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WhatsApp introduces ads in its app

(www.nytimes.com)
713 points greenburger | 2 comments | 16 Jun 25 13:38 UTC | HN request time: 0.481s | source
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yakkomajuri ◴[17 Jun 25 12:56 UTC] No.44298568[source]▶
I guess this was expected, but it makes me feel really powerless in the sense that I can't really move away from WhatsApp.

I have a couple of friends that I message via Signal and even convinced my dad to use it a while back, but here in Brazil WhatsApp is _everything_, and I doubt most people care about this at all. In my case, I'd love to just go over to Signal fully but then I couldn't talk to family, friends, and probably couldn't even book a haircut or pay my taxes (my accountant messages me on WhatsApp).

It's one of those where unless just about everyone were to go over to Signal, most people won't, because keeping track of messages in two apps is quite hard.

That leaves me stuck in this ecosystem, which is quite sad.

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CivBase ◴[17 Jun 25 13:22 UTC] No.44298886[source]▶
This is why we need to unify on protocols, not platforms.
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1. greensh ◴[17 Jun 25 15:20 UTC] No.44300266[source]▶
i mean this protocol does exist with RCS. In fact if you use your SMS client it probably defaults to RCS if you have an Internet connection.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rich_Communication_Services

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2. account42 ◴[18 Jun 25 12:16 UTC] No.44309210[source]▶
Can third-parties setup their own RCS server and message users on existing servers?