*gasp*
Who could have ever seen this move coming? From Facebook, of all companies!
this post was submitted on 16 Jun 2025
774 points (98.6% liked)
Technology
71537 readers
4339 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related news or articles.
- Be excellent to each other!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
- Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.
Approved Bots
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
To be fair, I am shocked... Not to see a Pikachu face in the comments.
As somebody that doesn’t use what’s app, I’m shocked it didn’t have ads already.
I literally just got my senior citizen dad off Skype and over to WhatsApp like 2 years ago... Ain't no way I can get him over to signal
If thats not a reason to switch to Signal what is.
But people just suck it up anyway, they did when reddit gone to shit, they did when Amazon startes showing ads even tho when you were paying, they did when Netflix disallowed sharing and you had to pay extra.
People just suck up whatever is thrown at them and are fucking stupid.
We cant have nice things, because companies will greed and if users dont react and cancel the shit out of them they and others will continue to press more moneyjuice out of people.
How is signal insulated from the same fate? Isn’t it another free app that will eventually hit the enshitification wall?
I mean yes thats possible. we dont have be bound to a company or app forever.
Generally Signal is by a non profit, meaning they dont have to make more money (as meta has to because they have obligation to share holders) meaning enshittification, if any, is gonna be slower and less probable
Sheep don't know they are being slaughtered. We're the digital 1% and we can't make the sheep wake up.
I don’t use either but my issue with Signal is none of my friends want another application to install and they are happy with WhatApp.
Conversely, I’m happy not having a group chat app and will either text you or iMessage you. Don’t you dare ring me as I ain’t answering.
I just deleted WhatsApp one day and made the switch. Messaged all important contacts, that I will be available via Signal. Most of the few I care about went ahead and installed Signal. One is still dragging their feet and we communicate via SMS now xD
load more comments
(2 replies)
I'm forced to use WhatsApp chat so I keep it installed begrudgingly. But who the fuck is using WhatsApp stories?
I use Beeper which shows me a unified view of whatsapp and Signal and others. whatsapp itself has zero permissions on my phone. I hate that I need to have it at all but Europe is deep into that. Sigh.
There was a big uproar amongst normies when the WhatsApp TOS changed......but people forget quickly and prefer convenience. That was our one chance to convert everyone over.
load more comments
(1 replies)
At least normal European people are locked into a platform that doesn't care what device you're using, unlike iMessage - so it's not all bad
load more comments
(6 replies)
Whatsapp is popular a lot in many parts of the world. In India, WhatsApp is almost the defacto standard messaging app with Telegram probably flying in a far second. I doubt I know anyone who even uses stuff like Signal or Threema or any of the alternatives.
load more comments
(1 replies)
load more comments
(3 replies)
load more comments
(2 replies)
Good news good Signal.
Facebook shit gonna do facebook shit
I wished Whatsapp wasn't a thing so much. There are so many so much better apps. Signal is so much better and it would work fine for the vast majority of people.
load more comments
(5 replies)
Meta has been running ads claiming no one can read your WhatsApp messages, including them. For some reason, I'm not 100% sure about this. It's hard to imagine they can resist grabbing all that data for their AI somehow.
Of course they fucking grab it. They have 45 backdoors with golden handles otherwise they're show the fucking source
I wonder whether Meta will try to lock down cross platform access now.
Currently Beeper still works everywhere and EU'S DMA (Digital Markets Act) still has WhatsApp as gate keeper which is required to interpolate with other chat apps. However "WhatsApp stories" are entirely different from chat so that means they can block all of that and this is probably how Meta will approach future WhatsApp updates - more shit to lock people in WhatsApp that isnt directly chat related because thats the only way to show people ads.
Hopefully this helps people move off of WhatsApp to Signal or something else.
Yeah like it moved them off of Xitter, Reddit, Facebook and Instagram.
I mean we are here, aren't we? The majority of people will do nothing of course, but some will make the switch or even just install another app just to give it a try. And soon Whatsapp's enshittification will continue and some more people will switch and so on.
load more comments
(4 replies)
Looks like I need an alternative. An alternative for which there is still no prospect of enshitification. Which services are neither American, Chinese nor Russian? Anything from Europe?
load more comments
(4 replies)
I see a lot of people saying it's time to switch to Signal, and I mean I agree in principle, it's my main messaging app, but I don't see how it can scale. It runs off of donations and the only reason it's still functioning is because the users that are there are above averagely passionate about it and willing to donate. If it became the defacto messaging app I fear that there is no way they would be capable of financing that level of traffic.
load more comments
(7 replies)