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.
A fair number of my contacts from countries where this is true also have Signal. If you don’t, I suggest installing it and seeing how many people are there.
If it’s hard to remember who uses what, start conversations from the contacts app instead of one of the messaging apps; in most cases it will tell you.
Already did that months ago when they change the term of services and people are aware of it at the time. Many install Signal, tried them, signal got overloaded, experience degraded, people are back to Whatsapp. Now only dead account are there. Telegram is more popular but that is just jumping from crocodile’s mouth to shark’s.
Government agencies, company customee services all relies on Whatsapp. They have emails but if you want to get response in timely manners, Whatsapp is the way to go (Or twitter, again another bad alternatives).
At least it is still E2E (supposedly), so it is not all bad. Look, I know I sound pessimistic because I am (at least in this specific topic). I hope everyone else can do better than me, cheers!
WTF!? What country is that?
I’d hazard a guess that it’s Brazil.
Wrong continent ;)
India
Wrong country ;)
I said India, because I am an Indian, and our government also does use whatsapp. In some way, our countries have some kinship
edit - I just checked context of replies, and you said wrong continent for brazil, but not for me, is it because I atleast got the continent right? if so, let me guess again, is your country in indian subcontinent, or south east asia in general?
Southeast asia, Indonesia 🇮🇩. Cheers!
(If anyone bothered to check my bio, it would be easy to figure out. lol)
SO we atleast got the “IND” part common.
I have almost never checked any other user’s profile. SOmehow feels creepy.
I did not experience this, and I’ve been using Signal daily for years. Prior to 2020 or so, I experienced more unreliability and hesitated to recommend it to the average person.
I’m familiar with the problem though; in most of the EU and probably other places WhatsApp usage is so high that it’s a major inconvenience to avoid it entirely.
Signal has recently been giving me issues like taking forever to send and not properly notifying me about messages.
Android, iOS, or desktop?
I’ve noticed the occasional slow delivery, but I have had reason to believe the recipient has an unstable internet connection when that has happened.
Android and iOS. I’ll have to see if it’s better now though.