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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: 0s | 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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lynx97 ◴[17 Jun 25 08:11 UTC] No.44296779[source]▶
Nah. I only use WhatsApp because friends and acquaintances of mine use it. I have NEVER had the need to send a video, nor a photo to anyone. I would be totally happy using iMessage or even SMS. The ONLY reason I have WhatsApp installed is peer pressure. No need for any of its features. No need to pay for it either.
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mrweasel ◴[17 Jun 25 08:24 UTC] No.44296850[source]▶
Agreed, iMessage and SMS are both free, so why would I pay for WhatsApp again? With RCS starting to work better, I don't really see a need for 3rd. party messaging apps. I do like Signal, but honestly I don't have a need for it.
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1. dzonga ◴[17 Jun 25 08:52 UTC] No.44297012[source]▶
in a lot of countries not called America / Western Europe SMS costs are high. Hence why Whatsapp took off. Even phone calls there's nothing called unlimited mins / unlimted sms everything is metered - off-net / on-net data sold by bundles etc with some carriers you can even buy whatsapp "bundle" where you can access whatsapp but not regular data