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WhatsApp introduces ads in its app

nytimes.com

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Re: WhatsApp introduces ads in its app

#851

Post by barbazoo »

mvieira38 wrote: post #794
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

> I just won't stand with people dismissing what matters to me as if I'm a nutjob for not using their fascist app

I bet you're gonna be happier for it. In my experience, people that were friends stay friends, a messaging app won't change that (imagine if it did!).

Re: WhatsApp introduces ads in its app

#852

Post by palata »

yakkomajuri wrote: post #843
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…

This has led to all sorts of opinions on the thread, which are all very interesting! I do agree that just accepting this is not the way to go, and also that slowly making changes is a valid approach. I do want to qualify though, for those who aren't in a WhatsApp-heavy country, how things work. I looked at my latest messages and beyond all my friends and all my family, I have my accountant, my landlord, my barber, HO…

I understand that WhatsApp may be necessary to talk to businesses (because Signal didn't develop that, and I honestly don't think they should).

But what would prevent people from using WhatsApp to talk to businesses and Signal to talk to friends? I have been using multiple channels with friends forever: phone call, mail, email, MSN Messenger, Facebook, IRC, ICQ, WhatsApp, Threema, Signal, Slack, Discord, Matrix, ... What sucks is when I can't reach a friend. But I never saw it as a problem that I had too many choices to talk to them :-).

I don't really understand this "It has to have 100% of the market" stance. I don't want monopolies, I don't really understand why someone would say "this monopoly sucks, but I really want a monopoly so I won't ever change unless it is for a better monopoly".

Re: WhatsApp introduces ads in its app

#853

Post by barbazoo »

whiplash451 wrote: post #582
bootsmann wrote: post #556

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> most people won't switch because of network effects, so meta can keep tightening the screws Network effects are much much smaller for messaging apps vis-a-vis social networks because there is no problem in incrementally moving your DMs from one place to another.

There is a massive barrier to switching. In order to switch, you also need to convince your acquaintances to switch. Good luck with that.

When I did it, because my phone supports multiple apps being installed at the same time, I was able to do it gradually. Most people I know do have a second option to reach them so it wasn't a problem at all.

Re: WhatsApp introduces ads in its app

#854

Post by cs702 »

"Your personal messages, calls and statuses, they will remain end-to-end encrypted," says the Facebook executive in charge of WhatsApp.

A company representative adds that it has "no plans to place ads in chats and personal messages." Plans, of course, could change in the future.

As many here have noted, WhatsApp is the dominant communication platform for many people, and many businesses, particularly outside the US. In the short run, almost none of them will be able to leave the platform. In the longer term, so many of them are upset about the introduction of intrusive ads that it could well become "the beginning of the end" for the platform.

Social media platforms can rise and fall.

Re: WhatsApp introduces ads in its app

#855

Post by palata »

ndr wrote: post #832
Moldoteck wrote: post #822

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you should still slowly push for more ppl in family to use signal. In moldova as example most ppl used viber, but moved gradually to telegram and whatsapp. I've convinced my family/friends to use telegram in the past, but I'll slowly help them use Signal more. Changes rarely happen fast

What makes Signal less at risk than WhatsApp? Are they profitable in other ways? Are they at the same risk of capture?

Signal is open source, for one, so if Signal started pushing for ads, then someone could fork it into a new service.

In my opinion, the goal is not to find "the perfect monopoly". The goal is to be versatile. Right now, Signal is better than WhatsApp (be it just because it does not belong to Meta), and using Signal is absolutely trivial (it can even be used in parallel to WhatsApp).

I use Signal today, if in 2 years Signal goes into surveillance capitalism and ads, well I'll move to the next one. And then the next one. It's not like it requires a PhD to use a clone of a messaging app.

Re: WhatsApp introduces ads in its app

#856

Post by ezst »

udev4096 wrote: post #357

The revenue it will generate will be astonishing. Probably even make 10-20% of facebook's total revenue. It's never too late to shift to Signal

With evidence upon evidence that every centralised service eventually devolves into an enshitified user-hostile nightmare, why would you recommend yet another silo?

Re: WhatsApp introduces ads in its app

#857

Post by mvieira38 »

sebastiennight wrote: post #850
mvieira38 wrote: post #794

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Why would you block people instead of just messaging them about how you're moving to Signal, and then uninstalling WhatsApp? This approach seems unnecessarily confrontational and might end up being quite counterproductive.

Because then they have the option of readding you to group chats and sending you messages

ETA: there is no way to really uninstall Whatsapp around here because so much of society runs on it, the most I can do is move all of my private existence elsewhere and hope that decreased traffic will do something

Re: WhatsApp introduces ads in its app

#858

Post by recursive »

klabb3 wrote: post #782
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…

Yup. Non-traveling US Americans mostly won’t understand how critical WhatsApp is in many parts of the world, for more than a decade. It’s much much stronger than the iMessage norm in the US. Businesses put WhatsApp numbers on their stores, and it’s often the only way to get a hold of a person. I would bet it’s more used than email, especially for young people. If WhatsApp went down for a week, it would seriously impe…

> It’s much much stronger than the iMessage norm in the US.

I've lived in the US all my life, and I didn't even know there was a norm at all, so that's not much of a threshold.

Re: WhatsApp introduces ads in its app

#859

Post by sebastiennight »

muppetman wrote: post #364
filoleg wrote: 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…

> you can upload your own FLAC/MP3s to it, so all that odd werid music you've got that isn't on Spotify you can have anywhere you're logged into your YT Music account.

FYI you can also do this with Spotify[0].

[Ø]: https://support.spotify.com/us/article/local-files/

Re: WhatsApp introduces ads in its app

#860

Post by barbazoo »

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…

> 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.

How much of a problem is personal (!) email being dropped for reasons other than the recipient account not existing realistically?

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