WhatsApp introduces ads in its app

Reaction to ads & “enshittification”

• Many say ads were inevitable once Meta bought WhatsApp; this is seen as the latest stage in a familiar “free → dominant → enshittified” pattern.
• Current plan (ads only in “Updates”/Channels, not chats) is widely viewed as a foot in the door; people expect gradual expansion into more intrusive surfaces.
• Users recall the original “no ads, no games, no gimmicks” promise and a 2012 blog post arguing ads were harmful, and feel this is a betrayal rather than a neutral “pivot.”

Business model, old $1 fee, and Meta’s incentives

• Several recall paying ~$1/year (or a one‑off) pre‑acquisition and say they preferred that to ads.
• An ex‑employee notes the fee was lightly enforced, often auto‑extended, and revenue was modest relative to user count.
• Many argue that as part of Meta, WhatsApp will always be optimized for ad extraction and data synergy with the rest of Meta, not for user comfort or sustainability at small fees.

Network effects and regional dependence

• In much of Europe, Latin America, India, and parts of Africa, WhatsApp is described as “infrastructure”: schools, sports clubs, government agencies, small businesses, banks, and even police all rely on it.
• Some claim Meta could make the UX much worse and still retain users because the social and institutional lock‑in is enormous.
• Others counter that previous “unshakeable” networks (ICQ/AIM/MSN/BBM/Skype) eventually collapsed once alternatives and multi‑messenger tools lowered switching friction.

Alternatives and their trade‑offs

• Signal: praised for privacy and being non‑profit, but criticized for:
  • Painful backups and migration (esp. iOS), storage bloat cleanup, and weak multi‑device UX.
  • Nagging for contacts/notifications/donations; hostility to third‑party clients; crypto features some dislike.
• Telegram: widely lauded as far more feature‑rich (channels, topics, bots, multi‑device, performance), but:
  • Not fully E2EE by default, has ads in channels, and faces political/FSB trust concerns.
• iMessage: strong in the US, mostly irrelevant elsewhere and locked to Apple ecosystem.
• Matrix/XMPP/RCS/Email‑as‑chat: discussed as more open/federated models, but seen as either immature, complex, or lacking mass‑market UX and distribution.

Privacy, metadata, and tracking

• Multiple comments stress that end‑to‑end encryption doesn’t prevent extensive metadata profiling (who talks to whom, when, and via which devices).
• Ads are seen not just as visual clutter but as additional tracking vectors and identity‑resolution tools inside an already pervasive Meta data apparatus.

Paid vs ad‑funded: willingness and friction

• Large subthread argues most users say they’d pay for ad‑free services but rarely do; many block ads instead.
• Micro‑payments and global billing are described as technically and regulatory hard; this pushes platforms toward ads, where revenue scales with users’ spending power rather than direct fees.
• Some propose regulation (treating messaging as a utility, enforcing interoperability) or publicly funded/open systems as the only realistic way out of the ad‑surveillance spiral.