WhatsApp introduces ads in its app

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.

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?

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

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.

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.

SMS is definitely not free. You may have a bundle that includes X (or unlimited) amount of SMS, but there are plenty of subscriptions out there (maybe not in the US) that charge by the SMS, or come with bundles of only having, say, 50 free SMS per month.

In all fairness, no one uses SMS, and no one uses iMessage (outside of the US maybe?).

WhatsApp is omnipresent in Singapore. For example, every business, every support channel, every delivery company uses WhatsApp. WhatsApp QR codes are everywhere (similar to QQ/wechat in CN).

Most iPhone users I know in Singapore never even set up their iMessage (which is also only available on iOS and is a total pain to get to work if you're dabbling in various sim cards, as is very common in SEA). So yes, there's a very good reason WhatsApp is very popular in some parts of the world (similar to BlackBerry Messenger (BBM) until quite recently in Indonesia). It's become too big to fail and took over a very very big portion of (private/business) communication in many parts of the world. And it 100% needs more regulation.

Not like whatsapp works decently if you have 2 sim cards… you can use 1 phone number per phone and the other one is just ignored.