WhatsApp Introduces Ads in Its App (nytimes.com) 49
An anonymous reader shares a report: When Facebook bought WhatsApp for $19 billion in 2014, the messaging app had a clear focus. No ads, no games and no gimmicks. For years, that is what WhatsApp's two billion users -- many of them in Brazil, India and other countries around the world -- got. They chatted with friends and family unencumbered by advertising and other features found on social media. Now that is set to change.
On Monday, WhatsApp said it would start showing ads inside its app for the first time. The promotions will appear only in an area of the app called Updates, which is used by around 1.5 billion people a day. WhatsApp will collect some data on users to target the ads, such as location and the device's default language, but it will not touch the contents of messages or whom users speak with. The company added that it had no plans to place ads in chats and personal messages.
[...] In-app ads are a significant change from WhatsApp's original philosophy. Jan Koum and Brian Acton, who founded WhatsApp in 2009, were committed to building a simple and quick way for friends and family to communicate with end-to-end encryption, a method of keeping texts, photos, videos and phone calls inaccessible by third parties. Both left the company seven years ago. Since then, Mark Zuckerberg, the chief executive of Facebook, now Meta, has focused on WhatsApp's growth and user privacy while also melding the app into the company's other products, including Instagram and Messenger.
On Monday, WhatsApp said it would start showing ads inside its app for the first time. The promotions will appear only in an area of the app called Updates, which is used by around 1.5 billion people a day. WhatsApp will collect some data on users to target the ads, such as location and the device's default language, but it will not touch the contents of messages or whom users speak with. The company added that it had no plans to place ads in chats and personal messages.
[...] In-app ads are a significant change from WhatsApp's original philosophy. Jan Koum and Brian Acton, who founded WhatsApp in 2009, were committed to building a simple and quick way for friends and family to communicate with end-to-end encryption, a method of keeping texts, photos, videos and phone calls inaccessible by third parties. Both left the company seven years ago. Since then, Mark Zuckerberg, the chief executive of Facebook, now Meta, has focused on WhatsApp's growth and user privacy while also melding the app into the company's other products, including Instagram and Messenger.
The gift of monetization (Score:1)
The other name of the enshittification.
From your best friend, Zuck the lizard .
Save the lizards! (Score:3)
Lizards do not deserve your scorn. They are useful and eat insects. Zuck? He tries to open our mouths and shit in them.
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Honestly, I'm surprised it took them this long to start the full enshittification.
I mean, it's been about 10 years since Meta bought it for a ridiculous amount of money. Usually they are looking to get that ROI as soon as possible...
The Downward Spiral (Score:5, Insightful)
Enshittification has no bottom. It keeps delving new depths of shit its users will put up with until they just stop using it.
ACs are smart. (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeah, it's just a made up word. Like the rest of the words.
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Big tech has finally moved on from embrace, extend, extinguish to acquire, monetize, abandon.
No doubt the executive officers are all back slapping each other for inventing the strategy Computer Associates has been using for decades.
Re: The Downward Spiral (Score:2)
Re: The Downward Spiral (Score:2)
What. (Score:2)
Are you really trying to justify slapping more advertising into a place where advertising didn't exist before, and calling that some kind of "value add"? I sure hope this is sarcasm.
If I want to see ads that are "relevant to me" I'll go ahead and open up Facebook or Twitter or some other fully-beshitted social media garbage. But in the history of advertising, the next time people willingly want to look at ads will be the first.
The one free service that hasn't (Score:2)
The only free service that hasn't been enshitified is Craigslist.
Any day now...
Dropped like a hot rock (Score:5, Informative)
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Sure, but you also socially isolated yourself because most of the population do have WhatsApp.
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You that as if is a problem.
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If they want to reach you, they'll find a way. I bet GOP told them how he can be reached.
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The initial plan was to charge $1 per year. This rate would cover costs and still allow for profit from business customers who pay for additional features to run their business, while providing the service without needing ads or other user-unfriendly methods.
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It's a chat app. The cost of running that core service is basically zero. (As evidenced by the number of free chat apps, IRC servers run gratis, etc)
The IRC servers have nothing remotely like the user count that Whatsapp does, nor do they offer anywhere near the same functionality nor uptime.
For now (Score:5, Insightful)
The promotions will appear only in an area of the app called Updates, which is used by around 1.5 billion people a day. WhatsApp will collect some data on users to target the ads, such as location and the device's default language, but it will not touch the contents of messages or whom users speak with.
One has to be very naive to trust this won't happen soon.
Re: For now (Score:2)
and to be fair, if you use WhatsApp actively, you'll have things like shops and restaurants as contacts. these are constantly uploading "updates" as ads. (by ordering directly with WhatsApp you can get food much cheaper by not paying the Uber eats/door dash/etc fee)
I bet the next move is gonna be forcing these users to pay to do this.
Enshittify! (Score:2)
Let the utter enshitiffication commence! It's getting deep, folks.
Non-paywalled link (Score:2)
https://archive.is/L3W74 [archive.is]
Auto-update apps (Score:2)
Set to false.
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I would not count on this requiring the app to update.
No ads (Score:1)
No ads in Apple's Messages app.
Apple has not announced any plans to give it ads either. For now.
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No ads in many other alternatives as well, plus they are cross-platform so you are not limited to the ~15% or so of the market buying iPhones.
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Desperate times (Score:2)
I wonder if they are doing this because they are losing revenue from no longer spying on [arstechnica.com] Android users by using a sandbox hack.
Why do people bother with whatsapp (Score:3)
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You have a smartphone with talk & text messaging already, why let your data be handled by this creepy bastard zuckerberg?
Try to Voice/Video-call your firends/Family in the USoA/Colombia/Mexico/Spain/Belgium/Hungary/Germany/Italy/Switzerland/Argentina/Peru/Chile/Ecuador while you are in venezuela and see how much it costs.
Try to do Group chat over RCS and see how much that costs.
Try to convince all those people to move to another free+ no Ads service (like signal) and see how hard is that (obligatory herding cats joke: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com] ).
Wait until said service starts to charge, or puts Ads, or both, and repea
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The alternative to Whatsapp is Signal (or other end-to-end encrypted, crossplatform chat app), not SMS/RCS.
Outside the US it has also become the standard communication tool. Send a kid to school? there is a whatsapp group for the class parents, and another one for your carpool. In the US enough people use iphones for Apple's messaging app to have critical mass, but that's not
It begins! (Score:2, Interesting)
Well, you had a nice long run. The enshittification will now begin. Sure, they're small ads. At first.
Then they'll be animated, because you people love clicking on animated ads.
Then they'll be the kind that takes over the screen and shows a slot machine, and you'll click on those because who doesn't enjoy flicking the bar on a Skinner box?
God damn I miss USENET and its high barriers to entry.
Can someone create a new social network that requires high technical skill to even get on? That worked
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"will now begin"
Merging your data with the Facebook data was no enshittification?
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Ah, eternal September. This is why we can't have nice things. Now, pardon me while I go call AOL technical support and report the 4chan for violating terms of service!
Sigh (Score:2)
Irony was:
I paid for Whatsapp, a long time ago. It wasn't much but I paid to have it.
Then they changed to a free model and at no point were able to give me a refund. A bit like Slashdot... which still has a Disable Advertising button on my account that I paid to get, and that now doesn't disable advertising.
Now they're gonna load it with ads.
Part of the reason that I talk to people on Signal first and only fall back to Whatsapp if people have nothing else.
It's a chat app. One of thousands. I have no att
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You are paying too much for car insurance.
Great news (Score:3)
We could ... (Score:2)
Use irc or email... you know... they already exist just for some reason people prefer to use "Apps"
Why not use other revenue streams? (Score:2)
I'd go with:
server-side storage for old chat data, to clear up valuable cell phone storage space
let companys pay for using their name/domain name as a Whatsapp 'number' instead of a phone number
make their bot-access more streamlined and charge for it in a normal way (not like now)
OMG allow video calls on web already (Score:1)
Please remeber that OG WhatsApp CHARGED money (Score:2)
Originally, you got Whatsapp free for one year, and after that you had to pay $1 for each year. Later on they forfeited the fee (I do not remeber if it was Whatsapp or Facebook the ones who forfeited the fee).
Had WhatsApp/Facebook/Meta not forfeited the fee, maybe they woud have slowly increased both the ammount per payment (from $1 to 2 to 3 To ...) and the frequency (from yearley to every 6 months to each 4 to each 3 to ...) so we would be paying for "no adds whatsapp".
So, pick your poison, but free AND
Always Remember... (Score:2)
Always remember that when you choose anything else but an Open Source app, you will find yourself bent and penetrated from behind sooner or later.
Especially in times of crisis, when people's standards of living are decreasing and they panic "profit, profit! we need more profit!" they're gonna do whatever it takes to make more profit and keep the standard of living the same.