The launch upends its founders’ original mission of creating an app with ‘No Ads! No Games! No Gimmicks!’ This week, WhatsApp did something its founders said it would never do: it’s putting advertisements inside the app. It ends WhatsApp’s decade-plus run of offering an ad-free messaging and calling experience.

WhatsApp says that users will start seeing ads in parts of the app, as owner Meta Platforms moves to cultivate a new revenue stream by tapping the billions of people that use the messaging service.

Send news tips to: [email protected] Betrayal or inevitability? Meta is putting ads in WhatsApp. More than a decade after it acquired WhatsApp, Meta will begin showing ads within the app. The move,