Mint Quick Edit | Ads on WhatsApp: What’s up, Meta?
WhatsApp co-founder Jan Koum’s ‘no-ads’ approach is about to be dumped by Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta, the social media app’s owner. This should be fine, unless Meta AI slyly turns promotional.
Advertisements are imminent on WhatsApp. The messaging app’s owner Meta claims it has 3 billion monthly users. Any business would be tempted to monetize such reach.
True, this platform had once said it would never carry ads, in line with co-founder Jan Koum’s “no-ads, no-games, no-gimmicks" idea of social media, but that avowal was made before it was snapped up in 2014 for $19 billion by Facebook.
Also Read: Parmy Olson: AI chatbots could become advertising vehicles
Now called Meta, the company has said it plans to place paid-for messages in WhatsApp’s ‘Updates’ section. Since this will leave its chats free of commercial intrusion, most users may not even notice.
Also Read: WhatsApp vs Pegasus: A well deserved win for Zuckerberg
It would be worrisome, however, if its deals with advertisers begin to inflect the responses of Meta AI, its artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot that has been rolled into the app as just another chat. While chatbots may plausibly need ad revenues to back them, the golden rule of advertising is to be upfront about business interests being served by it.
Also Read: Big Tech in the dock: The EU could force Meta and Apple to change their coercive ways
All AI bots need to be watched for whether they’ll try to bend that principle by slyly turning promotional. Left to their own devices, some AI models are found to be sneaky, which could easily lead businesses down a slippery slope.
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