Facebook appears to be increasingly keen to assert itself within the platforms that it has acquired over the years. WhatsApp co-founder Jan Koum walked away from the chat app in 2018 over concerns about the business model imposed by its new parent company, which would introduce adverts into the app for the first time – something Koum swore would never happen during the early days of the messaging platform. A few months later, Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger, who co-founded Instagram, decided to depart parent company Facebook too. Following the departure, rumours of Facebook pressuring Instagram to do more for Facebook to help counteract the seismic scandals that hit the brand, not to mention its dwindling teen usage.
Given the relatively pristine brand image of WhatsApp, the Facebook logo – until the latest update, only ever found buried within the settings app – brings an association with those aforementioned scandals. Not ideal when friends and family are using the chat app to discuss every detail of their lives.