When Facebook bought Instagram in 2012 for about $1 billion and WhatsApp in 2014 for about $19 billion¹, they kinda promised to leave both of them mostly alone, keeping them on as integrated, but still separated products.

This week, Instagram’s Co-Founders rather surprisingly announced they would step down, following in the footsteps of the two WhatsApp founders, who left Facebook in 2017 and this spring, respectively.

This exit is notable for a few reasons. For one, unlike most high-level departures, it came as a surprise to almost everyone — including Facebook. Initially, spokespersons for either company had no idea what was going on, only regaining their composure (and playbook) in the following hours. What’s more interesting is what this signals for both Facebook and Instagram (and also WhatsApp): It’s hands-on now.

It seems that both Instagram founders left for the same reason as WhatsApps did: Facebook couldn’t keep their hands off their products. And while Facebook did kinda promise not to do that when they purchased them, they are still the owners, and nothing can stop them from doing so. So, when Facebook’s user growth in North America slowed, and the 2016 presidential election causing even more trouble, Facebook turned to WhatsApp and Instagram to keep the growth going. Which meant integrating both more tightly with Facebook, and by extension, allowing Facebook to sell ads based on their user data. It was a death by thousand cuts instead of one point of contention that caused the exit.

While Instagram’s founders have thus far been coy about their reasons, WhatsApp’s Brian Acton have been more vocal: In March, Brian Acton tweeted “It is time. #deletefacebook.”, later clarifying that he felt betrayed by Facebook for compromising WhatsApp in order to gather more user data for its advertisers, and by also misleading the European Union about its plans to integrate WhatsApp into Facebook.

This prompted a response by a Facebook executive named David Marcus, who pointed out that Acton knew exactly who he was getting in bed with, and got paid a lot of money for it. What’s worrying about Marcus’ response is its view of Facebook at the end, espousing that it’s all about the people, and that this good mission outweighs any bads along the way. As Bloomberg’s Matt Levine points out, first, judging by Facebook’s financial statements, you might be forgiven to think that it’s more about making money by keeping you on Facebook and showing you ads, and second, Facebook doesn’t really seem to give a shit about people as long as no one rubs their noses in it (YouTube).

But more worryingly, it displays an attitude that Facebook’s employees seem to be exhibiting an extreme case of group think, where the “higher goal” justifies any means. And any dissenting voice is culled from the herd, and now with Instagram’s founders gone, it looks like the last critical voices with any weight have left Facebook too. Considering it doesn’t really answer to anyone but Mark Zuckerberg, that is a worrying development.

Brian Acton, meanwhile, put some of his considerable Facebook money where his mouth was, and donated $50 million to the non-profit behind Signal, an end-to-end encrypted messaging and VoIP app widely considered as the gold standard regarding encryption and user privacy.

Teens Are Listening

While Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh is denying any allegations about sexual misconduct, and Republican senators are handwringingly trying to appear like they give a damn about any of it, there’s a group who is watching the proceedings intently, since for them, Kavanaugh’s past is their present: Why the Kavanaugh accusations matter to teen girls. And it’s important to keep in mind why Kavanaugh’s accusers can’t remember everything (YouTube) — our memories just don’t work that way.

Hippo Invasion

When drug lord Pablo Escobar was killed by authorities, he left behind a luxurious estate, including a personal zoo of considerable size and variety. While most of the animals were shipped to other zoos by authorities, the four hippopotamuses were left to fend for themselves. Now, there’s dozens of them, and the Columbian government as well as conservation experts are trying to figure out wether to keep them or to get rid of them somehow: Could Pablo Escobar’s Escaped Hippos Actually Help the Environment?

Talking Your Language

Language is important to us. But what’s also important to us are our accents and dialects, and actors often work hard to get all the nuances right. Watch Movie Accent Expert Erik Singer Break Down 28 Actors’ Accents (YouTube).

📖 Weekly Longread 📚

Stormy Daniels Isn’t Backing Down

🦄 Unicorn Chaser 🦄

Clair de Lune in the moonlight