- cross-posted to:
- [email protected]
- cross-posted to:
- [email protected]
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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Doctorow is always right.
@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…
jesus that some dystopian shit
Facebook has had a strategy for a long time of monopolising the internet of countries that previously had very little internet. They essentially subsidise internet infrastructure and make that subsidy dependent on facebook being a central part of the network.
So I’m not surprised to hear this. They obviously have found ways to inveigle themselves into key infrastructure in lots of places, even if they couldn’t build it in from the ground up.
Explains why I’ve started seeing ads for WhatsApp, which was really bizarre
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
I hate how my country (Brazil) depends so much on Whatsapp. If I could, I would uninstall that app immediately.
Same thing here in Italy
Same in Germany.
I do believe it’s better than using iMessage for example but it’s undoubtedly rubbish.
Same here in UK. So many people think of it like email. A universal communication system. They can’t see the problem with it being a single, closed, for profit, provider. Now Meta feels people are locked in, they will be finding out. But they still won’t see the problem until it ratcheted to really bad. Like frogs in boiling water.
I forgot WhatsApp existed.
Guess its shittier now.
Mhm. Yup.
Tell me you’re not well traveled without saying you’re not well traveled
It’s the go-to messagging app in my country for historical reasons.
I’ve never used whatsapp and don’t even remember what it’s for. Somehow life goes on.
I’m guessing you’re in the US. In many parts of the world including where I live, it’s the messenger app. If you don’t have WhatsApp you’re pretty much not communicating with most people.
I am in the US, but it’s mostly that I just don’t messenger apps. I send ordinary text messages on my phone or make voice calls.
It’s not a popular messaging app in the US. It is in many other countries though. I use it to talk to my wife’s family.
*gasp*
Who could have ever seen this move coming? From Facebook, of all companies!
As somebody that doesn’t use what’s app, I’m shocked it didn’t have ads already.
To be fair, I am shocked… Not to see a Pikachu face in the comments.
Thank you for your assistance.
Signal doesnt have ads…
Uninstalled.
Luckily I/people I interact with never used it much.
Good news good Signal.
Only if you donate. Otherwise bad news, Signal.
Have they removed that dogshit crypto they added a few years ago? Haven’t donated since.
Signal was never more than a stepping stone anyway. Centralised privacy services, that can be taken down by any government, are doomed to fail under surveillance capitalfascism.
It’s still there, buried in the settings. TBF I wouldn’t expect them to remove it, because some people probably do use it.
No idea, all I see as options now for Paypal and credit card.
I recommend https://simplex.chat/
I recommend you have a look at this guy’s Twitter profile and reconsider.
What does this mean? What’s on his twitter profile?
What’s on his twitter profile?
Well for one, he’s still on Twitter, which is run by a Nazi, so…
Bunch of right wing stuff, some anti vax stuff, the usual
I’m surprised. He didn’t come across this way to me on Github, or in group chats and interviews he’s done. I want to say that, as a non-American, maybe he doesn’t know the kind of things Trump has done here, but then it seems like everyone knows what Trump has done here.
Time to ditch WhatsApp
The best time to quit was 10 years ago. The second-best time is now.
No, the second best was 10 years minus 1 day ago
👆 mark that comment. I’m sure you’ll write that again in a year or so
And the year after that, and the year after that, and the year after that, and
And again in a year or so only a handful of tech nerds with few social connections will actually ditch it.
Slowpoke meme, I chose you… like 10 years ago.
Hopefully this helps people move off of WhatsApp to Signal or something else.
I just wish SMS would go away.
Why? It works fine and it’s built into the phones. No need to convince family members to install a fuckin’ chat app just to be able to message them.
Because it sucks and it’s tied to a provider and the rest of the world doesn’t even use it.
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.
Hope so… Just a little bit and them another ones when they extent the implementation of IA… And wishing to not be the standard any more
Only shocking part of this is that it took them this long.
Yeah, it was never not going to happen. Shareholders demand unending year-on-year growth at all costs, forever, until everything is shit.
I’m more surprised it took them this long. Thankfully there are already many decent alternative messaging apps.
but still nobody is going to switch. whenever i try to convince people to switch, they just defend whatsapp and I’m a whiner
Or they do switch but for like 1 day and then go back to messaging you on WhatsApp. I tried switching to signal at least a couple times, even convinced a couple groups to move, but not a single chat lasted more than a couple weeks. Eventually they all went back to WhatsApp. Every single one. It’s extremely difficult to get people to care.
Keep answering on Signal.
got my mom and sister to switch our group chat to element, but after a month they decided it sucks and now they love whatsapp more than ever…
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. 😅
A fair number of my contacts from countries where this is true also have Signal. If you don’t, I suggest installing it and seeing how many people are there.
If it’s hard to remember who uses what, start conversations from the contacts app instead of one of the messaging apps; in most cases it will tell you.
Already did that months ago when they change the term of services and people are aware of it at the time. Many install Signal, tried them, signal got overloaded, experience degraded, people are back to Whatsapp. Now only dead account are there. Telegram is more popular but that is just jumping from crocodile’s mouth to shark’s.
Government agencies, company customee services all relies on Whatsapp. They have emails but if you want to get response in timely manners, Whatsapp is the way to go (Or twitter, again another bad alternatives).
At least it is still E2E (supposedly), so it is not all bad. Look, I know I sound pessimistic because I am (at least in this specific topic). I hope everyone else can do better than me, cheers!
signal got overloaded, experience degraded
I did not experience this, and I’ve been using Signal daily for years. Prior to 2020 or so, I experienced more unreliability and hesitated to recommend it to the average person.
I’m familiar with the problem though; in most of the EU and probably other places WhatsApp usage is so high that it’s a major inconvenience to avoid it entirely.
Signal has recently been giving me issues like taking forever to send and not properly notifying me about messages.
Android, iOS, or desktop?
I’ve noticed the occasional slow delivery, but I have had reason to believe the recipient has an unstable internet connection when that has happened.
Android and iOS. I’ll have to see if it’s better now though.
Government agencies…relies on Whatsapp
WTF!? What country is that?
India
Wrong country ;)
I said India, because I am an Indian, and our government also does use whatsapp. In some way, our countries have some kinship
edit - I just checked context of replies, and you said wrong continent for brazil, but not for me, is it because I atleast got the continent right? if so, let me guess again, is your country in indian subcontinent, or south east asia in general?
Southeast asia, Indonesia 🇮🇩. Cheers!
(If anyone bothered to check my bio, it would be easy to figure out. lol)
I’d hazard a guess that it’s Brazil.
Wrong continent ;)
deleted by creator
The most important people in my life is my family, especially my parents. Teaching them to try new app to chat to me is easy enough but all of their friends and groups are still on whatsapp.
Making them juggle between two apps (separating how they interact to me and totheir friends) is not easy. Justifying it is even harder, they simply don’t care (to understand) the implication.
Rather than make them confused and worried about not being able to contact me, I just have to accept the status quo. It is the conclusion I arrive at.
Must be nice tho to not use any Meta product. :)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s9Ux8DFgMSM
Might give you some ideas on how to do that
It may not fit your exact needs, but my solution to WhatsApp and fb messenger is to bridge them with a beeper account. Of course you lose the calling ability, but if you’re not using it for calls it is a good enough solution. The other caveat (at least with fb messenger) is you still need to check on your actual account if you get any legit messages from someone not on your list.
This might be good middle ground. The last time I tried beeper, the apps is kinda … suck tho. Well, at least it not full of ads!
Does it still require user to install their desktop app first?
Not that I’m aware of, never even knew it was ever a requirement. I’ve only used the android client and the browser client. For whatever reason they don’t really communicate the browser is out there for use. It’s chat.beeper.com for anyone looking.
Be the change
