*gasp*
Who could have ever seen this move coming? From Facebook, of all companies!
To be fair, I am shocked... Not to see a Pikachu face in the comments.
Thank you for your assistance.
"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...
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.
WhatsApp was not free and already had a massive user base before Facebook bought it.
Hope this will turn people to alternatives.
Good news good Signal.
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.
Sheep don't know they are being slaughtered. We're the digital 1% and we can't make the sheep wake up.
I don’t use either but my issue with Signal is none of my friends want another application to install and they are happy with WhatApp.
Conversely, I’m happy not having a group chat app and will either text you or iMessage you. Don’t you dare ring me as I ain’t answering.
I just deleted WhatsApp one day and made the switch. Messaged all important contacts, that I will be available via Signal. Most of the few I care about went ahead and installed Signal. One is still dragging their feet and we communicate via SMS now xD
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.
Isn't Beeper another security risk? They also store your data on their cloud, and it's not encrypted during the bridge process.
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
This is such great news! More ammo to use when trying to convince friends and family to move away from WhatsApp
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..
Signal? Dude, I don't want nonstop getting updates about the war plans of the Trump administration ;-)
Facebook shit gonna do facebook shit
I forgot WhatsApp existed.
Guess its shittier now.
Mhm. Yup.
It's the go-to messagging app in my country for historical reasons.
I hope Signal does this too!
- no one ever.
Hopefully this helps people move off of WhatsApp to Signal or something else.
Yeah like it moved them off of Xitter, Reddit, Facebook and Instagram.
I mean we are here, aren't we? The majority of people will do nothing of course, but some will make the switch or even just install another app just to give it a try. And soon Whatsapp's enshittification will continue and some more people will switch and so on.
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.
Unfortunately "better" varies from person to person. Signal is behind on features, e.g. WhatsApp has integration for businesses (customer support).
I hope my monthly donation will help but we must realize for some some features are important, I guess that for most it's how many ppl they know is there/unwilling to lead a migration
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.
I hate how my country (Brazil) depends so much on Whatsapp. If I could, I would uninstall that app immediately.
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?
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
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
