• World
    • Africa
    • Asia Pacific
    • Central & South Asia
    • Europe
    • Latin America & Caribbean
    • Middle East & North Africa
    • North America
  • Coronavirus
  • Politics
    • US Election
    • US politics
    • Donald Trump
    • Brexit
    • European Union
    • India
    • Arab world
  • Economics
    • Finance
    • Eurozone
    • International Trade
  • Business
    • Entrepreneurship
    • Startups
    • Technology
  • Culture
    • Entertainment
    • Music
    • Film
    • Books
    • Travel
  • Environment
    • Climate change
    • Smart cities
    • Green Economy
  • Global Change
    • Education
    • Refugee Crisis
    • International Aid
    • Human Rights
  • International Security
    • ISIS
    • War on Terror
    • North Korea
    • Nuclear Weapons
  • Science
    • Health
  • 360 °
  • The Interview
  • In-Depth
  • Insight
  • Quick Read
  • Video
  • Podcasts
  • Interactive
  • My Voice
  • About
  • FO Store
Sections
  • World
  • Coronavirus
  • US Election
  • Politics
  • Economics
  • Business
  • Culture
  • Sign Up
  • Login
  • Publish

Make Sense of the world

Unique insight from 2,000+ contributors in 80+ Countries

Close

Facebook Sees WhatsApp as a Weapon of Conquest

By transforming WhatsApp, is there a chance Mark Zuckerberg may fall flat on his Facebook?
By Peter Isackson • Dec 03, 2020
Peter Isackson Daily Devil’s Dictionary, Facebook news, WhatsApp news, WhatsApp profit margins, WhatsApp global users, Facebook WhatsApp acquisition, Facebook plans for WhatsApp, Mark Zuckerberg Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg WhatsApp, WhatsApp user base

© Ink Drop / Shutterstock

New York Times tech journalist Shira Ovide offers a fascinating glimpse of what’s going on in the back offices of Facebook concerning the future of the popular messaging app, WhatsApp. Changes are afoot, she tells us. Ovide whets the reader’s appetite with this intriguing teaser: “the changes could reshape the direction of the internet.”

Everyone can understand why Mark Zuckerberg and his cohorts are losing patience with the app six years after acquiring it: “More than two billion people worldwide use WhatsApp regularly to text or make phone calls, but it scarcely generates any money for Facebook, which has owned WhatsApp since 2014.” Now, if that sentence accurately describes reality, WhatsApp is profitable but only “scarcely.” Everyone will agree that if true, we should all be crying scandal. Such a state of affairs for a respectable monopolist such as Facebook is intolerable, if not downright shameful. Imagine how Zuckerberg’s shareholders must feel. With a goldmine of 2 billion customers in their possession, where’s the gold?


The Opioid Scandal: When Evil Gets an MBA

READ MORE


So let’s check out the lay of the land. WhatsApp turns out to be providing a seriously useful service to billions of people, but it is only producing meager profits. It’s not as if the customers were complaining. They seem delighted. But something is seriously wrong. Making people happy, responding to their needs and knowing you have managed to make that happen with no inconvenience to yourself is not what business is about. It’s all about finding ways to extract profit from the position of privilege you’ve built for yourself without letting your customers notice how they are being exploited. Why have a monopoly if it isn’t going to make you rich at the expense of your customers?

Ovide tells us that Facebook has finally decided to address this troubling issue. She predicts that these decisions may have earth-shaking consequences. Here’s how she describes the suspense-laden drama: “If Facebook figures it out, WhatsApp could change how we shop and use the internet forever — as the company’s main social network and Instagram did. If not, Facebook will own a spectacularly popular failure.”

Today’s Daily Devil’s Dictionary definition:

Failure:

In modern business practice, any venture that achieves functional success but fails to find a way to screw its users on a massive scale.

Contextual Note

Ovide astutely reports on the strategic thinking of Facebook’s executives. We can easily recognize the Zuckerberg logic behind it: “Facebook is trying to use its trademark playbook to remake WhatsApp into an inescapable way for businesses to interact with us.” 

That’s more like the Facebook we all know, admire and love (or hate). The key word is “inescapable.” That’s how Facebook reasons. Like the slave owners of the Old South who invented slave patrols and even drafted the Second Amendment of the US Constitution to make it possible to recruit armed militias to prevent the slaves from escaping, or like the Sackler family making it difficult for their cherished customers to escape the effects of opioid addiction, Facebook adheres to one fundamental truth: that businesses that accept to provide escape routes to their captive clientele will always be deemed failures, even when they succeed in providing services appreciated by a loyal public.

Embed from Getty Images

Ovide helpfully describes for her readers Facebook’s now traditional “three-step playbook,” which essentially consists of giving people a place to hang out (step 1); inviting business in to mingle with their victims (step 2); getting businesses to pay for advertising (step 3). Because WhatsApp isn’t about mingling, they haven’t found a way of applying the model. Ovide pertinently remarks that Facebook “doesn’t exactly know what else to do when it has to deviate from its three-step plan.”

They could have just left things the way they were, since they apparently weren’t losing money and their users were very happy with the functionality provided. Moreover, WhatsApp’s success meant that no one else would be tempted to enter the marketplace to challenge it. But monopoly can never leave well enough alone, especially if it knows it has access to billions of people that it isn’t monetizing. It must reach ever higher and farther.

At this point, Ovide expresses her own hint of schadenfreude: “It’s heartening, really, to see the big and mighty Facebook fumbling in the dark a little.” She then speculates on the probability of success for Facebook’s plan of turning WhatsApp into “a 21st-century Sears catalog,” which they have already started to do. She recognizes that this is terra incognita even for the members of Facebook’s team, who have been everywhere and done everything. She appears to reflect the uncertainty of Facebook’s strategists themselves: “Or maybe none of this will catch on widely. I don’t know, and maybe for the first time in its history, Facebook doesn’t know, either.”

Ovide reminds her readers that WhatsApp is wildly popular outside of the US, especially in India. She wonders whether, for the Asian subcontinent, the initiative will “change the entire retail industry in ways we can’t imagine” or even whether it might “influence how governments plan their currencies.” Those are the kinds of major issues Facebook is proud to be dealing with and playing the role of trendsetter.

But despite all this strategic speculation, there is another issue she doesn’t mention. In a just society, is it fair that a private company that owns a tool that billions of people have come to depend on for their daily communication should have the power to decide how their dependence can be manipulated for reasons of sheer profit? Is an economic, social and political system that not only allows, but even encourages such things sustainable? Facebook and Purdue Pharma are brothers-in-arms if not partners in crime.

Historical Note

In the short article, Ovide doesn’t take the time to analyze the origins of the Facebook-WhatsApp relationship. When Facebook put up $19 billion in 2014 to buy WhatsApp, people were already wondering about the logic of the acquisition. Business Insider pointed out that WhatsApp “does pretty much the same kinds of things that you can already do on Facebook” and called it “something it does not need, at least in terms of software functionality.”

Once the classic reasoning about the intrinsic value of the product versus the price of acquisition could be dismissed as irrelevant to the world of social media apps, Business Insider zeroed in on the real reason for the acquisition, “that WhatsApp is already, on its own, a sizeable threat to Facebook in terms of peeling off its users and siphoning them into a messaging environment that until today, Facebook had no access to.” In other words, WhatsApp was an obstacle to Facebook’s mission of world-conquering monopoly. It was that loathsome thing called “a competitor of Facebook.” That’s all the reasoning any rational person might need to write a check for $19 billion, n’est-ce pas?

At the time of the acquisition, Business Insider made the point that Ovide repeats today about Facebook’s global strategy, namely that “WhatsApp has an appeal that Facebook does not: Its core audience is international. The vast majority of its users are not American even though the company is based in California. Facebook, by contrast, is kind of the opposite — its core base is in the U.S. and it has only recently made inroads globally.”

Make Sense of the world

Unique insight from 2,000+ contributors in 80+ Countries

These comments from the past remind us that Facebook’s “inroads” have now become major boulevards practically everywhere on earth. According to the firm’s 2020 vision, it’s now time to control and exploit to the hilt the global transportation network that they own and control. We may sympathize with Ovide when she confesses, in the guise of conclusion, that “I’m not sure which outcome we want, but I’ll be paying close attention either way.” Some of today’s WhatsApp users may be justified in hoping for the worst.

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of The Daily Devil’s Dictionary on Fair Observer.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

Share Story
CategoriesAmerican News, Business, Insight, North America, Technology TagsFacebook news, Facebook plans for WhatsApp, Facebook WhatsApp acquisition, Mark Zuckerberg Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg WhatsApp, Peter Isackson Daily Devil’s Dictionary, WhatsApp global users, WhatsApp news, WhatsApp profit margins, WhatsApp user base
Join our network of more than 2,000 contributors to publish your perspective, share your story and shape the global conversation. Become a Fair Observer and help us make sense of the world.

Fair Observer Recommends

Facebook’s Flawed Business Model for Free Expression Facebook’s Flawed Business Model for Free Expression
By Peter Isackson • Oct 23, 2019
Superhero Culture and Cambridge Analytica Superhero Culture and Cambridge Analytica
By Peter Isackson • Oct 17, 2019
A Whistleblower Decries Facebook’s Assault on Democracy A Whistleblower Decries Facebook’s Assault on Democracy
By Peter Isackson • Oct 16, 2019

Post navigation

Previous PostPrevious Agriculture Is India’s Ray of Hope in Time of Crisis
Next PostNext Soul-Searching for America’s Broken Ethics
Subscribe
Register for $9.99 per month and become a member today.
Publish
Join our community of more than 2,500 contributors to publish your perspective, share your narrative and shape the global discourse.
Donate
We bring you perspectives from around the world. Help us to inform and educate. Your donation is tax-deductible.

Explore

  • About
  • Authors
  • FO Store
  • FAQs
  • Republish
  • Privacy Policy
  • Terms of Use
  • Contact

Regions

  • Africa
  • Asia Pacific
  • Central & South Asia
  • Europe
  • Latin America & Caribbean
  • Middle East & North Africa
  • North America

Topics

  • Politics
  • Economics
  • Business
  • Culture
  • Environment
  • Global Change
  • International Security
  • Science

Sections

  • 360°
  • The Interview
  • In-Depth
  • Insight
  • Quick Read
  • Video
  • Podcasts
  • Interactive
  • My Voice

Daily Dispatch


© Fair Observer All rights reserved
We Need Your Consent
We use cookies to give you the best possible experience. Learn more about how we use cookies or edit your cookie preferences. Privacy Policy. My Options I Accept
Privacy & Cookies Policy

Edit Cookie Preferences

The Fair Observer website uses digital cookies so it can collect statistics on how many visitors come to the site, what content is viewed and for how long, and the general location of the computer network of the visitor. These statistics are collected and processed using the Google Analytics service. Fair Observer uses these aggregate statistics from website visits to help improve the content of the website and to provide regular reports to our current and future donors and funding organizations. The type of digital cookie information collected during your visit and any derived data cannot be used or combined with other information to personally identify you. Fair Observer does not use personal data collected from its website for advertising purposes or to market to you.

As a convenience to you, Fair Observer provides buttons that link to popular social media sites, called social sharing buttons, to help you share Fair Observer content and your comments and opinions about it on these social media sites. These social sharing buttons are provided by and are part of these social media sites. They may collect and use personal data as described in their respective policies. Fair Observer does not receive personal data from your use of these social sharing buttons. It is not necessary that you use these buttons to read Fair Observer content or to share on social media.

 
Necessary
Always Enabled

These cookies essential for the website to function.

Analytics

These cookies track our website’s performance and also help us to continuously improve the experience we provide to you.

Performance
Uncategorized

This cookie consists of the word “yes” to enable us to remember your acceptance of the site cookie notification, and prevents it from displaying to you in future.

Preferences
Save & Accept