36 ms·
WhatsApp introduces ads in its app
- snapcaster 1y agoSurprised it took them this long
- 1oooqooq 1y agothey got so lucky with whatsbook taking over entire countries, they were swimming in money just selling support channels to gov and big companies. literal chat dialog tree with 4 options that is not connected to anything for around 250k/year.
- toast0 1y agoThey were working on it in 2019 when I left, I thought it was tested in one country after that and then it got shelved. IIRC, it needed a ToS change and there was too much pushback. I had been voluntold to be on the ads team, because I had sent a list of things that needed to be done to make ads doable and not terrible. Of course, none of my ideas were deemed feasible at the time, including figuring our the ToS stuff, because no use building a product you can't launch and ToS changes aren't easy.
- blitzar 1y ago> things that needed to be done to make ads doable and not terrible ... none of my ideas were deemed feasible at the time Don't sell yourself short ... they did all the things to make ads doable it was just not feasible to make them not terrible.
- toast0 1y agoI mean, they didn't, at least at the time, because they couldn't launch it. In my mind, early focus on ToS could have possibly gotten the change more palletable/directed the project towards more palletable choices or perhaps more likely gotten to the cancellation decision faster and people could work on different things.
- throwaway2037 1y agoLine messaging app that is popular in Japan has had adverts for years. They aren't very intrusive. I am fine with it. They also sell "stickers" (elaborate emojis) as an alternative revenue stream. They are surprisingly popular amoung all ages. If WhatsApp takes a page from their book, I will be fine with it. I have never paid a penny to FaceBook/Meta for running this amazing, free service. Nothing is free in this world.
- andrepd 1y agoWould be nice if these kinds of articles would at least take a paragraph to plug some alternatives, such as Signal.
- jraby3 1y agoWhatsApp has long promoted itself as a safe alternative to apps like Telegram and Google’s Android messaging. Users flocked to the app globally, finding it a cheap and secure alternative to texting, particularly people in unstable political climates and authoritarian countries, since its messages cannot be easily intercepted without access to personal devices.
- angry_octet 1y agoThis reply screams LLM. Not really responding to the parent comment, nauseatingly anodyne in content. Not wrong, but not right. Will HN be overwhelmed with LLM trash?
- add-sub-mul-div 1y agoWith all the LLM enthusiasts here why would HN not be at the forefront of it?
- gloxkiqcza 1y agoIt’s a quote from the linked article.
- angry_octet 1y agoBut why reply with a snippet like that? Just a normal non-sequitur, or a machine regurgitation?
- eviks 1y agoYour llm detector needs serious calibration
- laurent123456 1y ago
- jraby3 1y agohttps://archive.md/L3W74 https://archive.md/L3W74
- leokennis 1y agoAt least in The Netherlands, WhatsApp could show a 60 second unskippable modal ad video on every launch, and still get away with it due to network effects. If you’re not on WhatsApp, no updates or news from your kids school, your sports team, your family, your car dealership etc. for you.
- AlecSchueler 1y agoSignal seems to be booming right now in the Netherlands. I've been using it for years and never managed to grow my contact list beyond single digits, being a few friends in tech and a few who were very privacy conscious. All of those people were also available on WhatsApp and we'd often forget and message one another there. But since January the trust in Meta has not only plummeted but it's become a mainstream enough talking point that I now receive invites to join Signal groups from--for want of a better term--normal people. Two of the local parenting groups I'm on are on Signal and no one ever mentions it or questions it, it's just "here's the group link" and the expectation that everyone has it installed.
- ghusto 1y agoIn the Netherlands, was trying to promote Signal. I switched phones and lost all my history. Now I’m fairly careful with these things, and make backups, but even I wasn’t able to get it back. Couldn’t recommend it to anyone since. There’s a line between being secure and being useful, and they’re slightly unbalanced in Signal.
- Funes- 1y agoYou should've made sure of how Signal works with regards to chat history before you removed the app from the old phone.
- egypturnash 1y ago"the iphone 4's antenna isn't a bad design, you're just holding it wrong" - steve jobs
- mrtksn 1y agoDoes anybody have stats on how many people are O.K. paying for their core services, i.e. how many people pay for paid personal e-mail services? I just don't want to believe that our services have to be paid for through proxy by giving huge cut to 3rd parties. The quality goes down both as UX and as core content, our attention span is destroyed, our privacy is violated and our political power is being stolen as content gets curated by those who extract money by giving us the "free" services. It's simply very inefficient. IMHO we should go back to pay for what you use, this can't go on forever. There must be way to turn everything into a paid service where you get what you paid for and have your lives enhanced instead of monetized by proxy.
- blitzar 1y ago> Does anybody have stats on how many people are O.K. paying for their core services Rounded to the nearest meaningful number - 0%
- mrtksn 1y agoI don't know, I expect it to be at least %3 as this is the general conversion rate for "free" users AFAIK. There must be some some number that makes it viable to have free users and paid users. For games, the free users are usually those who provide the "content". People usually demonize freemium games but IMHO its much more benign than extracting huge sums by artificially making it worse and sell attention.
- 1oooqooq 1y agoyou're being too generous, as if people were on whatsbook because of a value they get. they are just there for the captive network effect, which will take a hit the second or becomes a freemium or ad ridden service.
- xp84 1y agoYeah, nobody uses Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, or Google anymore now that they’re “ad-ridden”
- 1oooqooq 1y agoYES! finally people will start to move out of whatsbook! ....i hope
- SlowTao 1y agoYou would think, but you would be surprised at how much crap people will put up with in order to get something for free.
- vachina 1y agoIf ads are not unblockable (via DNS), then it’s time for Signal.
- Funes- 1y agoWith all the morally reprovable shit they've pulled on their users, it's always been time for Signal.
- deafpolygon 1y agoIf that’s the case, I’ll just switch to Apple Messages since all 3 people in the world that I talk to have those available.
- rootnod3 1y agoI think that kind of business model will screw them. Line has a more sensible one. For example if a business wants to message all its followers, they can only do so twice a month unless they start paying. So customers get an ad-free experience and can only receive ad messages from companies or accounts they follow.
- davweb 1y agoMeta are already monetising business usage of WhatsApp in this way[1]. Any ads are in addition to this, not instead of. [1]: https://developers.facebook.com/docs/whatsapp/pricing/ https://developers.facebook.com/docs/whatsapp/pricing/
- mc3301 1y agoThere are most certainly ad banners in Line. At least in Japan. And they used to have some strange invasive bluetooth auto-connect when near a convenience store.
- nottorp 1y agoI remember paying 0.99 for ... something ... before Whatsapp was acquired by Facebook. Wouldn't mind doing it again. Unfortunately now they're owned by a Silicon Valley company so I guess 0.99 is too little for them, they'll charge the price of a SV latte... how much is that? 59.99? 99.99?
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- charles_f 1y agoWhatsapp used to be paying (and pretty cheap) before it was bought out, and I was happy to pay for it. I'd much rather have that than starting to get ads. They're going to be hidden in a feature no-one uses, they're not going to use private data, but given Facebook's invasive behavior, how true is it and how long will it last?
- sneak 1y agoPaying money to abusive companies isn’t how you get rid of corporate abuse. Delete your WhatsApp and Instagram and Facebook. Delete the apps from your devices. Every time you launch the app you vote willingly for more abuse and surveillance and censorship.
- perks_12 1y agoWhatsApp has S-tier status here in Germany. If I had access to a proper API I would pay them per message, without them needing to make their UX worse. If anything, if I had to pay per message, I'd be incentivized not to send too many messages, keeping the distractions for the user at a minimum.
- ASalazarMX 1y agoThis is why they've been pretty draconian in banning users who work around the official apps and limits. Otherwise, to force their ads they would have to oust third-parties the way Reddit did.
- timeon 1y ago> If anything, if I had to pay per message, I'd be incentivized not to send too many messages Sounds like SMS.
- Kwpolska 1y agoExcept not limited to 160 characters (70 if you want Unicode) and with rich media capabilities.
- stonogo 1y agoSo... MMS, then?
- djtango 1y agoWhy did MMS feel so janky back in the day? Was it a client thing or a protocol thing? Whatsapp felt so responsive back in the day. I'd be pinging my family in real time halfway across the globe on mobile in 2009. For Free. That was a killer app... Why did MMS fail where Whatsapp succeeded?
- jeroenhd 1y agoMMS has terrible limitations, in both file size and media resolution. RCS has replaced MMS as a protocol back in 2008 and it's only now gaining traction. Many carriers have shut down their RCS infrastructure half a decade ago, though, so they're not exactly jumping on the chance to turn it back on.
- christina97 1y agoThere’s something particularly paternalistic about this statement from the PM: “Your personal messages, calls and statuses, they will remain end-to-end encrypted”.
- blitzar 1y agoAny man who must say, "I am the King", is no true king. Any tech company who must say, "we don't harvest your information", is a tech company that harvests your information.
- gruez 1y agoSignal also claims the same: > We can't read your messages or listen to your calls, and no one else can either. Should we be suspicious of Signal as well?
- andreyf 1y agoThat's not the same thing at all. Especially as LLM's get smaller, WhatsApp can make a lot of money reading your messages and listening to your calls on the endpoint in order to market segment your ads while remaining e2e encrypted.
- 7373737373 1y agoYes
- selfhoster11 1y agoSignal isn't backed by a global data gathering conglomerate, so no.
- gruez 1y agoYou're right, they're funded by something far more sinister - the US government. More to the point, I thought the principle was "Any man who must say, "I am the King", is no true king."? That seems to leave no room for hedging, like only distrusting "global data gathering conglomerate" or whatever. If you're have to do a holistic assessment of an organization's governance structure and incentives, you're basically admitting that witty one-liners like the above are pointless, which was my point.
- gear54rus 1y agoDoes anyone know what's the state of the art way for cutting crap out of android apps? In the same way adblock cuts crap out of web pages? I assume one would need a Java disassembler at least. On desktop, something like recaf works and allows changing things in classes without the full recompilation. Is there something like this for android?
- hiccuphippo 1y agoDNS blocking with tools like DNSNet get you halfway there without tampering with the apps. It installs itself like a VPN and filters dns requests to ad domains using lists from the same sources as the adblockers. I say halfway because some apps have a fallback, built-in, ad when it can't reach the server, other serve the ads from their own servers so no way to block them. Most only leave a blank space.
- paxys 1y agoMore than halfway I'd say. It blocks everything from third party ad networks, which is what 90%+ of websites and apps use.
- yehoshuapw 1y agoalso adaway, which does the same or can be used in root mode to edit the hosts file. I use the hosts file from there, and edit it manually via "adb root" (lineageos. root only via adb)
- shizzor 1y agoOn Android there's also "Private DNS" where you can set a different server to resolve domain names. This way, you won't need to install and run additional apps and can still use VPN for ... well VPN.
- DanAtC 1y agohttps://revanced.app/ https://revanced.app/ for applying premade patches to APKs
- 1y ago
- robertlagrant 1y ago> When Facebook bought WhatsApp for $19 billion in 2014, the messaging app had a clear focus. No ads, no games and no gimmicks. This sort of analysis is very surface-level I think. My impression is WhatsApp offered that by running on VC money and had no plan to run an actual business. That's not a question of focus. It's an unsustainable, please monetise me later land grab.
- ASalazarMX 1y agoYoutube was the same. Both are products that people really want to use.
- timeon 1y agoAlso Instagram and others. It was about capturing and selling community.
- robertlagrant 1y agoI agree, although that's too vague. YouTube has a different appeal. But my point is more that I wouldn't say YouTube got ads because it stopped having a focus on not having ads. It needs to pay for itself.
- ndriscoll 1y agoHow was it unsustainable? As far as I know they were simply competent. They charged $1/year, so had ~half a billion in revenue, right? They probably could've bumped that to $2-$5/year with similar uptake. And they ran it with ~500 servers and 50 employees 12 years ago, so could probably do the same with ~50 or fewer servers today.
- robertlagrant 1y agoThey're doing a lot more now, though. Voice notes; multi-way video and audio calls; e2ee. And they barely even charged $1/year. I never paid for it.
- YetAnotherNick 1y ago
- 9283409232 1y agoOne thing I don't hear people is ads used as tracking tools. The Facebook pixel is huge for not just tracking for digital advertisements but tracking across the web for surveillance. With ads in WhatsApp, you could in theory use advertisements for identity resolution.
- lawgimenez 1y agoThis post was no.5 on hacker news, minutes later I’m surprised it is now somewhere around 67.
- ommz 1y agoAh... There's a pattern here. Soon enough, just like with Facebook pages eons ago, they will nerf the reach of WhatsApp channels then prod channel owners to pay for more eyeballs. It should be a law of nature that whatever Meta/Facebook acquires will surely be ad-riddled & 'spyware' infested regardless of the "we won't" promises they swear to abide by.
- vips7L 1y agoJust another reason iMessage is coming out on top.
- tacker2000 1y agoimessage is irrelevant outside of the US.
- vips7L 1y agoThat literally means nothing when it comes to determining which is the better platform.
- tacker2000 1y agoImessage is a platform also owned by big tech, and the primary motivation and goal of Apple is to keep users locked in to their own ecosystem. As a a result, imessage doesnt support any other mobile platforms properly, and even discriminates against users that dont have an iphone. The world outside of the US doesnt have 80% iphone penetration. How you can say that imessage is any “better” is a complete mystery to me. Both apps (whatsapp and imessage) are just here to serve their big tech overlords in their own bigger picture.
- vips7L 1y ago> How you can say that imessage is any “better” is a complete mystery to me. We’re literally in a thread about being served ads in WhatsApp.
- tacker2000 1y agoThey are both not a good solution to good, secure, ubiquitious and “free” messaging.
- vips7L 1y agoYes let’s keep moving the goal post.
- nojvek 1y agoWhatsApp promise to users by it's founders. “No ads! No games! No gimmicks!” I wonder how the early founders feel about what Whatsapp has become with random junk and gimmicks in the UI.
- baggachipz 1y agoI'm sure their tears are rolling down the mountains of cash they sit upon.
- illiac786 1y ago> 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 End-to-end encryption was added by Meta, they reused (part of) the Signal app code for this. This was a big topic for years, I am surprised by this oversight.
- kovariantenkak 1y agoFun fact: For the first few years WhatsApp didn't have any encryption whatsoever. It took public pressure for them to even add TLS. A massive oversight on the authors part and completely missing the point of early WhatsApp as first status update application and then SMS replacement.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- EGreg 1y agoDidn't Facebook promise the WhatsApp guys, or its users, that it will "never" show ads in that app, as a condition of buying it?
- yapyap 1y ago[flagged]
- bondarchuk 1y agoLooks like it's (for now) only in the "Updates" tab..
- abkolan 1y agoExactly, it's only Updates tab "for now".
- huqedato 1y agoGreat. It's then time to drop it and move on.
- openplatypus 1y agoI could easily pay for WhatsApp if it wasnt Facebook/Meta. With it being Meta I can be sure I will pay and still have my data and privacy violated.
- arch_deluxe 1y agoThis seems like a good time to mention that FreeFollow.org is looking for private beta testers for our app that combines the pub/sub model and slick UX of social media (posts, comments, following) with the economic model of webhosting (pay to host a group, not to participate in them) and the E2EE design of 1Password (but using OPAQUE which is actually the protocol used by WhatsApp, rather than SRP). Our initial use case -- why we're building this -- is parents who are currently using text groups in Apple Messages or WhatsApp to share photos/videos of their kiddos with friends/family and want something less interruptive and more casual, but for whom social media is so toxic and untrusted as to be a non-starter.
- Aerbil313 1y agoToday is the day the notion of the 'internet is free, good and a convenience' is over for the global public. WhatsApp was the first ever primary convenience brought by the advent of the internet - it fulfilled a legitimate need all over the world by providing essentially free, limitless, boundless communication if you had few megabytes of internet in your mobile quota. It is to this day the #1 most used app for a good percentage of the population, only surpassed by social media. (Mostly because of the immortal network effects lingering from a decade ago.) I was honestly expecting it, after recently seeing on a friend's phone that it already essentially turned to social media on Android. They can't yet push it on the higher income iPhone users (lest they switch to other messenger apps), but change is coming rather inevitably since it's nothing but untapped advertising dollars potential in the eyes of the behemoth that is Meta. I don't think there's a sustainable solution here except to self-host a Matrix server for family and friends if you have the time, money and technical expertise.
- skeeter2020 1y ago>> WhatsApp was the first ever primary convenience brought by the advent of the internet Unique but I believe fundamentally incorrect take on the Internet...
- MyPasswordSucks 1y ago> WhatsApp was the first ever primary convenience brought by the advent of the internet - it fulfilled a legitimate need all over the world by providing essentially free, limitless, boundless communication if you had few megabytes of internet in your mobile quota. Yes, truly WhatsApp was the first of its kind. It's all the communication of sending a letter through the mail, except delivered electronically - one wonders why they didn't call it "electronic mail", or perhaps "e-mail" for short. The group chats it offers are another huge innovation - for the first time, people were able to chat with each other by relaying their messages across the internet. Truly a marvel. Personally, I divide the internet into two eras - "before Whatsapp", when there was simply no primary convenience of any sort to be found upon the internet and all users were deeply encumbered by bounds; and "after Whatsapp", when I and others can communicate, conveniently, via the internet, because of WhatsApp, boundlessly.
- emushack 1y agoAnd the enshitification continues...
- sexy_seedbox 1y agoBrian Acton must be rolling in his grave ...oh wait
- danpalmer 1y ago> The promotions will appear only in an area of the app called Updates, which is used by around 1.5 billion people a day Is that 1.5 billion people engaging with it, or 1.5 billion people seeing it because it's the first tab and then immediately switching to "Chats", the only useful tab in the app?
- adithyassekhar 1y agoChats is the default and first tab.
- signal11 1y agoThe chats tab has ads of a sort as well. They’re messages from businesses, as I mentioned here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44296250 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44296250
- chrismorgan 1y agoI’m actually surprised to learn that channels didn’t already have paid promotion. I just assumed it did, because that’s the way that kind of thing always works. But I’ve never touched Channels, and haven’t seen others doing so either. As for status updates… that’s something many people seem to actually use, so ads in there may have an effect.
- seltzered_ 1y agoSomething to remember is that back in 2018 there mightve been a different vision around WhatsApp businesses possibly helping subsidizing the app for things that are useful for their customers. From a 2018 interview of Brian Acton after he left Facebook ( https://www.forbes.com/sites/parmyolson/2018/09/26/exclusive-whatsapp-cofounder-brian-acton-gives-the-inside-story-on-deletefacebook-and-why-he-left-850-million-behind/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/parmyolson/2018/09/26/exclusive... ): " "An SMS has just come in from his local Honda dealer saying “payment received.” He points to it on his phone. “This is what I wanted people to do with WhatsApp,” he says of the world’s biggest messaging service, "
- mupuff1234 1y agoWasn't there a push by the EU to force intercompatibility between messaging apps?
- jones89176 1y ago[dead]
- Mila-Cielo 1y ago[dead]
- methuselah_in 1y agoI would say xmpp apps are just fine at this point of time and will be able to help out
- pmlnr 1y agoIndeed. I've been running an xmpp server for a small group of non technical friends, it's been fine for years.
- methuselah_in 1y agowell. Great there are a lot of public servers that are there. Atleast better than whataspp using your data. OMEO encryption makes sure not even the server maintainer sees your data.
- udev4096 1y agoThe revenue it will generate will be astonishing. Probably even make 10-20% of facebook's total revenue. It's never too late to shift to Signal
- ezst 1y agoWith evidence upon evidence that every centralised service eventually devolves into an enshitified user-hostile nightmare, why would you recommend yet another silo?
- udev4096 1y agoBecause it's very similar to what people use. I would definitely recommend matrix but not everyone would feel comfortable with it
- crossroadsguy 1y agoThe frogs have been boiled enough by now gradually and very efficiently. They have been primed well. (In another news Signal still has focus on crytpo. Is this Firefox+Pocket level of stickiness and “we are right!”?).
- SlowTao 1y agoEmbrace, extend, EXPLOIT!
- cocoto 1y agoCriticizing Signal for its crypto payment system is ridiculous. The option is totally optional and completely buried as it is literally the last option when messaging. It’s better to criticize the rule against third-party clients.
- ornornor 1y agoI use signal every day and had no idea about their crypto
- mort96 1y agoBoth things are worthy of criticism. I'd ideally not use a messaging client that's embroidered in an ecosystem of cryptocurrency scams. Same reason I really don't like Brave even though its cryptocurrency BS is also "optional". It's erosive. But yeah, I might agree that the third party clients thing is a bigger issue. Especially when the official client insists on not officially supporting Linux on ARM64 and not playing nice with Wayland. (Seriously, Signal on Linux is so blurry!)
- icar 1y agoWhat about https://flathub.org/apps/de.schmidhuberj.Flare https://flathub.org/apps/de.schmidhuberj.Flare ?
- mort96 1y agoSure, they exist, but Signal is against them. Look into what they did against LibreSignal. Now part of the problem with LibreSignal was the trademark violation of using the name Signal. But Moxie is clearly against any third party using their servers, as we can see in this comment: https://github.com/LibreSignal/LibreSignal/issues/37#issuecomment-217211165 https://github.com/LibreSignal/LibreSignal/issues/37#issueco... IMO that's an unforgivable stance towards third party clients. I have read (well, skimmed) through their terms of service and haven't seen anything against using their servers from third party software, yet they'll evidently shut down third party software for interacting with their servers. If you're gonna have policies like that, at least outline them in your ToS.
- anshumankmr 1y agoIf WhatsApp does this, Telegram will not be far behind in rolling this out.
- accordingme 1y ago[flagged]
- accordingme 1y ago[flagged]
- findthebug 1y agoinstall signal, donate €2.99, done. don't understand so many still stick to this messanger.
- jraph 1y agoNetwork effect
- dguest 1y agoIn a lot of developing countries WhatsApp doesn't count against your data plan. Signal data is billed like any other app. It's not easy asking all your friends to pay for something they already get "for free".
- uncircle 1y agoRipe for antitrust litigation. Reminds me of Microsoft bundling Internet Explorer. Unfortunately, developing countries have bigger things on their plate than going against Meta, especially since I figure the “bribes” and promise to improve the nation’s internet infrastructure are very substantial.
- dguest 1y agoThe issue is being framed very differently from IE and MS though. You have, to paraphrase: > Internet.org [1] is providing free internet to millions of people who didn't have it 5 years ago. vs > Free WhatsApp is harming market efficiency. I'm guessing a lot of people are reluctant to spend a lot of effort on the later point. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet.org https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet.org
- accordingme 1y ago[flagged]
- accordingme 1y ago[dead]
- appleaday1 1y agoI got 99 problems, WhatsApp aint one.
- d3vmax 1y agoAlice Newton-Rex, head of product at WhatsApp: “Alongside of private messaging, people were saying they wanted to hear more about topics, teams and organizations across WhatsApp.” - I am pretty sure NO ONE asked to hear about more topics and organizations across whatsapp.
- zuppy 1y agothese guys don’t use their own product. everyone i know uses only 2 things: direct message and group chats. everything else is just noise.
- _Algernon_ 1y agoTranslation: After going through a far too large number of focus groups that didn't want it we finally found one that phrased a reply in such a way, that after removing context and playing Chinese whispers up the management chain, can be interpreted as them wanting ads.
- TeMPOraL 1y agoNah, it's even simpler than that: after shoving enough surveys in users' faces (as they seem to semi-regularly do across all Meta products; I've had at least 2 in WhatsApp alone over the past few months), they've collected enough misclicks and drunk responses to be able to interpret them as lots of people wanting ads.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- PaulHoule 1y agoI was playing a lot of Beat Saber in April and got a survey which asked bizzare questions like “Do I want to use VR to manage my calendar?” They went so far as to ask for times I might be available for a focus group then they ghosted me.
- imiric 1y agoYou think this decision was based on user feedback at all? The simplest explanation is that they want more revenue, and WhatsApp users were an obvious source they weren't exploiting enough.
- b0a04gl 1y agoeveryone saw this coming the day facebook bought it, but the real issue isn't ads in status . it's that the platform is now locked into meta's attention monetization engine. the founders explicitly said no ads. now not only ads, but paid channels, algorithmic exposure, and user segmentation creeping in. most people won't switch because of network effects, so meta can keep tightening the screws. this isn't about revenue, it's about control. they’re reshaping a private messaging tool into a broadcast platform with tracking hooks. and most users won’t even notice until it’s too embedded to undo
- fouronnes3 1y agoIt is becoming painfully apparent that the cycle of enshittification is truly inevitable, right up there next to the second law of thermodynamics.
- bapak 1y ago[flagged]
- osculum 1y agoWhatsApp used to be a paid app, and I paid for it back in the day, as did lots of my friends.
- avhception 1y agoAnd I'd gladly pay again if they would only let me!
- bapak 1y agoYou can't have both a paid app and an app with billions of users. You can use WhatsApp to talk to people across the world, you bet your ass that nobody would be using it in Indonesia and Brazil if it costed one dollar, vastly diminishing its value. If you want a free app that only part of users worldwide can afford there's already iMessage.
- DoingIsLearning 1y agoTangentially on topic is there a programmatic way to export data from Whatsapp other than media? For example, if I would like to transition away from Whatsapp but would like to preserve old chats with friends that are no longer with us.
- fakedang 1y agoI think Whatsapp has an export chat feature for individual chats that exports that specific chat as a text file.
- h4kunamata 1y agoAnd people will still use it, that is why big techs get away pushing a lot of crappy into users. There was some wild change they wanted to push some time ago, users started mass migration away from it forcing them to abandon their insane plans. These companies only learn when the problem hits their pocket. I still have my social media accounts coz otherwise, hobbies and alike gets impossible to track. But I only access them via PC browser/mobile browser on my GrapheneOS phone. Instagram only allows video upload via their app which I can understand (compression and etc), GrapheneOS allows me to lock everything so I only use it to upload videos. Man, it is a complete mess, Sponsored, Threads posts that takes you to install apps and ADs is everywhere and I mean everywhere. On my phone/PC, nothing of the above exist. It is just one post after another with, no Ads, no sponsored, no apps, nothing. Facebook follows suit, I have not used their app in years now, mobile browser only. WhatsApp is gonna become exactly the same, a complete mess. People accepted Instagram changes so....
- m4houk 1y ago> Instagram only allows video upload via their app which I can understand (compression and etc) You can upload videos from the web now; even Reels.
- k_bx 1y agoI really hope it helps them build a decent app, but I doubt it. In Ukraine, there's a huge problem of Telegram being so feature-rich compared to WhatsApp that it's impossible to convince people to do the switch, even under the national security threat.
- ale42 1y agoIf one should switch, why should they switch to WhatsApp instead of something more privacy-friendly as Signal?
- k_bx 1y agoI'm a much heavier Signal user than WhatsApp but for broader audience it not even serious to consider. Too slow/laggish, lacks features (at some point it ate 40GB of my phone space -- with no good UI to clean it up), crashes etc. Not ready for this kind of scenario, unfortunately.
- frollogaston 1y agoI missed 2 weeks of message notifications because Signal quietly went out of date. It had one job!
- jaoane 1y agoReally WhatsApp is not a national security threat? Ukraine is basically a vassal state of the US at this point, I would think it would be best to depend less of them.
- k_bx 1y agoIt is to an extent, but not as much to call it a "national security threat".
- changadera 1y agoThat's funny because one of the reasons I used Telegram originally was the encryption of messages and open sourcedness. Also Whatsapp use to require your phone to be on and with signal to receive messages on the web app.
- Elaris 1y agoIt always seems to go like this. An app starts out simple, focused on privacy and a clean experience. But after a while, growth slows down, money becomes a bigger concern, and ads slowly get added. I understand why companies do it, but as a user, it’s frustrating because you already know where it usually ends up. WhatsApp was great because it didn’t have ads and kept things private. Once they start changing that, it usually doesn’t stop with just one small change.
- Huxley1 1y agoI’ve gotten used to chatting with friends and family on WhatsApp. As long as they don’t put ads into private chats or groups, I think it’s fine for now. But I do wonder if this is just the first step, and like other platforms, ads might slowly spread into more parts of the app over time.
- Daisywh 1y agoI remember switching to WhatsApp many years ago, mainly because it had no ads and encrypted chats, while other apps were constantly crammed with ads and features I didn't need. Now I feel like I'm slowly going back to that old path. Sometimes it really feels like no app can really stay clean for long.
- tigroferoce 1y agoI think this is two sided topic: - on one side there is the increasing number of features in WhatsApp that nobody asked for and that make the experience worse and worse, I agree. Yet, on the other side of the world a 1B people in China use WeChat for so many things beside communicating, so I understand Meta's appetite to become the West WeChat. Still I hate it. - on the other side there is the business model of WhatsApp. Or the complete lack of it. It's 100% unrealistic that a global, always on, high availability, high security service is free. These things are expensive and they need to be monetized. It's either ads, either fees on extra services they are providing through the app, either a monthly subscription. Now, I think nobody would pay for WhatsApp and they would lose their market immediately if they went that route (for many good reasons). They tried hard to position WhatsApp as WeChat, failing at that (for many good reasons). Ads is the only thing that is left IMO.
- palata 1y ago> It's 100% unrealistic that a global, always on, high availability, high security service is free. What about Signal? It seems like they run on donations, don't they?
- tigroferoce 1y agoTrue, but they are a much smaller service. I remember that WhatsApp was designed to be lean and very efficient so that it would run on a small number of servers. But this it different from a highly profitable service. Let's keep in mind that Meta payed 19B for WhatsApp in 2014. They need a juicy ROI.
- 1y ago
- gherkinnn 1y agohttps://blog.whatsapp.com/helping-you-find-more-channels-and-businesses-on-whatsapp https://blog.whatsapp.com/helping-you-find-more-channels-and... How long until "Updates" gets a red badge despite no updates only to show you an ad? Also, I find the language used in their announcement deeply offensive. > Helping you Find More Channels and Businesses on WhatsApp > support your favorite channel > help you discover > find a new business and easily start a conversation with them > help admins, organizations, and businesses grow
- rhubarbtree 1y agoMany folks blame the users “well, they won’t pay for the app!” rather than blaming the software developers who work for Meta. It’s much easier for software devs to agree not support enshittification than it is to unite consumers behind a campaign. We have more agency, more time, and more economic power.
- elric 1y ago> It’s much easier for software devs to agree not support enshittification Is it? Most software developers I know prefer having a job to not having a job. You don't want to implement ads? You're fired. Blaming the users is also the wrong thing to do, of course. The blame lies squarely with Meta. And with regulators. Any communications platform that has as much market penetration as Whatsapp should be open to use by third parties, just like the telephone system.
- rhubarbtree 1y ago> Is it? Most software developers I know prefer having a job to not having a job. You don't want to implement ads? You're fired. You know as well as I do that Meta software developers can get jobs elsewhere. It's a choice.
- zakki 1y agoHNers, please create a new messenger.
- jones89176 1y ago[dead]
- aembleton 1y agoThen what happens? A messenger is only as good as the network of people on it. Signal already exists, and I have a few group chats on it, but most still happens on Whatsapp and FB-Messenger.
- uncircle 1y agoHNers will probably take VC money and sell to Meta eventually for a gazillion dollars. You should ask someone on the GNU mailing list (but they don’t have the time and money, especially marketing reach to compete with anything popular)
- abalaji 1y agoHonestly, this might have gone over better with messaging such as. "We added Ads to WhatsApp, here's what we're doing keep the user first" There is a cult understanding that Instagram ads are highly relevant and quite useful at times and WhatsApp ads have the same possibility. But the messaging is quite poor.
- zecg 1y agoThis reminds me to throw 10€ at Signal
- jones89176 1y ago[dead]
- junon 1y agoUpdates tab now has random channels from other people on it, too. Naturally the only ones that show up are thirst trap profiles masquerading as "uwu just sharing my life" channels.
- landhar 1y agoJune 18, 2012 -> https://blog.whatsapp.com/why-we-don-t-sell-ads https://blog.whatsapp.com/why-we-don-t-sell-ads Almost 13 years to the day! I find it really frustrating that I am not able to avoid using whatsapp due to how popular it is to the point that it’s become the go-to communication channel for most things :/
- whiplash451 1y agoIndeed. And the worse isn't that we'll have to deal with ads. The worse is that people will stick around despite the ads, which only goes to show how powerful the grip of Meta on our societies is.
- agile-gift0262 1y ago... and once they have proof of they power because WhatsApp use keeps increasing despite all the enshittification done in the last few months, they'll feel encouraged to enshittify further in even bolder ways.
- orsenthil 1y agoThat blog post is very interesting in number of ways! The principles they enlisted > Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don't need. – Tyler Durden, Fight Club > Advertising isn't just the disruption of aesthetics, the insults to your intelligence and the interruption of your train of thought. > Remember, when advertising is involved you the user are the product. --- That said, building a product and selling it for 19 Billion dollars in 2012 was essentially a success of capitalism over those principles. There shouldn't be any complaints, since FB didn't kill it, and the number of users kept increasing.
- whiplash451 1y agoCombined with their GenAI bot that nobody asked for either, Meta is now begging for someone to displace WhatsApp. It's unclear that Signal/Telegram/etc have a shot, though.
- agigao 1y agoWhatsApp - bye bye.
- HenryBemis 1y agoThe below comment does not contribute to the discussion, it can be perceived as a negative one, and I should probably not make it. But these are my true feelings towards everyone who uses anything-Facebook/Meta: hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha and then after I catch my breath, a bit more hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha. Seriously, who expected anything different? Like.. in which universe does anything think "Facebook/Meta is going to do the right thing"(?)
- xinayder 1y agoHas anyone reported this as a DMA and GDPR violation to the EU? They're using personal data to show personalized ads, without an option to opt-out entirely, and I'm pretty sure they will offer the same shitty deal for EU users: either pay for less intrusive ads, or sell your data for personalized ones.
- m4tthumphrey 1y agoUnpopular opinion?: If they are only in the Updates tab why do ads matter? I don't know anyone who uses that tab...
- ed_blackburn 1y agoWhatsApp has been relatively feature stagnant for a long while now, and it's certainly being almost ubiquitous for a long time too, but we're seeing an explosion in features and product tweaks recently? I wonder what the trigger was to suddenly leverage the enormous corpus of users to sweat more cash out of it?
- Aardwolf 1y ago> relatively feature stagnant Is that a bad thing? It's a useful dedicated tool. Paperclips have been feature stagnant since the 19th century, and they're fine
- nalinidash 1y ago> Is that a bad thing? I think the op did not mean that. Whatsapp has been adding many new features and tweaks recently(maybe 6months-1yr).Before that they were not that keen on changing.
- Toorkit 1y agoIt's about time they added AI features to paperclips.
- elric 1y agoCan we get a federated messenger already? Sure, we have email, but the MS/Google duopoloy has effectively unfederated that, with their inscrutable block lists and nonexistent appeals processes, allegedly in order to protect you from spam. Sure, XMPP is a thing, which has been mostly dead for well over a decade. Sure, Matrix is a thing, but every time I look at it, all I see is criticism of its specifications and poor interoperability between implementations? What would it take to sort out this mess? More money for Matrix or XMPP? Someone with enough clout to promote them? I'm sure organizations like the UN or the EU would, in theory, be in favour of an effective global communicator. But those same organizations would like rail against encryption and decentralisation.
- jama211 1y agoEmail still works fine between Gmail/ms and everything else, in practice it’s not ruined at all…
- vbezhenar 1y agoWe need to keep trying and support alternative implementations. Fighting complexity with money is like fighting fire with gasoline. It does not work. But messaging apps are especially tricky to take off, because the most important feature of the messaging app is how many friends already using it. So I don't really believe in independent open-source apps becoming popular. It's always startups, funded with billions, pouring those billions into marketing.
- ajconway 1y agoBuilding complex apps is hard. User-facing, feature-rich apps--especially so. It takes a lot of engineering effort, but also management (which implies some kind of a corporate structure). Coincidentally, it also doesn't align well with open (or any) standards.
- evrimoztamur 1y agoWe do not need federated messaging at the consumer app level, we need a replacement that's available at the cellular network level (just like SMS). RCS (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rich_Communication_Services https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rich_Communication_Services) is trying to do this, but it might be too little too late.
- botanical 1y agoAs much as I like WhatsApp, I hate that it's been bought by a company like Meta. Its voice-calling quality is the best from all similar apps, companies use it to communicate with people, and my entire family solely uses it. I just wish there was something else with such far reach and capability. We can only hope for interoperability with other chat apps. At least the ads are in Updates, where I never bother looking at
- codedokode 1y agoWhatsApp cannot even be used from desktop without a smartphone. I think they took "mobile-first" approach too literally. But to be fair, competitors like Telegram also do not allow registering an account from desktop app, only from a smartphone. This seems to be the new trend: you cannot sign up for Gmail and Vk without a smartphone too: for Gmail, you need to scan the QR code, and for Vk you need to install a mobile app.
- afarah1 1y agoIt can be used in the desktop (web) with the phone turned off since a few months (years?) ago.
- fifticon 1y agoAs part of this, it has been rebranded to WhatsAd
- animal531 1y agoWhere I live using tools such as Truecaller isn't really an option, and just that by itself probably slows my budget phone down by 15%. I don't know if it'll manage with another 15% loss.
- arisudesu 1y agoAnd so, WhatsApp has reached parity with Telegram in features, in the sense that both now show ads (even though Telegram was initially promoted as always free and without ads, it was the first to abandon this promise and shamefully removed it from the main page). Time for a new messenger, and I don’t mean Signal, but the creation of some kind of old Skype, with a peer to peer protocol. It was very good before Microsoft bought it. Of course, if the code is open and does not require a proprietary server part.
- bebopsbraunbaer 1y agowhats wrong with Signal?
- arisudesu 1y agoDoesn't it require a central server for communications?
- pt_PT_guy 1y agoMy wish is to have Telegram clients and user experience (both mobile and in Linux desktop versions) with Signal security and whatsapp adoption. Signal is a cool 2nd alternative to WhatsApp, but their desktop client is absolute garbage, their videocall echo cancelling is non-existent and sending media over slow connections absolutely sucks (it keeps on resending and resending the files)
- thowier4342334 1y agoOkay, but wasn't this expected ? We all hate ads, but what did we expect ? That some rando will pay for all those server and personnel bills out of the goodness of his "heart" ? Please. I wish the culture of Silicon valley wasn't so full of bullshit that this'd have become obvious a long time back. (For a more egregious eg. of ads, look at LINE which is all the rage in Japan. Or indeed Google, whose entire Android/Chrome business is made to subtly feed data back into its ads business).
- skrebbel 1y agoDoes anyone understand why it took them so long? I expected them to load the app full of ads right after they bought it over a decade ago. I mean, WhatsApp is the only Meta product I use and it's sortof felt like a public utility more than a ultracapitalist for-profit "if you're not paying then you're the product" type affair. I mean, my messages are encrypted, the thing Just Works, UX is great, calls are free despite what I assume is substantial bandwidth and server cost, and so on. Why did they give this away to 2b people for 10 years? Could they really cover the all cost and then some just with those WhatsApp Business API call charges? I mean I love it but I can't say I get it. Thanks for all the freebies Mark!
- Lutger 1y agoI was wondering why it took so long for the enshittification to commence in earnest. It already slowly started, with various social media features nobody asked for, but now it is official: whatsapp is dead. Especially given that Trump already helped so many people move away from Meta, I see the whatsapp monopoly coming to an end pretty soon.
- elAhmo 1y agoAnyone remembers time when WhatsApp was a paid app on the AppStore? I miss that monetisation strategy, paying for an app once and calling it a day. Everything seems to have either adds or subscription modes now, from Sudoku apps to flight tracking (yes Flighty, talking about you).
- mdavid626 1y agoRemember Google, when they bought YouTube? They said, that there won’t be any ads. Now it’s almost only ads.
- imiric 1y agoIf this concerns you and you must use WhatsApp, I highly suggest installing it on a separate device only used for WhatsApp, that doesn't have any contacts besides the ones in WhatsApp, which should only have a name and phone number, and registering it with a burner SIM, or from a virtual service. An additional layer of security would be installing it in a Work profile in Android (maybe the new profiles feature works for this, I'm not sure), and only activating that profile when you need to use it. With the recent news about the Facebook and Instagram tracking via WebRTC[1], we can only assume that they're doing it with WhatsApp as well. [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44169115 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44169115
- yoz-y 1y agoI wish it was possible to give contacts permission the same way one can share photos. Apps should not have free access to all contacts but anything else is currently highly impractical to the point of being unusable. (Android work profile is a good idea, unfortunately that profile is usually take up by… work)
- hotpocket777 1y agoOn iPhone, it is. Can set “limited access” for contacts just as you can for photos.
- yoz-y 1y agoOh! I did not actually know that, thanks!
- yakkomajuri 1y agoI guess this was expected, but it makes me feel really powerless in the sense that I can't really move away from WhatsApp. I have a couple of friends that I message via Signal and even convinced my dad to use it a while back, but here in Brazil WhatsApp is _everything_, and I doubt most people care about this at all. In my case, I'd love to just go over to Signal fully but then I couldn't talk to family, friends, and probably couldn't even book a haircut or pay my taxes (my accountant messages me on WhatsApp). It's one of those where unless just about everyone were to go over to Signal, most people won't, because keeping track of messages in two apps is quite hard. That leaves me stuck in this ecosystem, which is quite sad.
- klabb3 1y agoYup. Non-traveling US Americans mostly won’t understand how critical WhatsApp is in many parts of the world, for more than a decade. It’s much much stronger than the iMessage norm in the US. Businesses put WhatsApp numbers on their stores, and it’s often the only way to get a hold of a person. I would bet it’s more used than email, especially for young people. If WhatsApp went down for a week, it would seriously impede normal societal functions. It’s pretty much de-facto standard and arguably critical infrastructure.
- drstewart 1y agoWhat about non traveling Chinese?
- 55555 1y agoMy simple solution to this problem: we need a law that forces companies to provide a messaging-only version of messaging apps, without algorithmic social feeds.
- plemer 1y agoThat’s nice, but what’s their incentive to build? Unless we’re just going to start decreeing the products we’d prefer.
- milesward 1y agoEnshittification.
- an0malous 1y agoAt this point, everyone just needs to become aware that this is a common business strategy employed by tech companies and private equity that even has its own Wiki article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enshittification https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enshittification
- emptyfile 1y ago[dead]
- tecleandor 1y agoYesterday : Introduces adds Just 30 minutes ago: I got an official message from WhatsApp asking for my email address "for improved security just in case you lose your account"...
- somedude895 1y agoBoy I hope they vet these ads better than they do on Facebook, otherwise my mum and many other marginally-online people are certain to get scammed and hacked within hours of this going live.
- mbar84 1y agoI hope the only valid use for WhatsApp becomes giving people a link to your Signal.
- alex1138 1y agoI think it should also be pointed out that for all of the "Facebook is free, you are the product" and that maybe they should charge, Whatsapp had an existing monetization model Zuckerberg is ruthless and cutthroat and Whatsapp was less a "savvy acquisition" (I mean, yeah, get rid of competition) than a "I want this, I need to own it" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1692122 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1692122
- adikulkarni11 1y agoI’d be curious to see them implement a payment tier-model to negate/ reduce ads for specific users. Granted, their business model will have to change completely for this.
- cs702 1y ago"Your personal messages, calls and statuses, they will remain end-to-end encrypted," says the Facebook executive in charge of WhatsApp. A company representative adds that it has "no plans to place ads in chats and personal messages." Plans, of course, could change in the future. As many here have noted, WhatsApp is the dominant communication platform for many people, and many businesses, particularly outside the US. In the short run, almost none of them will be able to leave the platform. In the longer term, so many of them are upset about the introduction of intrusive ads that it could well become "the beginning of the end" for the platform. Social media platforms can rise and fall.
- sohrob 1y agoAll the more reason to switch to Signal. I use Signal and donate to the non-profit behind it every year because my privacy is worth protecting.
- hnpolicestate 1y agoThis is why I prefer protocols like SMS to services like Whatsapp
- MasihMinawal 1y agoreturn to msn
- nerdyadventurer 1y agoWhatsapp is not a messenger app anymore it is just Facebook tied to phone number and your contacts along with it. I do not know what to do, it cluttered mess, no way to disabling status, communities, meta AI. I'm just using since others use it.