Iranian state television on Tuesday afternoon urged the country’s public to remove the messaging app WhatsApp from their smart phones, alleging without offering any evidence the app gathered user information to send to Israel.

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,

ChatGPT can generate amazing images for you via WhatsApp texting. All you need to do is save the ChatGPT number.

TheLa televisión estatal iraní instó el martes por la tarde al público del país a eliminar la plataforma de mensajería WhatsApp de sus

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.

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,

WhatsApp has announced that it’s adding ads to the popular messaging app, though the initial implementation promises to be relatively restrained. In a recent Meta blog post, the company revealed that it was adding adverts to the app’s Updates tab.