Ads are “rolling out gradually” to WhatsApp
- Thread starter JournalBot
- Start date
I hate being on Whatsapp but with my European and other international friends, Whatsapp and Facebook are the two main ways of staying in touch, so it's a damned no matter what you do situation. I don't think I'd succeed at getting all of them to something non-Meta-owned and it's not like with local friends where it's sufficient to rely on seeing them in person.
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I led an entire movement of all my contacts to quit whatsapp and join signal 4 yrs ago when whatsapp updated their privacy policy.
It lasted a week before people complained about random errors etc.
I lasted a month out of principle. But my social circle eventually pulled me back in.
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And you may get to hear about confidential military strikes as a bonus!
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There's no way this stays restricted to non-messaging areas of the app. At a minimum, you have to assume they're going to start putting banners at the bottom of message threads, informed by the content of that chat (but using a "local-only LLM, so totally privacy-preserving and still end-to-end encryption but so sorry that your phone's battery now lasts twelve minutes and can cook an egg" or some such BS).
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Step 1: Create a functional app without ads.
Step 2: Insert ads into app.
Step 3: Offer ad-free subscription.
Step 4: Reintroduce ads to subscribers, and restrict key features to subscription-only.
Step 5: Profit!
Step 2: Insert ads into app.
Step 3: Offer ad-free subscription.
Step 4: Reintroduce ads to subscribers, and restrict key features to subscription-only.
Step 5: Profit!
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Frankly, if you're using Facebook spyware, you have bigger problems than advertisements. Thanks again for killing Skype, Microsoft... if it wasn't for the high profile example of those doofuses in government using Signal to convince my retired parents that it's so easy to use, they might have given Zuck all their data!
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Unfortunate, but the service should be able to self support through some sort of revenue. WhatsApp has been funded by Meta/Facebook. As much as I dislike Meta/Facebook, that has been a great service to the community. I don't see another practical option for operating revenue other than ads.
Signal lives off of donations. No one is going to donate to Meta.
Signal lives off of donations. No one is going to donate to Meta.
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Well, time to have another go at persuading the rest of the family to move to Signal.
Although in all honesty, until I read this article I didn't realise WhatsApp had any functionality other than messaging & group chats.
Although in all honesty, until I read this article I didn't realise WhatsApp had any functionality other than messaging & group chats.
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Signal lives off of donations, which is great! More power to them. But if they had to support the customer and usage volumes of WhatsApp, their donation model would break down.
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scortiusthecharioteer
Ars Centurion
Sure why not who gives a fuck anymore. Let Taco Bell paste from Spotify, let MS read every key click and let Meta blackmail your kids with the pics of them you posted in 2009.
I use Signal, but lets not pretend it's a replacement for something on the scale of WhatsApp, whether or not you personally use it.
I use Signal, but lets not pretend it's a replacement for something on the scale of WhatsApp, whether or not you personally use it.
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There were signup problems around that time because so many people were trying to make the jump. From using it since the beginning (TextSecure, 2013?) I’ve really only encountered one serious bug. It’s pretty solid, other than that period you mention. Bad timing =/
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That conversation lasted about 3 minutes in my family group chat and we're staying on whatsapp.
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Didn't Whatsapp charge $1/year at one point? I may be misremembering, but I swear at one point they were charging the equivalent of less than 10 cents/month per user and they were making more than enough money to run the service.
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I'd bet anything they also do like Facebook Messenger and start shoving crap like ride-sharing and making event invites.
That was one of the things pushed me to join friends on Telegram because I'd like message my partner asking when she wanted a ride home from work or if I should pick up something from the store for dinner and it'd be like "You can order an Uber with assistant!" and "Click here to set up a page for your event!" and I'm like buzz-off I'm literally talking about what I plan to do myself.
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What’s the use of a messaging app if none of your contacts are there ? You need critical mass
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For about a year (more than a year actually) I didn't own a smart phone and I didn't have internet at home, and yeah it was ... it worked, but it wasn't good and it did hinge on the fact that some of those people would update me by way of SMS what say the weekend plans for the Board Game/Disc Golf/General Hangs were. Which they gladly did, but I did feel like I was a burden. This was in 2018/2019 btw, and things aren't easier for people today. If it makes it easer for me and my IRL or AFK friends and family to stay in touch ... I'm gonna say it's still worth it.
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I was coming here to say exactly this! I'd be happy to pay a modest sum for ad-free and private messaging. The only problem is the network effect... What if someone could come up with an open messaging protocol so that all users could pick their client of choice... sort of like email or sms, but with the extra functions we all expect from messaging.
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Am I the only one who hasn't opened the "Channels" section a single time in almost 15 years of use?
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There is no WhatsApp without Signal. The only difference is Meta enshitification.
https://signal.org/blog/whatsapp-complete/
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Do I want to see friends or ads…? Tougher than you’d think. Maybe I need new friends.
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At this point, the only thing I use WA for is the family group chat, which we use primarily because my eldest sister was the first in our family to get a non-business smartphone and WA offered a means to get around text message limits at the time. It's also great for video chatting with my nieces and nephews without having to set up Zoom or Google Meet or some other service.
Otherwise, I wasn't even aware that Channels was a thing. I've heard about the extensive uses for WA in other countries, like commerce and such, but I've never seen them myself.
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I'm so happy to not be a user of all these shit services that everyone is addicted to.
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At one point before Facebook bought them and they only did simple text messages, they did charge $1/year. Maybe they could cover their operating costs then, but they were also venture backed and added higher bandwidth features (voice, images, video, real-time...). In 2013 they had $10M in revenue and spent $148M according to their SEC filing.
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pixithacat
Smack-Fu Master, in training
ha ha ha, what unexpected......moved away from whatsapp when they were bought bij Facebook, never looked back... I love the rest, do not need all those "social" apps
cheers,
einzelganger..
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I think you are right about that, i also miss the word "yet" in several places.
It also appears that the definition of "never" used by Meta is "15 years, maximum".
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Gotta rack up those impressions, Zuck's Metaverse AI superintelligence ain't gonna compute itself
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It's called XMPP (and before that, "Jabber"): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XMPP
Used to be the protocol behind Google Talk (back before the era of Google releasing a new, incompatible chat app every 5 minutes).
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internet2000
Ars Centurion
I think I'll stick with iMessage, in spite of the whole blue bubbles drama. It's not about social status, it's just plainly a better app. That's what the blue really stands for.
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We wouldn't even be having this conversation if Google/Android had an actual iMessenger equivalent that was baked into the OS/default RCS/SMS messaging app (and also a decent video calling app that could rival FaceTime in video quality). I'm all in favor of WhatsApp enshitifying their product with rampant adds. Hopefully then my european and LatAm friends will finally get off WhatsApp.
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I've used signal for years and never once had an error.
I'm willing to be convinced my experience just simply isn't hitting any edge cases, but I'm curious: what kind of errors are we talking about here?
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"Rollout" and "rolling out" is probably used a hundred times more frequently in modern English to denote the debut, launch, or first public showing of a product, ad campaign, rebranding, policy, or whatever than it is to actually refer to wee trolleys or Transformers, so what are you on about?
Bizarre indeed. This is a common use of a common word.
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