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.
Always a bit shocked to learn people still use WhatsApp.
These ads on messaging services are out of control
so… back to owl mail then?
I wonder whether Meta will try to lock down cross platform access now.
Currently Beeper still works everywhere and EU’S DMA (Digital Markets Act) still has WhatsApp as gate keeper which is required to interpolate with other chat apps. However “WhatsApp stories” are entirely different from chat so that means they can block all of that and this is probably how Meta will approach future WhatsApp updates - more shit to lock people in WhatsApp that isnt directly chat related because thats the only way to show people ads.
Considering the zero byte article using anything from Meta is a FAFO moment.
What app?
Really though, what was the main use for this kind of chat app? Genuinely since I assume there is one, I just don’t know it since I never had a reason to use it. Was it encrypted? Cause I get using specifically encrypted messaging systems, but if it’s not, was it that good of an option over other chat apps?
It was SMS, but better. It has been the message platform of choice for pretty much everyone in my country for well over a decade, not as many options existed back then.
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
“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
Facebook shit gonna do facebook shit
I’m forced to use WhatsApp chat so I keep it installed begrudgingly. But who the fuck is using WhatsApp stories?
I use Beeper which shows me a unified view of whatsapp and Signal and others. whatsapp itself has zero permissions on my phone. I hate that I need to have it at all but Europe is deep into that. Sigh.
Whatsapp is popular a lot in many parts of the world. In India, WhatsApp is almost the defacto standard messaging app with Telegram probably flying in a far second. I doubt I know anyone who even uses stuff like Signal or Threema or any of the alternatives.
Doesn’t help that Telegram media downloads are throttled by some Indian ISPs (looking at you, Jio)
At least normal European people are locked into a platform that doesn’t care what device you’re using, unlike iMessage - so it’s not all bad
I’m an iPhone user and I’ve never met anyone that gave a shit about iMessage. In the past ten years.
I’m an android user and I semi-frequently meet iPhone users who show anything between surprise and downright disdain towards me because I don’t have the right color of bubble.
It’s never the other way around.
Where do you find these peeps?
There was a big uproar amongst normies when the WhatsApp TOS changed…but people forget quickly and prefer convenience. That was our one chance to convert everyone over.
I stopped using it for 3 years, then I had to interact with a surgeon through it and reconnected with a fee people who still use it. I fucking hate using it
But then aren’t you trusting your credentials to yet another application? That seems like a bad idea…
Fair point. The simplest answer is thrt any other business cannot possibly be as evil as meta, so even worst case is a net win.
*gasp*
Who could have ever seen this move coming? From Facebook, of all companies!
As somebody that doesn’t use what’s app, I’m shocked it didn’t have ads already.
To be fair, I am shocked… Not to see a Pikachu face in the comments.
Thank you for your assistance.
Meta has been running ads claiming no one can read your WhatsApp messages, including them. For some reason, I’m not 100% sure about this. It’s hard to imagine they can resist grabbing all that data for their AI somehow.
Of course they fucking grab it. They have 45 backdoors with golden handles otherwise they’re show the fucking source
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
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.
It’s still there, buried in the settings. TBF I wouldn’t expect them to remove it, because some people probably do use it.
No idea, all I see as options now for Paypal and credit card.
I recommend https://simplex.chat/
Hopefully this helps people move off of WhatsApp to Signal or something else.
Hope so… Just a little bit and them another ones when they extent the implementation of IA… And wishing to not be the standard any more
I just wish SMS would go away.
Why? It works fine and it’s built into the phones. No need to convince family members to install a fuckin’ chat app just to be able to message them.
Seems like I’m not in the target audience for these ads. I have absolutely zero clue what any of the things mentioned above are. I use WhatsApp to send messages.
