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WhatsApp introduces ads in its app

(www.nytimes.com)
713 points greenburger | 21 comments | 16 Jun 25 13:38 UTC | HN request time: 0.49s | source | bottom
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mrtksn ◴[16 Jun 25 14:07 UTC] No.44289633[source]▶
Does anybody have stats on how many people are O.K. paying for their core services, i.e. how many people pay for paid personal e-mail services?

I just don't want to believe that our services have to be paid for through proxy by giving huge cut to 3rd parties. The quality goes down both as UX and as core content, our attention span is destroyed, our privacy is violated and our political power is being stolen as content gets curated by those who extract money by giving us the "free" services.

It's simply very inefficient. IMHO we should go back to pay for what you use, this can't go on forever. There must be way to turn everything into a paid service where you get what you paid for and have your lives enhanced instead of monetized by proxy.

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filoleg ◴[16 Jun 25 14:18 UTC] No.44289745[source]▶
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 people in the “a fee instead of ads” crowd consumes YT for hours a day, but so far I’ve only met one person (not counting myself) who actually pays for YT Premium.

And yes, a major chunk of the people I talked about this with were FAANG engineers, so it isn’t like they cannot afford it. But it felt like they were more interested in complaining about the ad-funded-services landscape and muse on their stances around it, as opposed to actually putting their money where their mouth is.

All I can say is, I am not paying for YT Premium out of some ideological standpoint or love for Google (not even close). It has genuinely been just worth it for me many times over in the exact practical ways I was expecting it to.

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1. cameldrv ◴[16 Jun 25 16:22 UTC] No.44291006[source]▶
I know lots of people that pay for YT premium. Lots of people pay for Spotify too. I even pay for Kagi.
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2. yapyap ◴[16 Jun 25 20:42 UTC] No.44293215[source]▶
Spotify I get because the Spotify free experience is HORRID.

Youtube is also moving into that direction.

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3. jobigoud ◴[16 Jun 25 20:58 UTC] No.44293330[source]▶
I think a good amount of people pay for Youtube just to be able to listen to audio with the screen off, which is a completely artificial restriction they added to the free version.

Such a strange business model, making the free version below acceptable.

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4. timewizard ◴[16 Jun 25 21:05 UTC] No.44293388{3}[source]▶
> Such a strange business model, making the free version below acceptable.

That's because the core product is not anywhere near worth what they charge for it. The youtube interface is a nightmare for users and creators alike. I have very little controls over what I do and don't see, how I can filter or search for content, or how I can search for new content. History of both videos and comments are effectively non existent and impossible to reasonably search or archive.

It's not a service so much as it is a copyright clearinghouse.

If they had an actual experience with worthwhile features to offer then they wouldn't have to artificially degrade the free experience to convince you.

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5. Hoasi ◴[16 Jun 25 21:06 UTC] No.44293390[source]▶
It's unclear to me how the paid Spotify experience compares with free, but you still get ads with the paid one. Also, you need to curate heavily because Spotify's algorithm will push certain types of content. If you listen to a podcast once, it is hard to get rid of it, as it will keep popping into your feed, or whatever they call their interface.
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6. openplatypus ◴[16 Jun 25 21:33 UTC] No.44293596{3}[source]▶
Omg I literally puke with Shopify ads in podcasts.

Whats the point of paid, premium service like Spotify if I keep being served those stupid, dishonest and bordeline illegally deceiving Shopify ads every 15 minutes.

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7. TingPing ◴[16 Jun 25 22:21 UTC] No.44293913{4}[source]▶
Because the ad has literally nothing to do with Spotify? Podcasters can say or sell whatever.
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8. qwerpy ◴[16 Jun 25 22:24 UTC] No.44293937{3}[source]▶
I rage quit my Spotify subscription after my first "sponsored" in the mobile app. Some people may tolerate ads in their paid subscriptions but many of us won't.
9. tensor ◴[16 Jun 25 22:40 UTC] No.44294045[source]▶
I'm honestly pretty damn pissed that even though I pay for the top tier of Spotify I still now get ads in podcasts on the platform. Yes, I can skip them for now, but when you're driving that's not always easy, and I have no doubt the "you can't skip them" is coming.

Absolute bullshit.

10. Marsymars ◴[16 Jun 25 23:16 UTC] No.44294242[source]▶
Getting my work to pay for Kagi was an easy conversation compared to how I’d imagine me asking them to pay for YouTube or Spotify would go.
11. wat10000 ◴[16 Jun 25 23:43 UTC] No.44294363{4}[source]▶
I feel the exact opposite. YouTube is the only streaming service I pay for, and it's well worth it. I have no trouble finding things I want to watch and there's a huge amount of it. Other services don't have nearly as much good stuff, and it's too hard to find among the crap.
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12. ThatPlayer ◴[17 Jun 25 01:16 UTC] No.44294855{3}[source]▶
It makes sense because YouTube's income is from being paid to deliver video ads. They can't fulfill that if the screen is off.

I believe they are rolling out audio ads.

13. timewizard ◴[17 Jun 25 03:57 UTC] No.44295632{5}[source]▶
Managing subscriptions and blocking (or unblocking) channels are subpar. Watch history, search history and comment history are all afterthoughts and it shows. Managing playlists and watching through playlists are unusual and glitchy. Search filters are weak. The audio only experience is just a gaping hole in the video player.

Youtube music is fine-ish. Search is pretty weak and prefers recommendations over results. The controls for playlist Play, Play with Shuffle, and Play with Autoadd are fairly confusing especially between the app and the desktop version. Creating and managing multiple playlists is a frustrating experience and not thought out at all. It constantly feeling the need to change the album art on my playlists.

You pay to not be annoyed. You're not paying for a "premium" product in any way.

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14. whoisyc ◴[17 Jun 25 04:23 UTC] No.44295753[source]▶
Kagi has a little over 50k paying users.

Hacker news has 5 million monthly unique users [1].

Given how hacker news constantly complain about google’s decline and the constant virtue signaling on the need to pay for software, you would expect a sizable chunk of the users (the vocal ones, at least) here pay for Kagi. And yet we are here. GP is absolutely right about it being all-talk.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33454140

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15. openplatypus ◴[17 Jun 25 05:06 UTC] No.44295916{5}[source]▶
Spotify has enough power to say that podcasters should have ad free feed for premium subscribers or get deplatfromed. Obviously I would expect Spotify to pay podcasters.

The idea of paid, premium service with ads is ridiculous.

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16. sundarurfriend ◴[17 Jun 25 06:30 UTC] No.44296224[source]▶
In general, 95% of users in any site are passive lurkers. So that leaves Hacker News with 250k active monthly users that comment and engage (which is likely still a massive overestimate). Of those, in the wide variety of comments and discussions, complaints about search and google in particular are again about 5% at most (being generous with numbers once more). That leaves us with 12500 people on HN who should potentially pay for Kagi. Seems like four times that many are doing it by your numbers.
17. piva00 ◴[17 Jun 25 07:47 UTC] No.44296646{6}[source]▶
> Obviously I would expect Spotify to pay podcasters.

Are you willing to pay more for your subscription so that Spotify can also pay podcasters? Because that's what you are asking, it won't ever be able to dilute even more the royalties pot, you'd need to pay more for your subscription so that podcasters can also be paid.

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18. openplatypus ◴[17 Jun 25 08:07 UTC] No.44296761{7}[source]▶
If I can avoid retarded Shopify ads, I would seriously consider. It would be nice change from bunch of individual Patreon subscriptions.
19. wat10000 ◴[17 Jun 25 13:08 UTC] No.44298728{6}[source]▶
And? Yeah, I’m paying to get rid of ads. Of course I am. I like watching the stuff, I hate ads, and it’s well worth the price to get rid of them.
20. int_19h ◴[17 Jun 25 17:02 UTC] No.44301267[source]▶
I pay for Kagi and Fastmail. I used to have YT Premium, but given that Google and Meta are both abusive monopolies that shouldn't exist in the first place, I don't see any ethical problems with circumventing their paywalls where possible, and if it it incurs measurable economic damage to them, so much the better.
21. filoleg ◴[24 Jun 25 01:22 UTC] No.44361978{3}[source]▶
Just to clarify for those who might've been as confused as I was upon reading that, this seems to be a thing with podcasts on Spotify. I only ever used it for music, so I genuinely had no idea (as I am yet to encounter a single ad while listening to music in around a decade of subbed usage)