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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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Al-Khwarizmi ◴[17 Jun 25 08:05 UTC] No.44296749[source]▶
I guess it feels worth it if you actually like it.

I've always hated WhatsApp but use it due to network effect: in my country you pretty much can't have a normal social life without it (and even things like customer service often use it as well).

When they started threatening with charging money, it felt like a punch to the gut. So I'm using this product I hate because I'm pretty much forced, as I'd rather be using Telegram or various others that I strongly prefer, and now that they've captured entire societies and communities with their free app, they're going to make ME pay?

My feeling is that capitalism is just not a good model for messaging apps with network effects. Regulation is sorely needed, at the very least for interoperability (like the phone network), and maybe more.

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sebastiennight ◴[17 Jun 25 10:02 UTC] No.44297402[source]▶
I think your chronology is wrong.

It is extremely unlikely that you used WhatsApp "before they started threatening with charging money" but would have preferred Telegram at the time.

Why?

1. Because WhatsApp was a paid app from the beginning ($0.99 after the first year of using it)

2. Because WhatsApp was bought by FB in early 2014, who made it free.

3. Because Telegram was founded in late 2013

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1. ta8903 ◴[17 Jun 25 13:03 UTC] No.44298675[source]▶
It's definitely not unlikely because I very clearly remember WhatsApp being a paid app from the beginning, but I also remember no one actually having to pay for it. Couldn't tell you how exactly it worked but I've used it since I was a kid to talk to my friends and family, while we didn't even know how to do online payments.