible,” Koum wrote in a blog post after he had sold WhatsApp to Facebook for $19