Two Stunning Charts Reveal Everything Wrong With Facebook's Acquisition of WhatsApp

Impact

Last week, Facebook completed its acquisition of mobile messaging app WhatsApp for $19 billion in the largest-ever purchase of a Silicon Valley company. That $19 billion figure has since risen to a $22 billion valuation, thanks to Facebook's rising share price.

On the day the deal closed, former British foreign secretary and current president of the International Rescue Committee David Miliband sent this poignant tweet:

Milliband has a point. On its own, the enormous valuation of a hot new messaging tool is fairly staggering. But what's more disturbing is that Facebook, a company that makes money off monopolizing your attention, spent more to acquire a slick messaging app than the world spent to combat some of the planet's most pressing humanitarian crises.

According to the U.N.'s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA), humanitarian groups like International Rescue Committee, which "responds to the world's worst humanitarian crises and helps people to survive and rebuild," needed a minimum of $17.2 billion to finance humanitarian aid in 2014. As of Oct. 9, UNOCHA had raised only $8.4 billion, just 49% of what it actually needs.

For additional context, donors only raised $19.1 billion in assistance to help combat HIV and AIDS around the world in 2013, a record year for the global response to HIV. The U.N. Development Program's entire integrated budget for 2014-2017, which encompasses UNDP, the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) and UN-Women, is projected to include $9.8 billion in 2014.

In fairness, 2013 was a record year for humanitarian relief, as global spending soared to $22 billion due to, as the Guardian notes, "conflicts in Central African Republic, South Sudan and Syria combined with natural disasters such as Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines," which drove donors "to pay out more emergency aid than ever before."

h/t The Independent