Sci & Tech
Whatsapp To Start Pushing Ads This Year
In 2019, WhatsApp introduced a lot of useful features. The Facebook-owned company added the call waiting function, new privacy features and even a Fingerprint unlock feature that gave Android users a more secure alternative to passwords. In 2020, the world’s most popular messaging service will now start posting adverts to the Status section.
Over the years, WhatsApp has remained an ad-free messenger app, but Facebook continues to explore ways to monetize the messaging platform, with over 1.5 billion users, monetising this loyal user base by showing them commercials is the first move Facebook revealed.
Coming Soon to @WhatsApp…
– WhatsApp Status (Stories) to get Ads in 2020
– WhatsApp for Businesses to get richer messaging format options
– WhatsApp product catalog to be integrated with existing Facebook Business Manager catalog
h/t + ? @Olivier_Ptv
at #FMS19 pic.twitter.com/Z5LsbADNbP— Matt Navarra (@MattNavarra) May 21, 2019
The news have sparked backlash as users threaten to switch to other ad-free messaging apps like Telegram in 2020.
‘Nice. I’m sure half the users will switch over to Telegram,’ one person wrote.
Another Twitter user added: ‘Alright, well, goodbye WhatsApp.
Just switch to @telegram or @signalapp already 🙂
— Adrian Kwiatkowski (@adriank1410) May 23, 2019
Brian Acton and Jan Koum, former Yahoo employees who founded the app in 2009 and sold it to Facebook both left the company after the new management expressed the direction they want to embark on with the app is more business minded which directly contradicts one of their long-standing promises about the company.
In 2012, WhatsApp vowed it would never introduce advertising on the app or gather vast amounts of data on its users.
‘Remember, when advertising is involved you the user are the product,’ it wrote in a blog post. ‘Advertising isn’t just the disruption of aesthetics, the insults to your intelligence and the interruption of your train of thought.’
So what does this mean for user data and privacy?
‘At every company that sells ads, a significant portion of their engineering team spends their day tuning data mining, writing better code to collect all your personal data, upgrading the servers that hold all the data and making sure it’s all being logged and collated and sliced and packaged and shipped out.’ Whatsapp wrote.
Maybe it is time to ditch the app!
Kenya Insights allows guest blogging, if you want to be published on Kenya’s most authoritative and accurate blog, have an expose, news TIPS, story angles, human interest stories, drop us an email on [email protected] or via Telegram
KETRACO CEO Advert Marred By Controversies As Fears Grow That Kipkemoi Kibias Is A Predetermined Candidate
I Will Bribe Every Judge in Town- MP Jack Wamboka
KNH ON THE BRINK: How Corruption, Revenue Plunder and State Neglect Are Destroying Kenya’s Flagship Hospital
Receivers In TransCentury Sh6B KRA Tax Arrears Are Biased And Must Be Removed, COFEK Claims
The Man Behind the Badge: How Prof. Erastus Kanga Turned Kenya’s Premier Wildlife Agency into a Theatre of Corruption, Fear and Impunity
City Lawyer Conrad Maloba Arrested Over Fake Ambulance Fraud
THE FIXER IN THE FILE ROOM: How Parliamentary Health Committee Clerk Adan Gindicha Cleared Mediheal Hospital of Organ Harvesting Claims Despite Mounting Evidence
Nairobi Freezes Binance Accounts in Sweeping Anti-Fraud Crackdown as Global Scandal Record Haunts World’s Largest Crypto Exchange
EXCLUSIVE: Odibets Bought Stolen Data From Millions Of Kenyans
Taiwan President Cancels Trip After African Countries Close Airspace
Forged Legacy: How Kaplan and Stratton’s Peter Gachuhi Is Accused of Faking a Top AG’s Will as State Claims Damning Evidence
Inside Details Of Sh78 Billion Fraud in KPC’s Mombasa-Nairobi Line 5 Pipeline Project That Has Continued To Bleed The Country
The Lawyer at the Centre of Kenya’s State Machine: Eric Gumbo, the AG’s Bypassed Office, and the Half-Billion-Shilling Question
Sold And Abandoned: How Diageo and Asahi Are Locking Kenya’s EABL Minority Shareholders Out Of East Africa’s Biggest Corporate Heist
Poison at the Pump: How Kenya’s Fuel Marking System May Be Exposing Millions to Cancer-Causing Chemicals
How Firm Linked To Mombasa Tycoon Jaffer Was Allowed To Import Fuel At Bloated Price And Set To Make Billions In Profits From Iranian War Crisis In Kenya
THE ZAKHEM-ECOBANK MACHINE: How Kenya’s Courts Were Weaponised to Drain a State Corporation of Over KES 78 Billion
The Teflon Company: How Gulf Energy’s Insiders Built Billions on Kenya’s Fuel, and Walked Away Clean
Kenyan Motorists Stare At Possible Engine Damage And Heavy Losses As Report Confirms Substandard Fuel In Circulation
Mombasa Lawyer Exposed In Sh600 Million Alleged Double-Dealing Diani Property Transaction
-
Business2 weeks agoKenyan Motorists Stare At Possible Engine Damage And Heavy Losses As Report Confirms Substandard Fuel In Circulation
-
Business2 weeks agoTHE FUEL CABAL: How Mohamed Jaffer, a KPC Insider, and a Ministry Official Are Alleged to Have Manufactured Kenya’s Worst Petroleum Crisis in Three Years, While Kenyans Burned
-
Business2 weeks agoGetting Away With It: How Kenya’s Most Politically Connected Fuel Company Gulf Energy Is Pocketing Billions While Rival Firms Face Public Wrath
-
Business6 days agoNairobi Freezes Binance Accounts in Sweeping Anti-Fraud Crackdown as Global Scandal Record Haunts World’s Largest Crypto Exchange
-
Investigations6 days agoEXCLUSIVE: Odibets Bought Stolen Data From Millions Of Kenyans
-
Business2 weeks agoSugar Empire in the Dock: How Kibos’s Mombasa Refinery Landed 1,481 Phantom Tonnes at the Port — and Why Nine Government Agencies Are Now Watching Its Every Move
-
Investigations7 days agoTHE BRAZEN RETURN: Triton Thief Yagnesh Devani, Who Pillaged Kenya of Sh7.6 Billion and Fled, Now Asks the Same Courts He Escaped to Restore His Stolen Wealth
-
Investigations5 days agoTHE FIXER IN THE FILE ROOM: How Parliamentary Health Committee Clerk Adan Gindicha Cleared Mediheal Hospital of Organ Harvesting Claims Despite Mounting Evidence