The end of an ad-free WhatsApp.

WhatsApp is rolling out ads. In an update on Monday, Meta announced that it will now show ads from businesses through its Stories-like status feature.

Meta says it will tailor the ads to your interests by using “limited” information, including your country or city, language, the channels you follow, and how you interact with ads on the platform. You can also change your ad preferences from Meta’s Accounts Center.

This isn’t the only change Meta is making to WhatsApp. The company will also start showing promoted channels when you click on the Explore button to find new ones to follow. It’s also rolling out the ability to subscribe to channels to “receive exclusive updates” as well.

  • nothrone@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    163·
    1 day ago

    WhatsApp getting ads is great news! WhatsApp, and any other meta/facebook/for-profit-social-network will never be a good product. Therefore, the second best alternative is for it to be as bad as possible, so people finally change to worthy alternatives.

    What is the alternative here? Don’t know, perhaps Signal, though the devs are not welcoming at all. The UI is absolute shit. Looks like UI for old people, huge margins and empty space. My screen fits like 3 chats. A compact theme would take a few hours to create and vastly improve the product, but ya…

    • Jack_Burton@lemmy.caEnglish
      131·
      1 day ago

      My Signal screen fits 8 chats, and looks simliar to any other messenger I’ve used. It’s a messenger app and the UI shows messages. I wouldn’t want it to show anything else.

      • nothrone@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
        1·
        7 hours ago

        It seems to be device specific. On my device, WhatsApp fits 2 more chats. I hate meta/insta/fb/etc, but WhatsApp just looks considerably better than Signal. Signal, as I said earlier, just has huge margins and padding. It looks ugly.

        Like you, I also want my messenger app to show conversations. Sadly, Signal shows more empty space than conversations. It really needs a compact UI. I invited several friends to Signal and they all left because it looks bad. I know it sounds like nitpicking, but UI/UX IS extremely important. Making the claim “meh, it looks fine” and ignoring people’s perspective is not the way to run an app that is dependent on the number of users, like signal is. If I don’t have anyone with whom to chat, the app is useless. It needs userbase.

        • Jack_Burton@lemmy.caEnglish
          1·
          6 hours ago

          Strange, maybe it has to do with scale in phone settings? I tend to have mine set to the smallest. I’ve also learned to not care as much about UI since dumping big tech and moving to FLOSS/FOSS (Libre Office is amazing but definitley less polished looking than something like Microsoft Office) so maybe I’m just getting blind to it haha

    • Ceruleum@lemmy.wtfEnglish
      10·
      1 day ago

      Signal? Dude, I don’t want nonstop getting updates about the war plans of the Trump administration ;-)