- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmy.zip
- technology@lemmit.online
- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmy.zip
- technology@lemmit.online
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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Repeat after me… “Enshitification”!
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?
Gradually is the answer. You can dual use both Signal and Whatsapp. Same how you can use Lemmy and Facebook and are not limited to one sociale media app.
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…
My Signal screen fits 8 chats, and looks simliar to any other messenger I’ve used. It’s a messenger app and the UI shows messages. I wouldn’t want it to show anything else.
Signal? Dude, I don’t want nonstop getting updates about the war plans of the Trump administration ;-)
delta.chat
The enshittify proof alternative!
…Electron inside.
Would signal also work?
I believe it is centralized but it is certainly an alternative to WhatsApp. My understanding is that it’s encrypted and privacy centric.
Yes, encrypted chats packetised over SMTP layer.
Smooth as silk for a year and a half.
Send pics, voicemails, files, videos, and video-chat(via Jitsi integration)
Arcane-chat app does location sharing too.
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provide free app at a loss
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grow massive user base and market share
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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.
It’s not very easy to solve the issue of infinite growth in a world with finite resources. The fundamental issue is that it’s just not physically possible, but they keep trying. Either we continue this cycle and eventually destroy the planet irreversibly, or we acknowledge that maybe money isn’t everything, and that maybe [the vast majority of] people aren’t inherently egoitistical monsters, and we move on to different systems.
The enshittification process in a nutshell.
@Auth
So that’s why we donate to @signalapp
@MazonnaCara89WhatsApp was not free and already had a massive user base before Facebook bought it.
Hope this will turn people to alternatives.
Wasn’t it like a quid to sign up?
Yeah it was something like that, very low price compared to what SMS were charged for.
Eastern Europe loves the app Viber that Rakuten bought, which has had ads for years.
People LOVE a walled garden of their friends are there, too.
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This is such great news! More ammo to use when trying to convince friends and family to move away from WhatsApp
I see a lot of people saying it’s time to switch to Signal, and I mean I agree in principle, it’s my main messaging app, but I don’t see how it can scale. It runs off of donations and the only reason it’s still functioning is because the users that are there are above averagely passionate about it and willing to donate. If it became the defacto messaging app I fear that there is no way they would be capable of financing that level of traffic.
I hope Signal does this too!
- no one ever.
Do you have WhatsApp?
No Telegram?
I dont have that one, none of the clients seem to work on my phone… Wechat?
Cant verify, SMS doesnt get through. LINE?
lol I dont have a japanese number. Kakaotalk?
No… …discord?
Sure!
Shit he’s 30 seconds from finding out Im a furry.
none of the clients seem to work on my phone
Hm, first time I hear that one to be honest.
I forgot WhatsApp existed.
Guess its shittier now.
Mhm. Yup.
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.
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.
Looks like I need an alternative. An alternative for which there is still no prospect of enshitification. Which services are neither American, Chinese nor Russian? Anything from Europe?
Signal is American but run by a non profit so it can’t be sold and is open source under GPL3 without a CLA from what I can see so it’s unlikely they would ever go closed source.
You may also get invited to a US military intelligence chat too. Bonus!
Will check it out, thank you!
Signal also has been a leader when it comes to encryption and metadata protection. Their cryptographic protocols are public domain and are the gold standard for private messaging from pretty much every perspective other than decentralisation. (it’s still centralised)
“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…
I wonder if anyone believed them at the time
If they did not, they at least ignored that instinct and kept using WhatsApp…
How do we get people to stop ignoring their better instincts in things like this?
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 wonder whether Meta will try to lock down cross platform access now.
Currently Beeper still works everywhere and EU’S DMA (Digital Markets Act) still has WhatsApp as gate keeper which is required to interpolate with other chat apps. However “WhatsApp stories” are entirely different from chat so that means they can block all of that and this is probably how Meta will approach future WhatsApp updates - more shit to lock people in WhatsApp that isnt directly chat related because thats the only way to show people ads.
Always a bit shocked to learn people still use WhatsApp.
All our clients use it. It’s bloody annoying. I have dozens who use WhatsApp, and like three who use Signal. Ironically, the three that use Signal also use WhatsApp and guess which one they use to contact us?
It’s a problem when it’s got mass market traction to get people to switch. I’m still trying to get off Messenger but some people insist on it… Going to have to get firm about that.
It’s like the de facto messaging app for a good portion of the world
I have a buddy in Japan who was a foreign exchange student here in the U.S. years ago. When he went back home I had to use Line to talk to him, I tried for years to get him to use Signal and after years of nagging he agreed to start using Discord… well at least it’s not Whatsapp…
All of my community groups are on there, including the school parents one. My choice is to not participate in the community or have Whatsapp… Or worse, Facebook.
It’s really big in Europe for some reason.
Which is funny, because it’s very popular in Asian countries and Mexico too.
Because SMS is trash, most of Europe doesn’t use iPhones and WhatsApp was one of the first messaging apps, so yeah.
One of the first movers, so many chat groups are still on there and it’s very difficult to make people move. Many people simply don’t care about privacy, ads, user experience and what not, they just want the convenience of staying in the chat groups they are already in. A shame really.
Some of us don’t have another choice. All (but 1) of my support groups are on WhatsApp and only 1 is on signal.
I had to do it because many use it and I was not. If you want to communicate in certain parts of the world, this is the only way. I wish everyone would go to Signal or Telegram but everyone are not me.
