[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.