After years of providing free services without any bells attached, WhatsApp is now going to start showing ads on the popular chat app. To be clear, users will only see ads on the Status screen — the app’s take on Instagram’s Stories.
So just like you see an ad after watching a few stories on Instagram, you will see ads on WhatsApp after you’ve scrolled through a few Status updates.
The company said that its ad mechanism uses signals like users’ country or city, language, and the channels they’re following, as well as data from ads that users interact with.
Meta said it is not using personally identifiable data, such as users’ phone numbers, messages, calls, and groups to serve targeted ads. If a user has added their WhatsApp account to Meta’s Account Center, the company will use their Account preferences to show ads.
Surprisingly, if the goods cost you nothing, you are the goods.
Why, exactly, do people still use WhatsApp?
Network effect, same as for most social things. Perhaps the EU will force interoperability, but they seem more focused on “save the children” style control and monitoring.
I hope they’ll never interoperate with Threema. Threema would have to be less secure.
Go explain to my grandma why the image I sent her isn’t in her image gallery.
Just another reason to use something better.
“Unfortunately, life is often not a concert of wishes, and you have to make compromises”
Stop using my own bad English against me! However, touché.
I have tried multiple times now.
People just don’t seem to switch.
Even my work uses it, despite me trying to explain to them how insecure it is (although it is all insecure as long as we open it on Android phones anyway) and urged them to use signal or some self hosted service.
My own approach is that there is no way to reach me via WhatsApp. Whenever I need to reach someone who “has WhatsApp”, I’ll just use their “WhatsApp number” anyway. Only very few people seem to know that their “WhatsApp number” is equal to their SMS/iMessage number… ;-)
Well, I don’t have that option, as I need to be available in the company’s WhatsApp group to get work (⇒ money), which then means that I have to keep my Android phone working, despite it getting worse every update.