WhatsApp Introduces Ads in Its App (nytimes.com)
- Reference: 0178065549
- News link: https://tech.slashdot.org/story/25/06/16/146228/whatsapp-introduces-ads-in-its-app
- Source link: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/16/technology/whatsapp-ads.html
> When Facebook [1]bought WhatsApp for $19 billion in 2014 , the messaging app had a clear focus. No ads, no games and no gimmicks. For years, that is what WhatsApp's two billion users -- many of them in Brazil, India and other countries around the world -- got. They chatted with friends and family unencumbered by advertising and other features found on social media. Now [2]that is set to change .
>
> On Monday, WhatsApp said it would start showing ads inside its app for the first time. The promotions will appear only in an area of the app called Updates, which is used by around 1.5 billion people a day. WhatsApp will collect some data on users to target the ads, such as location and the device's default language, but it will not touch the contents of messages or whom users speak with. The company added that it had no plans to place ads in chats and personal messages.
>
> [...] In-app ads are a significant change from WhatsApp's original philosophy. Jan Koum and Brian Acton, who founded WhatsApp in 2009, were committed to building a simple and quick way for friends and family to communicate with end-to-end encryption, a method of keeping texts, photos, videos and phone calls inaccessible by third parties. Both left the company seven years ago. Since then, Mark Zuckerberg, the chief executive of Facebook, now Meta, has focused on WhatsApp's growth and user privacy while also melding the app into the company's other products, including Instagram and Messenger.
[1] https://news.slashdot.org/story/14/02/19/2227203/facebook-to-buy-whatsapp
[2] https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/16/technology/whatsapp-ads.html
The Downward Spiral (Score:5, Insightful)
Enshittification has no bottom. It keeps delving new depths of shit its users will put up with until they just stop using it.
ACs are smart. (Score:3)
Yeah, it's just a made up word. Like the rest of the words.
Re: (Score:2)
Big tech has finally moved on from embrace, extend, extinguish to acquire, monetize, abandon.
No doubt the executive officers are all back slapping each other for inventing the strategy Computer Associates has been using for decades.
Re: The Downward Spiral (Score:2)
Technically this is ADding to the experience, not enshitifying. The ads will help you find new things to buy that are relevant to you. Enshitifying is when an update makes the experience worse, line of WhatsApp had text bubble that were harder to read messages from non-premium users.
The one free service that hasn't (Score:2)
The only free service that hasn't been enshitified is Craigslist.
Any day now...
Dropped like a hot rock (Score:4, Informative)
As soon as Facebook took it over I dropped it and never looked back, I expected this story to come sooner though.
Re: (Score:3)
Sure, but you also socially isolated yourself because most of the population do have WhatsApp.
Re: (Score:1)
You that as if is a problem.
Re: (Score:2)
I don't know about you, but I only talk on Whatsapp to people I know. How is that socially isolated?
Re: (Score:1)
Naaa, I still had SMS, Email, Signal, Phone calls and home visits. People who needed me had no problem contacting me.
This makes sense (Score:1)
It costs money to provide this service. People need to get paid someway. I am actually surprised it took them this long.
For now (Score:5, Insightful)
> The promotions will appear only in an area of the app called Updates, which is used by around 1.5 billion people a day. WhatsApp will collect some data on users to target the ads, such as location and the device's default language, but it will not touch the contents of messages or whom users speak with.
One has to be very naive to trust this won't happen soon.
Enshittify! (Score:2)
Let the utter enshitiffication commence! It's getting deep, folks.
Non-paywalled link (Score:2)
[1]https://archive.is/L3W74 [archive.is]
[1] https://archive.is/L3W74
Auto-update apps (Score:2)
Set to false.
No ads (Score:1)
No ads in Apple's Messages app.
Apple has not announced any plans to give it ads either. For now.
Re: (Score:2)
No ads in many other alternatives as well, plus they are cross-platform so you are not limited to the ~15% or so of the market buying iPhones.
Desperate times (Score:2)
I wonder if they are doing this because they are losing revenue from no longer [1]spying on [arstechnica.com] Android users by using a sandbox hack.
[1] https://arstechnica.com/security/2025/06/meta-and-yandex-are-de-anonymizing-android-users-web-browsing-identifiers/
Why do people bother with whatsapp (Score:2)
You have a smartphone with talk & text messaging already, why let your data be handled by this creepy bastard zuckerberg?
Sigh (Score:2)
Irony was:
I paid for Whatsapp, a long time ago. It wasn't much but I paid to have it.
Then they changed to a free model and at no point were able to give me a refund. A bit like Slashdot... which still has a Disable Advertising button on my account that I paid to get, and that now doesn't disable advertising.
Now they're gonna load it with ads.
Part of the reason that I talk to people on Signal first and only fall back to Whatsapp if people have nothing else.
It's a chat app. One of thousands. I have no att
The gift of monetization (Score:1)
The other name of the enshittification.
From your best friend, Zuck the lizard .
Save the lizards! (Score:3)
Lizards do not deserve your scorn. They are useful and eat insects. Zuck? He tries to open our mouths and shit in them.