WhatsApp is rolling out ads. In an update on Monday, Meta announced that it will now show ads from businesses through its Stories-like status feature.
Meta says it will tailor the ads to your interests by using “limited” information, including your country or city, language, the channels you follow, and how you interact with ads on the platform. You can also change your ad preferences from Meta’s Accounts Center.
This isn’t the only change Meta is making to WhatsApp. The company will also start showing promoted channels when you click on the Explore button to find new ones to follow. It’s also rolling out the ability to subscribe to channels to “receive exclusive updates” as well.
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*gasp*
Who could have ever seen this move coming? From Facebook, of all companies!
To be fair, I am shocked… Not to see a Pikachu face in the comments.
Thank you for your assistance.
As somebody that doesn’t use what’s app, I’m shocked it didn’t have ads already.
Good news good Signal.
“We will never show you ads in WhatsApp. We promise”. --Facebook when they bought WhatsApp and promised the previous owner not to force ads in the app…
I wonder if anyone believed them at the time
If they did not, they at least ignored that instinct and kept using WhatsApp…
How do we get people to stop ignoring their better instincts in things like this?
The only way to completely fix it is to make the services be compatible, so that people can switch without the downside of leaving people behind.
This is complicated and has downsides though.
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About the same time we hold people accountable for the words they use when convincing people to make a choice against their interests… So never
Should’ve included a clause that gives WhatsApp back to the sellers without returning the payment if they walk back from it. Put your money where your mouth is.
If thats not a reason to switch to Signal what is.
But people just suck it up anyway, they did when reddit gone to shit, they did when Amazon startes showing ads even tho when you were paying, they did when Netflix disallowed sharing and you had to pay extra.
People just suck up whatever is thrown at them and are fucking stupid.
We cant have nice things, because companies will greed and if users dont react and cancel the shit out of them they and others will continue to press more moneyjuice out of people.
Sheep don’t know they are being slaughtered. We’re the digital 1% and we can’t make the sheep wake up.
I don’t use either but my issue with Signal is none of my friends want another application to install and they are happy with WhatApp.
Conversely, I’m happy not having a group chat app and will either text you or iMessage you. Don’t you dare ring me as I ain’t answering.
I just deleted WhatsApp one day and made the switch. Messaged all important contacts, that I will be available via Signal. Most of the few I care about went ahead and installed Signal. One is still dragging their feet and we communicate via SMS now xD
I only use WhatsApp for work and none of my coworkers are switching off it. They have too much invested in it. Family specifically.
How is signal insulated from the same fate? Isn’t it another free app that will eventually hit the enshitification wall?
I mean yes thats possible. we dont have be bound to a company or app forever.
Generally Signal is by a non profit, meaning they dont have to make more money (as meta has to because they have obligation to share holders) meaning enshittification, if any, is gonna be slower and less probable
Signal is run by a non-profit. Moxie has integrity. And the software is open source.
There are more safeguards than in case of proprietary apps of for-profit companies.
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provide free app at a loss
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grow massive user base and market share
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squeeze your userbase for every cent they’re worth
Every single time. We got to solve the funding issue some how, I dont want to live in a future run by ads.
It’s not very easy to solve the issue of infinite growth in a world with finite resources. The fundamental issue is that it’s just not physically possible, but they keep trying. Either we continue this cycle and eventually destroy the planet irreversibly, or we acknowledge that maybe money isn’t everything, and that maybe [the vast majority of] people aren’t inherently egoitistical monsters, and we move on to different systems.
WhatsApp was charging $1-$3 per year before Facebook’s acquisition. They had 600M+ users and a team of twelve people. It was beautiful while it lasted.
Hopefully we can carry out the original mission with Signal.
The enshittification process in a nutshell.
It’s not just the funding, it’s the business overall. Public companies need to show growing revenues year to year, and worse: growing revenues with a minimum yield. A product can grow by attracting more users up to a certain point. Then the only way to grow is by making more money out of the same users base. If the revenue is based on ads:
- Extend the product so that the user’s engagement increases (channels/others kind).
- Add paying features (freemium approach, that includes blue stars or whatever the hell you want it to look like…)
- Serve them ads
Freemium is not always working well and Meta never used it. They have no new great idea to extend the product without eating their other products users bases. So the only one left is more ads.
Funding is not the issue, for-profit companies are. Non-profit is the way to go. Federation is even better as individuals/families/small organizations can run their own servers.-
I dont think its for profit being the issue. Companies making a profit is fine. Its publicly traded companies giving bad incentives.
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LET THE ENSHITTIFICATION BEGIN!
Begin? 🤔🤔🤔
What year is this?
2025!
Oh honey that ship sailed long ago
I wished Whatsapp wasn’t a thing so much. There are so many so much better apps. Signal is so much better and it would work fine for the vast majority of people.
Unfortunately “better” varies from person to person. Signal is behind on features, e.g. WhatsApp has integration for businesses (customer support).
I hope my monthly donation will help but we must realize for some some features are important, I guess that for most it’s how many ppl they know is there/unwilling to lead a migration
Yes, this is right. Saying arbitrarily “better” leaves a lot out.
I must admit that using the business integration for customer support has lead me to really good experiences. Especially not having to call, wait 20 minutes under a ring tone, and talking over a line with very low sound quality.
Nobody in their right mind wants to use Whatsapp for getting support. That is insane. I want to message people and do group chats. That is it. Anything else is bloat.
Are you saying that for WhatsApp specifically or for online chat in general?
I’m more surprised it took them this long. Thankfully there are already many decent alternative messaging apps.
but still nobody is going to switch. whenever i try to convince people to switch, they just defend whatsapp and I’m a whiner
Or they do switch but for like 1 day and then go back to messaging you on WhatsApp. I tried switching to signal at least a couple times, even convinced a couple groups to move, but not a single chat lasted more than a couple weeks. Eventually they all went back to WhatsApp. Every single one. It’s extremely difficult to get people to care.
got my mom and sister to switch our group chat to element, but after a month they decided it sucks and now they love whatsapp more than ever…
Wow, that’s impressive
Keep answering on Signal.
I literally just got my senior citizen dad off Skype and over to WhatsApp like 2 years ago… Ain’t no way I can get him over to signal
Time to ditch WhatsApp
👆 mark that comment. I’m sure you’ll write that again in a year or so
And the year after that, and the year after that, and the year after that, and
And again in a year or so only a handful of tech nerds with few social connections will actually ditch it.
Slowpoke meme, I chose you… like 10 years ago.
the channels you follow
I knew they would use that info for targeted advertising
It’s Facebook 101, let the users themselves tell you what they like
Signal doesnt have ads…
I forgot WhatsApp existed.
Guess its shittier now.
Mhm. Yup.
It’s the go-to messagging app in my country for historical reasons.
I’ve never used whatsapp and don’t even remember what it’s for. Somehow life goes on.
It’s not a popular messaging app in the US. It is in many other countries though. I use it to talk to my wife’s family.
Tell me you’re not well traveled without saying you’re not well traveled
Only shocking part of this is that it took them this long.
Yeah, it was never not going to happen. Shareholders demand unending year-on-year growth at all costs, forever, until everything is shit.
WhatsApp getting ads is great news! WhatsApp, and any other meta/facebook/for-profit-social-network will never be a good product. Therefore, the second best alternative is for it to be as bad as possible, so people finally change to worthy alternatives.
What is the alternative here? Don’t know, perhaps Signal, though the devs are not welcoming at all. The UI is absolute shit. Looks like UI for old people, huge margins and empty space. My screen fits like 3 chats. A compact theme would take a few hours to create and vastly improve the product, but ya…
My Signal screen fits 8 chats, and looks simliar to any other messenger I’ve used. It’s a messenger app and the UI shows messages. I wouldn’t want it to show anything else.
It seems to be device specific. On my device, WhatsApp fits 2 more chats. I hate meta/insta/fb/etc, but WhatsApp just looks considerably better than Signal. Signal, as I said earlier, just has huge margins and padding. It looks ugly.
Like you, I also want my messenger app to show conversations. Sadly, Signal shows more empty space than conversations. It really needs a compact UI. I invited several friends to Signal and they all left because it looks bad. I know it sounds like nitpicking, but UI/UX IS extremely important. Making the claim “meh, it looks fine” and ignoring people’s perspective is not the way to run an app that is dependent on the number of users, like signal is. If I don’t have anyone with whom to chat, the app is useless. It needs userbase.
Strange, maybe it has to do with scale in phone settings? I tend to have mine set to the smallest. I’ve also learned to not care as much about UI since dumping big tech and moving to FLOSS/FOSS (Libre Office is amazing but definitley less polished looking than something like Microsoft Office) so maybe I’m just getting blind to it haha
I know right? Why would I use signal? There’s not even any games!
/s
