Amid the ongoing lawsuit against Meta for breaching WhatsApp’s privacy claims, Sridhar Vembu, co-founder and Chief Scientist at Zoho, has lashed out at the tech giant. Vembu commented on the nature of the business, stating that ad-dependent business models fundamentally undermine user privacy. In a post on X (formerly Twitter), Vembu highlighted the “real and serious” conflict of interest in companies like Meta, where revenue from user data clashes with genuine privacy protections.
Vembu wrote, “As a general principle, when you rely on ads based on user habits, privacy can never be the first priority. The conflict of interest is real and serious. Combine that with public market pressure for ever greater profit to justify astronomical valuations (‘wealth creation’ is the polite term for it), it is naive to assume that these companies will put user privacy first.”
Vembu’s comments came in response to news of a class-action lawsuit filed in a San Francisco US District Court against the social media platform. The suit, filed by plaintiffs from India, Australia, Brazil, Mexico, and South Africa, accuse Meta of misleading billions of users about WhatsApp’s end-to-end encryption. Whistleblowers allegedly claim the company can access, store, and analyse private chats, contradicting Meta’s assurances that only senders and recipients can view messages.
Vembu’s statement echoes Elon Musk’s comment on the case, claiming both WhatsApp and Signal are unsafe. In his post, Musk advocated for the X Chat platform – an alternative to these messenger apps offering the benefits of encryption.
Vembu’s comments on the industry’s broader concerns
With the post, Vembu took a dig at Meta’s ad-based business practices and its effects on enforcing encryption. A couple of months ago, Vembu himself was expected to push his engineers at Zoho to introduce end-to-end encryption in the company’s messenger app, Arattai. At the time, Vembu had asked Arattai’s fanbase to trust the team for implementing the features, although he said that E2E encryption removes the pressure from Zoho’s servers, as chats now need to be stored on the user’s device.
Vembu, known for his outspoken views on ethical tech practices and bootstrapped business models, has long advocated for privacy-focused alternatives, with a homegrown alternative like Arattai a better option for Indian users. Vembu has stressed that unlike Meta’s WhatsApp, Zoho doesn’t sell user data to advertisers, thus operating on an entirely different user model.
While WhatsApp’s encryption is robust for messages in transit, critics point to vulnerabilities like unencrypted backups, metadata collection, and potential internal access. Meta has called the allegations “frivolous” and reaffirmed its encryption standards. However, if the lawsuit finds it guilty, it could be certified as a class action, affecting over 500 million users.
Vembu has commented previously on tech giants
This isn’t the first time Vembu has called out global tech giants. In previous posts, he has criticised over-reliance on US-based clouds and promoted local innovation. For Indian users who are increasingly wary of data practices, Vembu’s stance could boost interest in homegrown apps like Arattai once again, which saw a drop in interest after a spike last year.
Meta has not yet responded to Vembu’s post.
