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WhatsApp introduces ads in its app

nytimes.com

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Re: WhatsApp introduces ads in its app

#791

Post by jonpurdy »

nielsole wrote: post #768
Crosseye_Jack wrote: post #716

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They kinda did. Before facebook brought them, the app cost $1/£1 per year (iirc your first year was free). Thing is back then MMS and/or texts across borders was expensive, so if you were regularly sending picture messages to people the $1/£1 sub was a no brainer. Lets wave a magic wand and presume 50% of the user base thought it was also worth $1 a year and it grew just as well as it did (It was growing very well in…

And my understanding back then was that enforcement of payment was via the honour system. It was even possible to pay for your contacts, likely to make it as low friction as possible especially as paying for something on the internet was still a relatively new thing.

For $1 per contact, I'd be happy to pay for anyone I know, or ever meet in the future to keep a messaging platform ad-free/user-centric.

Re: WhatsApp introduces ads in its app

#792

Post by NoGravitas »

hocuspocus wrote: post #652
evrimoztamur wrote: post #637

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We do not need federated messaging at the consumer app level, we need a replacement that's available at the cellular network level (just like SMS). RCS ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rich_Communication_Services ) is trying to do this, but it might be too little too late.

In practice RCS is entirely run by Google outside China, the path to federation was killed around 2019 when Google decided every MNO should eventually move to Jibe if they wanted access to a global interconnected RCS, same on the client side. I don't think it's too late as iOS finally supports RCS. But so far Google hasn't shown willingness to let unsanctioned clients connect to Jibe.

And even within the Google ecosystem, RCS access can be iffy. It was working fine on my Pixel for months, then switched its status to "Setting up..." and hasn't worked for months since then, despite me trying All The Things suggested on various fora short of factory resetting my phone.

Re: WhatsApp introduces ads in its app

#793

Post by anton-c »

qwerpy wrote: post #220
nytesky wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

YT Premium is pretty expensive. I think it costs as much for one user for a multi-device plan on Netflix? They don’t create nor curate much content. I am curious about the poster who has learned so much from YouTube — I have tried learning many topics from science to programming to home repairs, and finding a quality program can be very challenging, and there are a lot of programs which are actually elaborate sales p…

There's great content on YouTube but there's a lot of garbage. AI-generated slop, clickbait thumbnails/titles that actually don't payout, sales pitches, and plain old low-quality garbage. The lack of a thumbs down really makes it hard to avoid these. I realize that thumbs down is also used to punish "wrong" political viewpoints and companies, so it's a hard problem. But as a viewer who never uploads content, it only…

Well when normal news like NBC just got immediate front page stuff with super low engagement people downvoted the crap outta it because it was showing such preferential treatment. Feels like they deserved it, they bought their way in.

Little did we know how far YouTube would go for them.

Re: WhatsApp introduces ads in its app

#794

Post by mvieira38 »

yakkomajuri wrote: post #769

I guess this was expected, but it makes me feel really powerless in the sense that I can't really move away from WhatsApp. I have a couple of friends that I message via Signal and even convinced my dad to use it a while back, but here in Brazil WhatsApp is _everything_, and I doubt most people care about this at all. In my case, I'd love to just go over to Signal fully but then I couldn't talk to family, friends, and…

Last night I just removed myself from every friend groupchat and blocked everyone there, while leaving a status message about how they can reach me on Signal or call me. If they are actually your friends they'll come around, and families survived before Whatsapp existed. I'm also brazilian, I just won't stand with people dismissing what matters to me as if I'm a nutjob for not using their fascist app

Re: WhatsApp introduces ads in its app

#796

Post by NoGravitas »

upofadown wrote: post #674
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…

I think the most valid criticism of Matrix for interoperability is that it was promoted as an interoperability standard but it was made incompatible with everything existing at the time. XMPP was based on XML for example, but Matrix is based on json. So by introducing yet another standard, Matrix creates yet another standards fork and dilutes everything that came before. We have to get to the point where progress in…

I think the real problem with Matrix and interoperability is that there is functionally only one server implementation, controlled by one organization. There are more client implementations, but generally if they want to support encryption, they have to depend on one library implementation.

Re: WhatsApp introduces ads in its app

#797

Post by calt »

parthdesai wrote: post #773
Crosseye_Jack wrote: post #716

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They kinda did. Before facebook brought them, the app cost $1/£1 per year (iirc your first year was free). Thing is back then MMS and/or texts across borders was expensive, so if you were regularly sending picture messages to people the $1/£1 sub was a no brainer. Lets wave a magic wand and presume 50% of the user base thought it was also worth $1 a year and it grew just as well as it did (It was growing very well in…

There's no way it would've gotten the adoption it did in 3rd world countries if you had to pay $1 per year.

Thing is, it already was getting that adoption, and network effect can largely take care of the rest. Also, some it’s tied to a real phone number, geographic price differentiation is trivial to implement.

Re: WhatsApp introduces ads in its app

#798

Post by NoGravitas »

mr_mitm wrote: post #728
reedlaw wrote: post #713

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like https://delta.chat/

Forward secrecy and deniability would be nice to have though.

My main gripe with Delta Chat is that it works poorly for groups: it sends an email for each member of the group. This risks your email account being flagged for spam, or at least rate limited.

It's great for direct chats and very small groups.

Re: WhatsApp introduces ads in its app

#800

Post by 55555 »

parthdesai wrote: post #773
Crosseye_Jack wrote: post #716

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They kinda did. Before facebook brought them, the app cost $1/£1 per year (iirc your first year was free). Thing is back then MMS and/or texts across borders was expensive, so if you were regularly sending picture messages to people the $1/£1 sub was a no brainer. Lets wave a magic wand and presume 50% of the user base thought it was also worth $1 a year and it grew just as well as it did (It was growing very well in…

There's no way it would've gotten the adoption it did in 3rd world countries if you had to pay $1 per year.

I think it grew there when you had to pay. It was still cheaper than the alternative.
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