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WhatsApp introduces ads in its app

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501–510 of 1001 posts

Re: WhatsApp introduces ads in its app

#501

I remember switching to WhatsApp many years ago, mainly because it had no ads and encrypted chats, while other apps were constantly crammed with ads and features I didn't need. Now I feel like I'm slowly going back to that old path. Sometimes it really feels like no app can really stay clean for long.

FOSS and open protocols are the answer of course. Signal is unimpeachable enough for me, but for the true believers there is Matrix with a bunch of third party clients.

Once you internalize the how and why (such as "forks are good" and "the more publicly auditable code the better"), there's really no going back and for the rest of your life you prefer FOSS even when you can't use it.

That's why I think that for some future generation there will be a FOSS equivalent of the waves of democracy that spread across the world starting in the 18th century. Once a country becomes democratic and people understand the benefits, they never really want to roll that change back. Our current generation is probably not going to double down on the "right to fork," but once an individual gets it they get it for good, so I feel it's just a matter time before a sea change occurs, even if we're all dead when it happens.

Re: WhatsApp introduces ads in its app

#503

At least in The Netherlands, WhatsApp could show a 60 second unskippable modal ad video on every launch, and still get away with it due to network effects. If you’re not on WhatsApp, no updates or news from your kids school, your sports team, your family, your car dealership etc. for you.

Apps are popular until they aren’t. Yahoo Messenger, MSN Messenger and Skype were all popular once. Ads are one thing, but now WhatsApp is letting businesses message you in Europe, only with opt out. This is pretty frustrating. I suspect some users will seek alternatives.

>. Yahoo Messenger, MSN Messenger and Skype were all popular once.

Credit where credit is due, Microsoft needed more than a decade to kill skype. It was so resilient and entrenched.

Re: WhatsApp introduces ads in its app

#504
post #468

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, they exist, but Signal is against them. Look into what they did against LibreSignal. Now part of the problem with LibreSignal was the trademark violation of using the name Signal. But Moxie is clearly against any third party using their servers, as we can see in this comment: https://github.com/LibreSignal/LibreSignal/issues/37#issueco... IMO that's an unforgivable stance towards third party clients. I have rea…

As mentioned in the thread and expanded on the blog [0] moxie is also against the whole idea of federation and multiple clients. I think my perception has changed in the last ≈ 10 years, to be more leaning in moxie's direction. It's hard enough to design something secure and usable, having to try and support all different implementations under the sun makes most federated approaches never reach any mass adoption. Eve…

I don't think it's a problem that they're against federation. I think federation is nice, but it has some clear trade-offs, and I don't feel like it's something Signal needs.

I don't even think they have to officially support third party clients or provide a stable API. I'd have no problem if they just occasionally made API changes which broke unofficial clients until their developers updated them.

But I really don't like that they're so openly hostile to the idea of other people "using their servers for free", with the threat of technical blocks and legal action which that implies. Especially not when their official client is as bad as it is. (Again, it's fucking blurry!)

Re: WhatsApp introduces ads in its app

#505
post #426

Alice Newton-Rex, head of product at WhatsApp: “Alongside of private messaging, people were saying they wanted to hear more about topics, teams and organizations across WhatsApp.” - I am pretty sure NO ONE asked to hear about more topics and organizations across whatsapp.

How do one cope on a day to day basis with this level of blatant bullshittery, apart from justifying it with a golden salary? Is this person aware that her role is to enact a farce, or even engineer such farce?

Pay for services that you use instead of forcing companies to rely on ad revenue to run their useful service?

I get it though, no one wants to pay for 100s of little free marginally useful things we use every day, but if you look back at what whatsapp did in the beginning, the £3 a year they were asking is so worth it

Re: WhatsApp introduces ads in its app

#506
Honestly, this might have gone over better with messaging such as. "We added Ads to WhatsApp, here's what we're doing keep the user first"

There is a cult understanding that Instagram ads are highly relevant and quite useful at times and WhatsApp ads have the same possibility. But the messaging is quite poor.

Re: WhatsApp introduces ads in its app

#507
post #471

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is becoming painfully apparent that the cycle of enshittification is truly inevitable, right up there next to the second law of thermodynamics.

[flagged]

I paid for WhatsApp, USD 1 for year for a few years. They dropped the fee back in 2016.

If WhatsApp wasn't part of Meta they would have found a way, even more it was a very small team before the acquisition already supporting hundreds of MAU, promises were made there wouldn't ever be ads but of course that corporate-consolidation doesn't care about any of that.

Re: WhatsApp introduces ads in its app

#508
post #505

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do one cope on a day to day basis with this level of blatant bullshittery, apart from justifying it with a golden salary? Is this person aware that her role is to enact a farce, or even engineer such farce?

Pay for services that you use instead of forcing companies to rely on ad revenue to run their useful service? I get it though, no one wants to pay for 100s of little free marginally useful things we use every day, but if you look back at what whatsapp did in the beginning, the £3 a year they were asking is so worth it

at the beginning, they "charged" $1 (or £3 as you said), but this "fee" was often just waived. You never really had to pay it to use whatsapp. The money was there as a form of advertising, to differentiate whatsapp from the others - because by making it seem more premium via attaching a price, it makes the people using it feel more superior and thus the platform more easily propagates; and it's also why they "secretly" let you use it for free if you refused to pay.

Re: WhatsApp introduces ads in its app

#509
post #505

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do one cope on a day to day basis with this level of blatant bullshittery, apart from justifying it with a golden salary? Is this person aware that her role is to enact a farce, or even engineer such farce?

Pay for services that you use instead of forcing companies to rely on ad revenue to run their useful service? I get it though, no one wants to pay for 100s of little free marginally useful things we use every day, but if you look back at what whatsapp did in the beginning, the £3 a year they were asking is so worth it

I remember when it was 1€/year. Absolutely totally worth it! And I'd gladly pay again if they would only let me!

Re: WhatsApp introduces ads in its app

#510
post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t have the actual stats, but, sadly, it seems like a gigantic chunk of the “i would rather pay a small fee to use a service rather than paying for it with exposure to ads” crowd is mostly all-talk. And I am saying this as someone who genuinely believes in the “small fee instead of paying with ad exposure” approach. The one specific example of this that made me think so is the Youtube Premium situation. So many…

I pay for YT Premium. Not because I care for stupid videos, but because you get YT Music for free with it... Spotify is the hottest of garbage in my opinion, constantly trying to push podcasts at me. Why more people don't cancel Spotify and just pay for YT Premium - you get ad-free videos and all the music of Spotify. Plus with YT Music you can upload your own FLAC/MP3s to it, so all that odd werid music you've got t…

I pay for both because YT Music sucks, a lot.
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