WhatsApp is practically unavoidable in my country. Months after ads were introduced in WhatsApp statuses, I didn’t receive them until a few days ago (I wasn’t interested in the status feature anyway, so with the Contacts Scope feature, I only gave permission to the couple of contacts I chat with and avoid most statuses and thus the ads).
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…including 14 new app icons, multiple accent colors, and themes.
Other reported perks include access to exclusive stickers, ringtones, and more immersive message reactions.
What these companies are monetizing nowadays never surprises me. From the early days of Xbox live avatar customization to Discord charging you for the ability to change a color, they seem to get away with it all.
Paying for basic features, I guess apple had some early influence there too.
If you want to pay for those things, by all means go ahead, but soon they’ll be charging us just for having the app open lmao.
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Indeed. Did you hear about Twitter getting rid of the dim theme? Allegedly, they can’t afford it right now, which make so sense. Many users such as myself were annoyed.
I hope WhatsApp’s monetization attempts starts waking up people to the privacy risks it presents.
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I would be all-in for monetization of stuff that are not necessary for the app to work IF it equaled to no tracking everywhere.
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Oh you are being “unreasonable“ here, of course they will track you everywhere, sell your data, show you ads, and charge you to make yourself their product.
Yep unfortunately.
Just another way for artificial growth so the shareholders are happy.
I am guilty for this part, I am a Meta stockholder (via UBS Core MSCI World ETF).
Anyway, I pay (donate) to use messengers (Signal).
well,it’s time to use signal instead of whatsapp : p
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Unpopular opinion : I like when companies develop a freemium model instead of selling people data. You can’t want something free* that doesn’t spy on you.
*Even OSS software is essentially nominally free, relying on user donations.
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Freemium is totally fine, Signal is also freemium.
The thing with Whatsapp (META), is that they will track you everywhere, sell your data, show you ads, and charge you to make yourself their product.
Just like you paid for MS windows when you buy a computer with windows preloaded, Microsoft still track you, show you ads, and sell your data.
Also just like Youtube, also just like Amazon, the list goes on and on…..
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I don’t disagree, but you can’t be annoyed when they spy on their users,but at the same time be annoyed when they make legit money. This will make them less incentivized to spy on users.