I forgot WhatsApp existed.
Guess its shittier now.
Mhm. Yup.
this post was submitted on 16 Jun 2025
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"We will never show you ads in WhatsApp. We promise". --Facebook when they bought WhatsApp and promised the previous owner not to force ads in the app...
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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?
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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
Always a bit shocked to learn people still use WhatsApp.
All of my community groups are on there, including the school parents one. My choice is to not participate in the community or have Whatsapp... Or worse, Facebook.
Some of us don’t have another choice. All (but 1) of my support groups are on WhatsApp and only 1 is on signal.
I had to do it because many use it and I was not. If you want to communicate in certain parts of the world, this is the only way. I wish everyone would go to Signal or Telegram but everyone are not me.
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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.
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.
Isn't Beeper another security risk? They also store your data on their cloud, and it's not encrypted during the bridge process.
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
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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.
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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.
Doesn't help that Telegram media downloads are throttled by some Indian ISPs (looking at you, Jio)
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Facebook shit gonna do facebook shit
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.
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
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*gasp*
Who could have ever seen this move coming? From Facebook, of all companies!
As somebody that doesn’t use what’s app, I’m shocked it didn’t have ads already.
To be fair, I am shocked... Not to see a Pikachu face in the comments.
These ads on messaging services are out of control
so...... back to owl mail then?
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.
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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