[espadrine]

I think the story blew out of proportion.

As far as I can tell, WhatsApp never said they would show ads in their app, and they never said they would sell ads.

On the contrary, they said that they would make it even harder for them to have any data to work with, as messages will be end-to-end encrypted, and so, undecipherable for them.

What they said would happen was telephone and metadata (ie, telephone contacts) cross-references with Facebook's data to improve Facebook's suggestions, which is a roundabout but logical non-automatic contact synchronization scheme.

Reading between the lines, what their blog post was meant to prepare the public for was the arrival of a bot API (as yet secret, and a pure speculation on my part). They want businesses both global and local to communicate with you:

> we want to explore ways for you to communicate with businesses that matter to you too, while still giving you an experience without third-party banner ads and spam

WhatsApp's PR department did a poor job, in my opinion, by talking about Facebook being able to offer better ads, since naturally everyone assumes it means transmitting your telephone number to advertisers, which they awkwardly mention they would not do:

> We won’t post or share your WhatsApp number with others, including on Facebook, and we still won't sell, share, or give your phone number to advertisers.

[Adverblessly]

> As far as I can tell, WhatsApp never said they would show ads in their app, and they never said they would sell ads.

From their update ( https://www.whatsapp.com/legal/#key-updates )

"New ways to use WhatsApp. We will explore ways for you and businesses to communicate with each other using WhatsApp, such as through order, transaction, and appointment information, delivery and shipping notifications, product and service updates,

>>and marketing.<<

For example, you may receive flight status information for upcoming travel, a receipt for something you purchased, or a notification when a delivery will be made.

>>Messages you may receive containing marketing could include an offer for something that might interest you.<<

We do not want you to have a spammy experience; as with all of your messages, you can manage these communications, and we will honor the choices you make."

I interpret the highlighted parts to mean they intend to show ads in the application in some format. It could be ad overlays, it could be adbots sending messages and it could be ad notifications.

Edits: figuring out how to highlight text :X

[themartorana]

There is a non-evil way to interpret this. A lot of small international business is conducted over WhatsApp - for instance, many key sellers in the vintage watch market offer WhatsApp as a communications method. But it requires more work than necessary to initiate the conversation. Allowing these sellers to accept incoming messages without having to use it like an individual would make it significantly easier to use (and might help displace email in many business transactions).

A business account for one-to-one communications with a business would be somewhat revolutionary. It's more private (and conversational) than Twitter, less bulky and in-the-way than email, etc.

[espadrine]

I'm not sure in which dictionary unsolicited electronic messages sent for commercial purposes are not spam…

That formulation is pretty damning. There's the chance that marketing material will only be delivered to users that used a commercial bot, but that would still be unsolicited in my opinion.