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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These ads on messaging services are out of control
so… back to owl mail then?
through its Stories-like status feature.
Eh, I’ve only seen it because of a misclick
Damn first Telegram put a paywall to blocking non contacts and now this.
Shit, maybe we just gotta go iPhone to get easy encryption on messages. Rcs is kinda booty.
I get downvoted to hell for years and years every time I defend iMessage. It’s such a nice experience and I get to communicate in a very multimedia way, using custom stickers and having it send animated handwriting when I write with my pencil on iPad. I get the platform limitation sucks, but it’s a better experience than WhatsApp or telegram or messenger ever was imo.
You mean WhatsCrap?
OH whatsSNAP
That must be the reason they’ve been putting out more ads about chats being secure between both chatters. A misdirection so they can personalize your ads to your conversations
Never used it for personal ends. But I’m curious to see if all the companies using as a work tool will divert from it.
Signal.
And IF I learn how to run Jammi, it will be my default communication application.
I think you mean Jami (single m).
It’s a nice concept but I’ll try to get my xmmp server nice and secured.
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
LET THE ENSHITTIFICATION BEGIN!
Oh honey that ship sailed long ago
Begin? 🤔🤔🤔
What year is this?
2025!
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
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’m forced to use WhatsApp chat so I keep it installed begrudgingly. But who the fuck is using WhatsApp stories?
Who is forcing you?
Only my family, friends and work. But I’m working on cutting them out of my life.
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.
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.
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.
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
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)
whatsapp-free since 2023!
People are going to use whatever the majority use.
I need to ude WhatsApp when i travel to countries egere it’s widely adopted. Just like I need tocuse Facebook if I want to partake in group chats with friends.
They’re just too big. How is anything else supposed to take off? Just gradually maybe.
So maybe Signal will get there in a few years? What’s itd adoption rate since it was created?
Gradually is the answer. You can dual use both Signal and Whatsapp. Same how you can use Lemmy and Facebook and are not limited to one sociale media app.
Family chatgroup, signal Work chatgroup, signal Half of my friends, signal
Won’t be very long until I remove whatsapp from my phone. That one friend that doesn’t want to switch, call me I guess…
It’s a slow grind for adoption. I’ve had Signal installed on my phone since like 2016. Went from one person I knew to now about ~30. It’s mostly people from work at tech companies but progressively I’ve noticed other industries employees adopting it for unofficial chat that my contacts list has been growing over the years. Probably won’t take off in a few years. Maybe another decade
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.
I mean comparing it to GrapheneOS doesn’t make much sense, they don’t have recurring costs.
What, like salaries?
No, they don’t have recurring costs that scale with their size. The whole original point of my argument was that Signal is fine now because its userbase is above averagely passionate about it and willing to donate, but if it were to become mainstream that would mean the percent of its users donating would go down whilst its cost would go up, in other words its costs would outscale its revenue. This doesn’t apply to GaprheneOS as their costs don’t scale with the number of users.
I think you’re missing the point. All I was saying is that both Signal and Graphene are both nonprofits and both seem to be doing okay with their donations business model.
And donations aren’t just a euro here and there from users. Proton is rumoured to be one of Graphene’s supporters.
“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…
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.
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.
