WhatsApp has recently received new features. But no one wants all that extra nonsense anyway.
WhatsApp gets new features, but you don’t want them
WhatsApp is extremely popular. The app now has more than 13 million users in the Netherlands, making it one of the largest apps in our little country. And that is not surprising: sending a message or photo to your friends or family is still easiest with WhatsApp.
Well, it still is now. Because WhatsApp is adding more and more (often unnecessary) functions to the app. This makes the once simple chat app increasingly a kind of ‘social media’ monstrosity. And you’re not looking forward to that at all, are you?
Sponsored emoji in WhatsApp
WhatsApp recently introduced even more community features and also concluded a kind of sponsorship deal with Mercedes. In this sponsorship deal, the standard emoji of a racing car was replaced by one that looks more like Mercedes’ Formula 1 car (you only see it when you send the emoji).
The new emoji is a lot less sharp than the original cart. But even more annoying: secretly this is a form of surreptitious advertising in the app and you don’t want that at all, do you?
Of course, replacing emojis isn’t that big of a deal. Many users have nothing to do with Formula 1 and the car is not used that much. But if this is the first step, the question remains whether WhatsApp will come up with more. For example, would you be okay with typing ‘Mercedes’ or ‘Ford’ in your messages and having WhatsApp immediately add a suitable advertisement for the recipient?
Is WhatsApp going the way of FaceBook?
After all, WhatsApp is owned by Meta. And if you’ve been keeping an eye on how FaceBook has ‘improved’ over the years, we can expect quite a few new features from WhatsApp. And that’s not good news, because Facebook has gone from a great app for reading messages from your friends to a chaotic whole with far too many advertisements.
Pay for new WhatsApp features
And then you will see: if you don’t want all that extra crap from WhatsApp shoved in your face, you can pay for it. Meta will undoubtedly introduce more new versions of WhatsApp in the future with even more features, and ultimately with a subscription.
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