this post was submitted on 08 Nov 2023

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115

WhatsApp seems set on introducing ads, but they won't appear in your inbox (www.androidpolice.com)

submitted 10 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 93 points 10 months ago (3 children)

This seems to follow a progression

No ads
Non-intrusive ads
Intrusive ads, but you can pay to make them go away
Intrusive ads, but you can pay to make them less intrusive
Intrusive ads and you have to pay just to see the content
Content becomes ads
Ads pretend to be content (see Dr. Pepper's "Fansville")
Award categories for ads are featured in major award ceremonies
Award ceremonies just for ads go mainstream

Actually not sure what's real vs hypothetical at this point.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 10 months ago (1 children)

This comment is brought to you by Nord VPN

[–] [email protected] 12 points 10 months ago

This is how you end up with that scene in Demolition Man where they’re singing commercials.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago (1 children)

(see Dr. Pepper's "Fansville")

Nice try, Dr. Pepper. If that is even your real name!

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago

Oh gosh. Did my critique of ads just become an ad?

[–] [email protected] 34 points 10 months ago (5 children)

Use Signal instead and donate what you can per month! I'd much rather support them than Meta

[–] [email protected] 17 points 10 months ago (4 children)

There's one slight issue with Signal and it's that none of my contacts is using it and I'm not going to be the guy telling them to install it just so that they can talk to me.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 10 months ago (2 children)

In the EU by next year app communication protocols need to be compatible by law, it is mainly said that it would mean that whatsapp could communicate with telegram but I suppose it also should work with signal.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

Should work pretty well even, since they use the same encryption protocol.

Won't happen though. Signal is very much against interoperability, and they're not big enough to be considered a gatekeeper that will be forced by law.

Fun fact I learned not long ago:
Even iMessage technically wouldn't count as a gatekeeper, since it is in fact below the usercount threshold the EU defined.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (2 children)

Signal is not required to be interoperable and the CEO also stated that they won't.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago

That's... Well, I guess I have zero incentive to try Signal then.

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[–] [email protected] 13 points 10 months ago

The only thing stopping me would be that literally no one on my contact list wants to do that... including work. I'm sure that's the same for most people.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 10 months ago (4 children)

Yeah great, then I can talk to literally nobody because I've never met a single person in my life who has signal, and now it doesn't even do texts anymore! Hooray!

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago (1 children)

SMS was considered a safety issue amd discontinued.

And if nobody in your friends group start talking about, nobody will get to know it.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago (2 children)

I know it was, that's when I stopped using signal. And I'm not going to waste my time trying to convince a bunch of people to sign up for yet another app to chat in, they're not interested and don't care because WhatsApp exists.

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

I'm using it. Thinking of bringing peoples from lemmy to signal.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago

Just today I found out that usernames are available for public testing.

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[–] [email protected] 19 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Time to find your matrix homeserver!

[–] [email protected] 7 points 10 months ago (9 children)

I do love the idea of matrix, but it's definitely not a direct replacement for whatsapp, sadly.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 10 months ago (12 children)

How do you even search for it. What's it called ? Matrix brings up the film franchise

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Why not? What is missing?.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago (1 children)

It's more like Slack than Whatsapp IMO. It's not so streamlined and using it on multiple devices is definitely mainly for tinkers. Or at least it was couple years ago. That cross signing through devices was everything but intuitive.

And THE feature everyone I know misses the most is giphy/tenor support, which is kind of dumb, but also really understandable. This and similar nice to have features are still lacking.

Is Matrix better for the users privacy? Definitely yes! But is it better user experience? Well, kind of almost, but not yet.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

Cross signing is easy now, ether scan a QR code, or compare emojis. Multi device on Matrix is even better than WhatsApp, signal etc. because you are not forced having at least one android or iOS phone running the main instance but all instances are the same level, same as in telegram. Having threats is superior to what whatsapp offers (no threats) Well, I’m not a gif sender, so I never recognized that gif is not supported

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago

Good to hear cross signing is now easier. I remember it was real PITA.

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[–] [email protected] 16 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I hope that they put ads, lots and lots of ads, so I can finally switch to something else.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 10 months ago

Waiting for WhatsApp enshittification do that I can move to more open platform

[–] [email protected] 15 points 10 months ago (1 children)

WhatsApp doesn't have an inbox. What are they talking about!?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 10 months ago (1 children)

It has a feed now full of podcasters and tiktokers, the web version offers me to buy ads for the feed right in the front of the messages, every time I open it, disgusting

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I don't see that. There's no feed anywhere as far as I can tell. I just see my chats. I didn't create any communities or join any channels. Is that where you see a feed?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago (3 children)

It's in the second tab, where stories are. Stories used to stay open, so you could easily see the ones you already watched. Now they disappear into a watched drawer that is by default closed. They need the space to show you channels, like the one of the owner Sugar mountain or random tiktokers.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

Whatsapp slowly transforms into instagram

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Are you sure you're talking about WhatsApp? I don't see stories anywhere. Never saw anything like that. Maybe you're talking about Snapchat or Instagram or something else?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (3 children)

At least for me on android there are 4 Tabs. Community's, chats, ~~current~~ updates, calls.

Edit: I checked the translation.

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Either they haven't rolled this out in your country yet, or you haven't updated the app in a while.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago (1 children)

The app is up to date. Maybe you're right and they only deployed this in some countries. How long ago did this show up for you?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

I don't use it myself, I've see it on a friends' phone, so good question. Was a while ago though, a few months, maybe?