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WhatsApp introduces ads in its app

(www.nytimes.com)
713 points greenburger | 3 comments | 16 Jun 25 13:38 UTC | HN request time: 0.949s | source
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b0a04gl ◴[17 Jun 25 06:18 UTC] No.44296183[source]▶
everyone saw this coming the day facebook bought it, but the real issue isn't ads in status . it's that the platform is now locked into meta's attention monetization engine. the founders explicitly said no ads. now not only ads, but paid channels, algorithmic exposure, and user segmentation creeping in. most people won't switch because of network effects, so meta can keep tightening the screws. this isn't about revenue, it's about control. they’re reshaping a private messaging tool into a broadcast platform with tracking hooks. and most users won’t even notice until it’s too embedded to undo
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fouronnes3 ◴[17 Jun 25 07:06 UTC] No.44296420[source]▶
It is becoming painfully apparent that the cycle of enshittification is truly inevitable, right up there next to the second law of thermodynamics.
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bapak[dead post] ◴[17 Jun 25 07:12 UTC] No.44296456[source]▶
[flagged]
osculum ◴[17 Jun 25 07:23 UTC] No.44296512[source]▶
WhatsApp used to be a paid app, and I paid for it back in the day, as did lots of my friends.
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bapak ◴[17 Jun 25 08:02 UTC] No.44296733[source]▶
You can't have both a paid app and an app with billions of users.

You can use WhatsApp to talk to people across the world, you bet your ass that nobody would be using it in Indonesia and Brazil if it costed one dollar, vastly diminishing its value.

If you want a free app that only part of users worldwide can afford there's already iMessage.

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overfeed ◴[17 Jun 25 08:37 UTC] No.44296924[source]▶
> You can use WhatsApp to talk to people across the world, you bet your ass that nobody would be using it in Indonesia and Brazil if it costed one dollar, vastly diminishing its value.

WhatsApp had payments (or a pilot) pre-acquisiton. At $1/year, it was an amazing value proposition even for those earning $1/day. IIRC, this was when WhatsApp had 3-500M users globally. Interestingly, they allowed people to pay the subscription on behalf of a contact, so the Indonesian expat in Australia could pay for friends and family in Indonesia, and the aervice could have reached a bullion users and 500M/year revenue with about 200 employees

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high_na_euv ◴[17 Jun 25 10:15 UTC] No.44297460[source]▶
1 day salary for chat app?

Are you nuts?

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1. overfeed ◴[17 Jun 25 18:14 UTC] No.44302083[source]▶
Did you know people below the poverty line would by $20 S40 feature phones just to be able to run WhatsApp? The other 2G phones cost less than half that amount, but you had to pay $0.1-$0.2 per SMS sent, in that light, spending $1 per year for WhatsApp's unlimited messages on a PAYG data package was a steal.

So no, I am not nuts, you just didn't think through the value proposition.

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2. high_na_euv ◴[18 Jun 25 10:03 UTC] No.44308368[source]▶
Why not any other free chat app e.g discord?
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3. overfeed ◴[19 Jun 25 05:18 UTC] No.44315671[source]▶
Network effects, similar to present-day Facetime in the US. There's Zoom and Google Meet, but if your family and friends are already FaceTiming, you're pressured into buying a iDevice.