Technology

*gasp*

Who could have ever seen this move coming? From Facebook, of all companies!

Good news good 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...

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.

• provide free app at a loss

• grow massive user base and market share

• 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.

I'm forced to use WhatsApp chat so I keep it installed begrudgingly. But who the fuck is using WhatsApp stories?

LET THE ENSHITTIFICATION BEGIN!

Hopefully this helps people move off of WhatsApp to Signal or something else.

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.

Facebook shit gonna do facebook shit

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.

I’m more surprised it took them this long. Thankfully there are already many decent alternative messaging apps.

Repeat after me.... "Enshitification"!

@MazonnaCara89 The country I live in (Brazil) overly uses and depends on WhatsApp. From government departments to businesses and transactional relations, all the way to social and family affairs, people is addicted to it, forcing other people (e.g. me) to either have a WhatsApp account or ending up far beyond mere social ostracism (beyond mere loneliness): effectively, the inability to buy, sell, rent or even resolve citizen matters with certain government/state departments (such as receiving medical appointment schedules from Brazilian's public health system (Sistema Unico de Saude/SUS (Unified Health System) via their "postinhos"/"Unidades Basicas de Saude" (neighborhood public health centers)). They don't even use the grand old phone calling and SMS anymore: even "calls", when performed, are made by people/departments/businesses via Whatsapp VoIP functionality.

That said, it's worth mentioning that WhatsApp has been running ads for a long time: the "Channels" section lists seemingly random "channels", many of which are businesses with "verified" "blue badges". So it's effectively advertisement disguised as veiled "recommendations" from Meta. It seems like it'll just become worse (to the surprise of no one who understands what Meta is).

I really want to leave WhatsApp, but I'm socially compelled to stay (it's the only mainstream platform where I still have an account, against my will)... the raw, grotesque distillation from social compliance, worse than depicted in Derren Brown's documentaries...

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. 😅

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

This is such great news! More ammo to use when trying to convince friends and family to move away from WhatsApp

Only shocking part of this is that it took them this long.

Time to ditch WhatsApp

I hate how my country (Brazil) depends so much on Whatsapp. If I could, I would uninstall that app immediately.

I forgot WhatsApp existed.

Guess its shittier now.

Mhm. Yup.

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 hope Signal does this too!

- no one ever.

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..

Signal doesnt have ads...