WhatsApp's major new feature dubbed 'worst idea ever' amid string of controversial updates
That is until now. Meta has announced a major change - bringing ads to WhatsApp. This is despite founders Jan Koum and Brian Acton previously vowing to keep the platform free of ads when they created it in 2009.
Advertisements will be shown only in the app's Updates tab, which is used by as many as 1.5billion people each day. However, they won't appear where personal chats are located, developers said.
"The personal messaging experience on WhatsApp isn't changing, and personal messages, calls and statuses are end-to-end encrypted and cannot be used to show ads," WhatsApp said in a blog post.
WhatsApp said ads will be targeted to users based on their age, the country or city where they're located, the language they're using, the channels they're following in the app, and how they're interacting with the ads they see.
WhatsApp said it won't use personal messages, calls and groups that a user is a member of to target ads to the user. However, users are already not impressed, and have taken to social media to make their feelings known.
One user wrote on X: "WhatsApp getting ads has got to be one of the worst ideas by Meta to come to life".
Another scribed: "WhatsApp is bringing ads. Its time to get back to Nokia 3310. Welcome to the dumb phone era". A third admitted: "Ads on WhatsApp feel so weird".
Others welcomed the change, with one tech head commenting: "Great to see them finally rolling out ads. WhatsApp is one of the greatest products ever. It isn't free to run it.
"Ads continue to be the greatest leveller to ever exist for billions of people. High income people in rich countries will get on high horse about ads but who cares".
Meanwhile, Dr Lukasz Olejnik, a cybersecurity and privacy expert, labelled the expansion potentially "risky".
"It's an end-to-end encrypted messenger, so the critical trust factor relies on the design and communication of such choices," Dr Olejnik said. "Risky. It isn't clear how privacy is considered, but it sounds like profiled or contextual ads."
It comes after two other advertising features were unveiled for WhatsApp in a bid to monetize the app's user base.
Channels will also be able to charge users a monthly fee for subscriptions so they can get exclusive updates. And business owners will be able to pay to promote their channel's visibility to new users.
"We've been talking for years about how to build a business on WhatsApp in a way that doesn't interrupt personal chats, and we believe the Updates tab is the right place to introduce that," Meta said in a release.
Channel subscriptions is where "you'll be able to support your favourite channel, such as your favourite news network, by subscribing to receive exclusive updates for a monthly fee."
Elsewhere, promoted channels "will help you discover new channels that might be interesting to you when you're looking through the directory."
The changes will be rolled out slowly over the next few months.
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