WhatsApp Had No Plans to Vie With Facebook, Co-Founder Says (1)

WhatsApp co-founder Brian Acton said that his messaging company had no plans to build social networking features to compete with Facebook before he sold the company to Mark Zuckerberg, a claim that bolsters Meta’s defense as it faces federal antitrust allegations.

“We had no ambition to build Facebook-like functionality like a feed or any Facebook-like features,” Acton said Tuesday during testimony at a federal courthouse in Washington. He also said that WhatsApp could have stuck with a subscription business instead of selling targeted ads if the service had remained independent.

Acton’s comments came as part of the US Federal ...