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WhatsApp introduces ads in its app

nytimes.com

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Re: WhatsApp introduces ads in its app

#751

Post by alias_neo »

rickdeckard wrote: post #649
alias_neo wrote: post #624

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's scenario 1. My children are still young, pre-school and reception so no such groups have come up yet. The odd parent that wanted to contact me has installed Signal or sent me SMS (RCS). For anything else, my wife is still on WhatsApp so she relays messages if/when they come up. EDIT: re: Work, my colleagues are all on Signal, we have lots of Signal groups to communicate.

So in a nutshell "I have someone else on WhatsApp who keeps me in the loop" Expect this to scale, in my experience you can move your family over to another service. Groups of families your kid is somehow in contact with, not so much...

it's a challenge for sure, however, I've managed to get my extended family all on Signal which is about as much reach as I could hope/expect to achieve.

That's my household, my parents, my grandparents, my parents-in-law, my sibling(s), cousins, aunts/uncles, sibling(s)-in-law, friends, and my colleagues.

Some of my children's' friends' parents who I'm friendly enough with also began using Signal so we can communicate. Those who are school friends but not outside-of-school-friends, we can communicate with via the school's app.

Almost anyone I could want to communicate with is on Signal, all of the family is directly or indirectly because of me, and friends and colleagues has been a combination.

Anyone I don't know well enough to have a conversation about privacy and Meta being the antithesis of it, is not likely someone I need to communicate with.

All in, my wife, on WhatsApp, isn't really "keep[ing] me in the loop", unless we're messaging a trades-person or similar, but that's infrequent enough to not be an issue.

Re: WhatsApp introduces ads in its app

#752

Post by EbNar »

dotancohen wrote: post #719
EbNar wrote: post #527

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd literally PAY for a mod taking away the "updates" tab. I don't care about stories nor I want channels shoved in my face. I just need to message someone, from time to time.

You'll love Telegram, then. And I fully expected to be contradicted by people telling me that they can't live without WhatApp because their contacts use it. I've never installed WhatsApp and my contacts can either contact me on any non-spyware app they choose, or by SMS. It actually works, telling people that you don't have WhatsApp.

I actually love and use Telegram (even if it's slowly enshittifying as well) and most of my IM is done on Telegram. Like it or not, UX is way ahead of Signal.

But I have a bunch of close (to hearth) and very far (geographically) friends who arent techies and who couldn't care less about ads or privacy related stuff. So, Whatsapp is unfortunately still needed.

Re: WhatsApp introduces ads in its app

#753

Post by [deleted] »

d3vmax wrote: 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.

[deleted]

Re: WhatsApp introduces ads in its app

#754

Post by a4isms »

d3vmax wrote: 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.

They had Sir Humphrey Appleby run a poll: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ahgjEjJkZks

Re: WhatsApp introduces ads in its app

#755

Post by imiric »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #638
_Algernon_ wrote: post #440

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Translation: After going through a far too large number of focus groups that didn't want it we finally found one that phrased a reply in such a way, that after removing context and playing Chinese whispers up the management chain, can be interpreted as them wanting ads.

Nah, it's even simpler than that: after shoving enough surveys in users' faces (as they seem to semi-regularly do across all Meta products; I've had at least 2 in WhatsApp alone over the past few months), they've collected enough misclicks and drunk responses to be able to interpret them as lots of people wanting ads.

You think this decision was based on user feedback at all?

The simplest explanation is that they want more revenue, and WhatsApp users were an obvious source they weren't exploiting enough.

Re: WhatsApp introduces ads in its app

#756

Post by mirekrusin »

d3vmax wrote: 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.

She didn't mean "users", she meant "people at her work".

Re: WhatsApp introduces ads in its app

#758

Post by imiric »

elric wrote: post #605

Can we get a federated messenger already? Sure, we have email, but the MS/Google duopoloy has effectively unfederated that, with their inscrutable block lists and nonexistent appeals processes, allegedly in order to protect you from spam. Sure, XMPP is a thing, which has been mostly dead for well over a decade. Sure, Matrix is a thing, but every time I look at it, all I see is criticism of its specifications and poor…

> Sure, XMPP is a thing, which has been mostly dead for well over a decade.

It's really not.

I've had a good experience moving close contacts to Snikket, which uses XMPP. Text, voice, and video chat work great across platforms.

Previously I tried Jami, which seemed promising, but message delivery was too unreliable due to it being fully P2P.

Re: WhatsApp introduces ads in its app

#759

Post by nalinidash »

Aardwolf wrote: post #604
ed_blackburn wrote: post #601

WhatsApp has been relatively feature stagnant for a long while now, and it's certainly being almost ubiquitous for a long time too, but we're seeing an explosion in features and product tweaks recently? I wonder what the trigger was to suddenly leverage the enormous corpus of users to sweat more cash out of it?

> relatively feature stagnant Is that a bad thing? It's a useful dedicated tool. Paperclips have been feature stagnant since the 19th century, and they're fine

> Is that a bad thing?

I think the op did not mean that. Whatsapp has been adding many new features and tweaks recently(maybe 6months-1yr).Before that they were not that keen on changing.

Re: WhatsApp introduces ads in its app

#760

Post by basisword »

nemomarx wrote: post #191
schroeding wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interestingly, the pendulum at least in my friend group starts to kinda swing in the other direction, i.e. non-technical friends start to indirectly ask (me as the tech guy) about blatant piracy for (visual, Spotify is still very much accepted) media and (TOS-violating[1]) ad blockers for ad-supported streaming. I cannot overstate how unexpected this was and is to me, we talk about people in their mid-twenties with j…

Number of competing video services with distinct libraries has kinda put it back in vogue, I think. No one I've ever talked to is really happy about paying for more than 1-2 streaming services, especially if some of them only have one show they're interested in. If that show is really tempting it becomes tempting to just pirate Severance or what have you instead of signing up to one new service for it on top of Netfl…

In my experience people tend to just move between services. A month on Netflix, then a month with Disney etc. The convenience of having those apps built-in to TV's and easily installed on phones shouldn't be overlooked. If you want easy access to your pirated content from all your devices (including TV's, phones, tablets) you have to have a bit more tech experience and be willing to deal with a bit more inconvenience. For most just rotating services subscribed to is much easier.
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