WhatsApp is the most widely used messaging platform in the world, with more than 2 billion users globally. The company has been owned by Meta (the parent company of Facebook) since the beginning of 2014, but for one of its former executives, in his opinion, the platform is far from being what they wanted it to be.
Niraj Arora was the chief business officer (CBO) for WhatsApp, and has confessed on Twitter that he regrets the company being sold to Meta, formerly Facebook. According to Arora, he is not the only one who regrets this sale.
This is because, according to Arora, Facebook promised them that it would respect and uphold the original vision of the creators of WhatsApp, including its three biggest limitations: not tracking users and their data, and not including advertisements on the platform. “Originally, WhatsApp made money by charging users $1 to download the app. […] We didn’t want cross-platform ads and tracking, and Facebook said they agreed and believed in our mission,” he wrote on Twitter.
Of course, WhatsApp continues to be an application with a great emphasis on the privacy and security of its users, with port-to-port encryption. But on several occasions Meta has considered including ads in the app, and other decisions and changes that, according to Arorahave made WhatsApp today “a shadow of the product we wanted to build for the world.”
Regarding the application, those responsible for WhatsApp have launched a series of new functions and improvements in recent years, such as the possibility of send files up to 2GB in the app, WhatsApp Business and more, in addition to working on the new communities. Will there ever be ads or some other way to monetize the app by Meta? In time we will know. [via[víaThe Next Web]