- cross-posted to:
- thevergenews@sh.itjust.works
- technology@lemmy.zip
- cross-posted to:
- thevergenews@sh.itjust.works
- technology@lemmy.zip
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…
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.
federation and open protocols.
the real hard part is getting companies (or better, people directly) to use it.
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.
LET THE ENSHITTIFICATION BEGIN!
Begin? 🤔🤔🤔
What year is this?
2025!
Oh honey that ship sailed long ago
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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.
WhatsApp was not free and already had a massive user base before Facebook bought it.
Hope this will turn people to alternatives.
I’d forgotten about this!!
Wasn’t it like a quid to sign up?
Yeah it was something like that, very low price compared to what SMS were charged for.
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.
@Auth
So that’s why we donate to @signalapp
@MazonnaCara89The enshittification process in a nutshell.
Eastern Europe loves the app Viber that Rakuten bought, which has had ads for years.
People LOVE a walled garden of their friends are there, too.
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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Repeat after me… “Enshitification”!
Is it really enshitification if it was shit to begin with?
Years ago before Meta bought it, it was good. So I think it kind of counts.
I hate how my country (Brazil) depends so much on Whatsapp. If I could, I would uninstall that app immediately.
Same thing here in Italy
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.
Same in Germany.
I do believe it’s better than using iMessage for example but it’s undoubtedly rubbish.
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.
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
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?
Sewer oulets, I’m guessing.
Work, school (not anymore, but while I was in school), local events where I meet people, friends, etc.
The only iPhone users I ever met who cared were back when texting cost a lot, unless you had a special plan (there was one that made it free if the person you texted had the same plan). Then smart phones came and we all switched to Kik, then WhatsApp, then Messenger (some got both or an alternative). And now we have got free texting and calling across the whole EU, yet none of my friends uses it haha
Isn’t Beeper another security risk? They also store your data on their cloud, and it’s not encrypted during the bridge process.
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)
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.
Who is forcing you?
Only my family, friends and work. But I’m working on cutting them out of my life.
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.
This is such great news! More ammo to use when trying to convince friends and family to move away from WhatsApp
Facebook shit gonna do facebook shit
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
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
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
Signal? Dude, I don’t want nonstop getting updates about the war plans of the Trump administration ;-)
I know right? Why would I use signal? There’s not even any games!
/s
I hope Signal does this too!
- no one ever.
I just love ads! Especially when they get in the way of what I’m trying to do!!
i use none of these features.
i’m glad they are not as invasive as i thought, but they will definetly be making them worse over time.
