Your WhatsApp Chats Will Soon Have Irritating Advertisement, Facebook Is Already Working On It

An interview with WhatsApp co-founder Brian Acton earlier this week gave the public an inside look into the dynamics between Facebook¡¯s monetization goals and WhatsApp¡¯s privacy focus.

Now, we might unfortunately see that play out right in front of us.

In the Forbes interview, Acton spilled the beans on how Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and COO Sheryl Sandberg planned to monetize their subsidiary messaging app. Specifically, it involved two ways of making money off WhatsApp: business APIs and targeted ads.

With business APIs, the idea was to provide tools to other companies to directly talk to their consumers. Basically, that meant offering business a way on Facebook to directly link users to a WhatsApp chat with them. In case you haven't realised, this is already a thing. Try booking a movie ticket on BookMyShow and provide your mobile number. You¡¯ll get an e-ticket delivered straight to your WhatsApp inbox. That¡¯s also part of how this works. The second half, which Facebook may not have implemented yet, is giving these partnered companies analytics tools to study the data they¡¯re generating while interacting with you.

ALSO READ: WhatsApp Co-Founder Says He Quit Facebook, Alleging Zuckerberg Wanted To Weaken User Privacy

The second monetization method however is most certainly the more intrusive of the two. At least with the above system, you get to choose whether you want a company contacting you on WhatsApp. However, Zuckerberg and Sandberg were also pushing Acton for targeted ads in the WhatsApp Status section.

You know Status? The Instagram Stories ripoff (which originally ripped off Snapchat) that now sits in the tab between your chats and calls. Yeah. Similar to how Instagram currently has ad content amidst users¡¯ Stories in your top bar, so will you see targeted ads within WhatsApp. It gets worse though. According to WABetaInfo, WhatsApp is already working to implement this in the iOS version, which means Android can¡¯t be too far behind.

So, why is this a bad thing? Well, think back to the Cambridge Analytica scandal. The problem with the data being gathered there by Facebook was that it was too much. Everything you interacted with was analysed and used to serve ads customised for the group of consumers you fit in to. So, what data does Facebook gather from its subsidiary WhatsApp? Your messages of course.

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A major part of the reason both WhatsApp founders Brian Acton and Jan Koum left was these targeted ads. Because to gather the data necessary to implement the feature, WhatsApp would have to weaken the end-to-end encryption that prevents it from reading your messages. And with no more opposition left, Zuckerberg can do just that, and he is.

Facebook/WhatsApp will charge companies to advertise in your Status tab, and will give them data gleaned from your private messages to tailor it for you. And though this tool will supposedly allow you to opt-out, it still demonstrates that Facebook has learned no lessons, since it should instead be asking if you want to opt in to begin with.

But no, it looks like we're going to do this whole song and dance again. Wonderful.