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WhatsApp introduces ads in its app

(www.nytimes.com)
713 points greenburger | 1 comments | 16 Jun 25 13:38 UTC | HN request time: 0.001s | source
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d3vmax ◴[17 Jun 25 06:18 UTC] No.44296182[source]▶
Alice Newton-Rex, head of product at WhatsApp: “Alongside of private messaging, people were saying they wanted to hear more about topics, teams and organizations across WhatsApp.”

- I am pretty sure NO ONE asked to hear about more topics and organizations across whatsapp.

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camillomiller ◴[17 Jun 25 06:49 UTC] No.44296318[source]▶
How do one cope on a day to day basis with this level of blatant bullshittery, apart from justifying it with a golden salary? Is this person aware that her role is to enact a farce, or even engineer such farce?
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yarekt ◴[17 Jun 25 07:41 UTC] No.44296614[source]▶
Pay for services that you use instead of forcing companies to rely on ad revenue to run their useful service?

I get it though, no one wants to pay for 100s of little free marginally useful things we use every day, but if you look back at what whatsapp did in the beginning, the £3 a year they were asking is so worth it

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1. TheAceOfHearts ◴[17 Jun 25 07:51 UTC] No.44296671[source]▶
This fails to account for network effects, where most people are already using a specific messaging app and people are unable to migrate elsewhere without sacrificing a ton of contacts. Even if someone is willing to pay, that won't magically transfer over their contacts.

In order to truly solve this problem there has to be some kind of federation and cross-platform standards so that alternatives are able to rise up and compete with big tech.