Facebook is putting ADVERTS in WhatsApp next year – against app founders’ wishes
It's a rogue move from billionaire Mark Zuckerberg's cash-hungry firm
FACEBOOK is going to start filling WhatsApp with ads next year, against its co-founders' wishes.
The company – currently grappling with the Facebook hack that hit 50million users – confirmed that ads would begin appearing in the app's Status feature in 2019.
He also said: "I sold my users' privacy to a larger benefit.
"I made a choice and a compromise. And I live with that every day."
His latest Twitter post, sent way back on March 21, reads: "It is time. #deletefacebook."
Just last month, Facebook's chief security officer Alex Stamos defended the potential use of ads on WhatsApp.
He wrote: "It is foolish to expect that FB shareholders are going to subsidise a free text/voice/video global communications network forever.
"Eventually, WhatsApp is going to need to generate revenue.
"This could come from directly charging for the service, it could come from advertising..."
A Facebook spokesperson said: "Thanks to the team's relentless focus on building valuable features, WhatsApp is now an important part of over a billion people's lives, and we're excited about what the future holds."
Back in 2012, WhatsApp founder Jan revealed his distaste for advertising on tech services.
In a blog post, he explained: "These days companies know literally everything about you, your friends, your interests, and they use it all to sell ads."
"At every company that sells ads, a significant portion of their engineering team spends they day tuning data mining, writing better code to collect your personal data.
"Remember, when advertising is involved, you the user are the product."
Do you think WhatsApp should have ads? Let us know in the comments!
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