WhatsApp introduces ads in its app

Today is the day the notion of the 'internet is free, good and a convenience' is over for the global public. WhatsApp was the first ever primary convenience brought by the advent of the internet - it fulfilled a legitimate need all over the world by providing essentially free, limitless, boundless communication if you had few megabytes of internet in your mobile quota. It is to this day the #1 most used app for a good percentage of the population, only surpassed by social media. (Mostly because of the immortal network effects lingering from a decade ago.)

I was honestly expecting it, after recently seeing on a friend's phone that it already essentially turned to social media on Android. They can't yet push it on the higher income iPhone users (lest they switch to other messenger apps), but change is coming rather inevitably since it's nothing but untapped advertising dollars potential in the eyes of the behemoth that is Meta.

I don't think there's a sustainable solution here except to self-host a Matrix server for family and friends if you have the time, money and technical expertise.

>> WhatsApp was the first ever primary convenience brought by the advent of the internet

Unique but I believe fundamentally incorrect take on the Internet...

> WhatsApp was the first ever primary convenience brought by the advent of the internet - it fulfilled a legitimate need all over the world by providing essentially free, limitless, boundless communication if you had few megabytes of internet in your mobile quota.

Yes, truly WhatsApp was the first of its kind. It's all the communication of sending a letter through the mail, except delivered electronically - one wonders why they didn't call it "electronic mail", or perhaps "e-mail" for short.

The group chats it offers are another huge innovation - for the first time, people were able to chat with each other by relaying their messages across the internet. Truly a marvel.

Personally, I divide the internet into two eras - "before Whatsapp", when there was simply no primary convenience of any sort to be found upon the internet and all users were deeply encumbered by bounds; and "after Whatsapp", when I and others can communicate, conveniently, via the internet, because of WhatsApp, boundlessly.

Ok, understand the downvote. Probably should have caveated it with 'in my social circle'.

In my country, there was no universal messenger app circa 2010s except WhatsApp.

Not everybody had a Facebook account to use Facebook Messenger, adults did but children and elderly didn't. Not everybody had an Apple device to use iMessage.

Nobody knew each other's email outside of work and business - the digital revolution came much later than the US to many parts of the world, and email was a tool for personal communication only very briefly, and only if you already knew that person's email, which most likely you didn't.

The reason WhatsApp took off is because it didn't require anything other than a person's phone number - which was usually the only type of digital pointer you had about a person.

SMS was not an option - it was expensive and limited (to this day still is, unlike the US!), only used as a last resort.

I'm sure many countries around the world would share the same sentiment, though maybe not most. Esp. Europe and South America, probably.