It’s the world’s most popular messaging platform, with 2.8billion monthly users globally.
But WhatsApp’s vast userbase is threatening to delete the app following its latest controversial change.
The free messaging app, owned by Mark Zuckerberg‘s firm Meta, is introducing adverts for the first time.
WhatsApp said adverts will be rolled out to all its users ‘slowly over the next several months’, regardless of what country they’re in.
However, the plan has gone down badly with people on social media, as one described it as Meta’s ‘dumbest idea ever’.
Another person said it’s ‘time to switch to Telegram’, one of WhatsApp’s primary rivals.
Someone else posted: ‘Bye bye Meta, may you loose every Whatsapp user you had in the past and get a very hard negative hit in your revenues.’
While another said: ‘WhatsApp is bringing ads. Its time to get back to Nokia 3310.’
The free messaging app said adverts will be rolled out to its global users in the next few months. The new ads will appear in the ‘Status’ section of the app under the ‘Updates’ tab – so away from the main chat area
For now, ads will appear in WhatsApp Status – the feature that lets users share photos and videos that disappear after 24 hours
One X user said: ‘Bringing ads on Whatsapp is the dumbest idea you have ever thought of as a tech company’
Meta revealed the controversial update in a blog post on its website, but said that adverts will not ‘interrupt your chats’, nor will it be binning end-to-end encryption.
For now, the adverts will only appear in WhatsApp Status – the feature released in 2017 that lets users share photos and videos that disappear after 24 hours.
But James Bore, tech expert at consultancy Bores Group, thinks it’s a matter of time before adverts come to the rest of WhatsApp.
‘WhatsApp is owned by the same company as Facebook,’ he told MailOnline.
‘Their history shows that they will cram in ever more prevalent and ever more intrusive ads into every aspect of every platform they can, regardless of how it negatively impacts user experience.’
WhatsApp Status is found in ‘Updates’ tab at the bottom of the app, next to the three other tabs – ‘Chats’, ‘Communities’ and ‘Calls’.
Meta says: ‘The growing popularity of the Updates tab makes this the right place for these experiences, in a way that doesn’t interrupt your chats.
‘If you only use WhatsApp to chat with friends and loved ones, there will be no change to your experience at all.’
Furious WhatsApp users are threatening to delete the app as Meta reveals plans to introduce ‘evil’ ads
Another person said it’s ‘time to switch to Telegram’, one of WhatsApp’s primary chat rivals
WhatsApp is the world’s most popular messaging app, with 2.8 billion monthly users globally, but it has so far resisted adverts to tap into new revenue steams
One X user said: ‘WhatsApp is bringing ads. Its time to get back to Nokia 3310’ in reference to the classic phone from 25 years ago, before the app era
WhatsApp admitted it will take user information such as their country, city and language, plus how they interact with the ads, to show certain ads that they ‘might care about’.
But it stressed that it will still not able to read your messages – so it will not be sending you targeted ads based on what you send to friends and family.
It will also ‘never sell or share your phone number to advertisers’.
On WhatsApp, personal messages, calls and statuses remain end-to-end encrypted, meaning no one can see or hear them (not even Meta).
The company added: ‘Nothing changes about people’s personal chats, which remain end-to-end encrypted and are not used for ads.’
‘Your personal messages, calls and groups you are in will not be used to determine the ads you may see.’
Meta (then known as Facebook Inc) purchased WhatsApp in 2014 , but it has so far resisted adverts to tap into new revenue steams.
As recently as 2023, WhatsApp denied reports it was even considering introducing adverts.
He jokingly added ‘Also it looks like you misspelled Brian’s name,’ referring to Brian Acton, co-founder of Whatsapp’
‘False. We aren’t doing this,’ WhatsApp boss Will Cathcart posted not even two years ago on X in response to a report from the Financial Times.
WhatsApp recently drew the ire of users by rolling out a new AI button, which many people have described as ‘annoying’ and ‘rubbish’.
The AI button appears as a purple-blue ring icon on the right-hand side of the chats page, just above the green button to start new chats.
When users tap it, they can start personal chats with the chatbot or ask questions about anything from news to weather and sports.
But users have claimed that the ‘annoying’ button gets in the way – often accidentally being pressed when they’re instead trying to tap on a chat.
The company has already caused controversy over using data from its users to train Meta AI – some without their knowledge.
