After the tech giant announced it would begin to include ads in WhatsApp’s Updates tab, which is used by roughly 1.5 million people per day, Signal president Meredith Whittaker took to X to lure users to her messaging tool: “Use Signal,” she wrote. “We promise, no AI clutter, no surveillance ads—whatever the rest of the industry does.”

WhatsApp announced yesterday that it will now show ads from businesses through its Stories-like feature, months after adding an unnecessary floating AI button to the main chat interface. In response,

Meta Platforms Inc. will begin showing ads inside of its WhatsApp messaging service, opening a new potential revenue stream while the company invests heavily in artificial intelligence and other long-term projects.

WhatsApp is testing ads in Status and paid channel subscriptions, all inside the Updates tab. Private messages remain encrypted and ad-free.

The cofounders of WhatsApp resisted ads in the app for years, including after the company was acquired by Meta for $22 billion in 2014. Brian Acton and Jan Koum left the company in 2017 and 2018, respectively, and on Monday Meta introduced ads in the “Status” feature as well as sponsored Channels in the the “Updates” tab of WhatsApp.

End-to-end encryption is still guaranteed, and Meta also said that if users only use the app to call or message their contacts, there will be “no change to [the] experience at all,” though for many, this promise simply isn’t enough.

It’s official, WhatsApp ’s latest update is bringing ads to the platform.

WhatsApp Ads face no apparent legal pushback in terms of privacy norms, said industry experts while privacy advocates argued ads still violate the privacy principles on which the app was created.