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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Get 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…
Soon: WhatsApp revanced
*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.
Good news good Signal.
Only if you donate. Otherwise bad news, Signal.
Have they removed that dogshit crypto they added a few years ago? Haven’t donated since.
Signal was never more than a stepping stone anyway. Centralised privacy services, that can be taken down by any government, are doomed to fail under surveillance capitalfascism.
I recommend https://simplex.chat/
I recommend you have a look at this guy’s Twitter profile and reconsider.
What does this mean? What’s on his twitter profile?
Bunch of right wing stuff, some anti vax stuff, the usual
I’m surprised. He didn’t come across this way to me on Github, or in group chats and interviews he’s done. I want to say that, as a non-American, maybe he doesn’t know the kind of things Trump has done here, but then it seems like everyone knows what Trump has done here.
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.
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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.
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Nothing better than having a private conversation with my friends and having some dude lean in to remind us that Brawndo, the thirst mutilator, has electrolytes.
I hate how my country (Brazil) depends so much on Whatsapp. If I could, I would uninstall that app immediately.
Same here in UK. So many people think of it like email. A universal communication system. They can’t see the problem with it being a single, closed, for profit, provider. Now Meta feels people are locked in, they will be finding out. But they still won’t see the problem until it ratcheted to really bad. Like frogs in boiling water.
Doctorow is always right.
delta.chat
The enshittify proof alternative!
Yes, encrypted chats packetised over SMTP layer.
Smooth as silk for a year and a half.
Send pics, voicemails, files, videos, and video-chat(via Jitsi integration)
Arcane-chat app does location sharing too.
Would signal also work?
I believe it is centralized but it is certainly an alternative to WhatsApp. My understanding is that it’s encrypted and privacy centric.
… So encrypted email?
I see a lot of people saying it’s time to switch to Signal, and I mean I agree in principle, it’s my main messaging app, but I don’t see how it can scale. It runs off of donations and the only reason it’s still functioning is because the users that are there are above averagely passionate about it and willing to donate. If it became the defacto messaging app I fear that there is no way they would be capable of financing that level of traffic.
I’d probably still use it if I had to pay for it
I mean, there are some who will be willing to do that, but the vast majority of average people won’t pay for something if a free version exists (like WhatsApp)
Edit: Ok I just Googled it and apparently their operational costs are less than 1$ per user per year which is far less than I expected. That’s way more sustainable in that case, possibly even through just donations.
Even if they charged 1.99 they’d be making a decent cut for future investment (they are a nonprofit).
GrapheneOS lives on donations too. Its definately possible.
This is one of the train that impossible for me to get off. It is very ubiquitous in my country to use whatsapp instead of text. I must suck it up I guess. 😅
A fair number of my contacts from countries where this is true also have Signal. If you don’t, I suggest installing it and seeing how many people are there.
If it’s hard to remember who uses what, start conversations from the contacts app instead of one of the messaging apps; in most cases it will tell you.
Already did that months ago when they change the term of services and people are aware of it at the time. Many install Signal, tried them, signal got overloaded, experience degraded, people are back to Whatsapp. Now only dead account are there. Telegram is more popular but that is just jumping from crocodile’s mouth to shark’s.
Government agencies, company customee services all relies on Whatsapp. They have emails but if you want to get response in timely manners, Whatsapp is the way to go (Or twitter, again another bad alternatives).
At least it is still E2E (supposedly), so it is not all bad. Look, I know I sound pessimistic because I am (at least in this specific topic). I hope everyone else can do better than me, cheers!
Government agencies…relies on Whatsapp
WTF!? What country is that?
I’d hazard a guess that it’s Brazil.
Wrong continent ;)
India
Wrong country ;)
I said India, because I am an Indian, and our government also does use whatsapp. In some way, our countries have some kinship
edit - I just checked context of replies, and you said wrong continent for brazil, but not for me, is it because I atleast got the continent right? if so, let me guess again, is your country in indian subcontinent, or south east asia in general?
Southeast asia, Indonesia 🇮🇩. Cheers!
(If anyone bothered to check my bio, it would be easy to figure out. lol)
LET THE ENSHITTIFICATION BEGIN!
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
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.
