WhatsApp built its user base on the promise of free messaging, and now the subscription pivot turns that pitch into a lie. Signal and Telegram both offer comparable functionality without mandatory recurring fees, which makes the timing of this look desperate rather than inevitable. The pricing strategy alone would be worth examining if the premise were not already a bad look for a company that built its reputation on network effects rather than innovation.

WhatsApp built its user base on the promise of free messaging

Really? Because initially, WhatsApp did actually charge money for the service, though it was only $1 a year. But I don't remember them ever promising free messaging.

Fun fact, WhatsApp wasn't even designed as a messenger in the first place, it was just meant as an app to show your status (like "at the movies"), but then evolved into one.

Didn't it start ages ago with some nominal monthly/yearly fee, like 99 cents? This was before I started using it, but I could swear it had a fee before Meta bought it and through that time it did build up a pretty significant user base.

None of those features are of interest to me. I wouldn’t use them even if they were free.

WhatsApp built its user base on the promise of free messaging,

You still get all the same free stuff.
They're charging for some new additional features.
Did you read the article?

Another great product that Meta bought and shat all over it.

That's just to establish the initial difference between tiers, otherwise it's not value added to paid service that's the incentive, it's the enshittification of the free tier that's about to heat up.

https://delta.chat/en/

https://blog.feld.me/posts/2025/03/deltachat-is-actually-good-though/

Why does it look like WhatsApp from ten years ago though? 😅

Small open source project vs Big tech.

Lemmy and Piefed also look like Reddit from 10 years ago 😄

"Exclusive premium ringtones" hahahahaha

You still get all the same free stuff.
They're charging for some new additional features.

This is standard enshittification.

1. Introduce a new premium tier, with "cool shit", whatever that might be. Free tier still allows you to do all the stuff you did before.

2. Wait a period of time, about 6 to 12 months usually, to get the users used to the fact that the free tier is still the same as usual. Tinker with the premium tier a little to make it sound like awesome shit is happening there and everyone should get on it.

3. Degrade the free tier, usually by adding "sponsored content" i.e. ads, or dropping features so that genuinely useful stuff only becomes available in premium tier. Pitch this as "maintaining quality for our increasing user base" or some bullshit.

4. Ratchet up pricing for the premium tier, reduce/enshittify features in the free tier.

5. Repeat from step 3 until your userbase migrates to the Next Hot Thing and your product sinks into irrelevancy.

So WhatsApp decided to repeat after Viber and telegram? Interesting.

Exactly.
Step 3 is where you have cause to get upset, and complain. Not there yet.

Signal and Telegram both offer comparable functionality without mandatory recurring fees

Telegram introduced a subscription named Telegram Premium a few years ago. You get similar functionality there -- setting colors to your profile or groups that you're part of, custom emojis (including animated ones), custom stickers, an indicator that you're on Premium, custom profile statuses, increased limits for sending files, etc. There's a lot more, I just listed some off the top of my head. They've been pushing people into Premium. Telegram is perfectly usable without that, of course. My favorite Premium feature is that you can require unknown senders to pay a fee to be able to send you a message :D Meanwhile, non-Premium users can get spammed normally.

Let's see what's behind door number 2, oh it's adverts in our conversations, congratulations.

Why does Meta need more money than they already have? Also, why do people still use WhatsApp?

It's the default messenger for anything in Europe and most of the world outside of North America

That's wild... Why not something like Signal or even Telegram? I didn't realize so many people actually trusted Meta with private/personal information.

Yeah you're responding to a bot whose instructions are to wax lyrically about OSS and anti-Google sentiment.

Snowden's revelation of US surveillance infrastructure more than 10 years ago doesn't really change much of people's perspective about privacy. Should be no surprise that people are still on facebook platforms.

I'm not from US, probably most of my friends don't know about Snowden, surveillance capitalism, and such. Some other people are already struggling enough with their daily shit to care about their online privacy.

And those infrastructure is also most useful to fight against journalist, US adversaries/critics, etc, than ordinary people.

So much nostalgia from… the 90s?

That's... Amazing. It's been awhile since I had a glimpse into how others experience the web. Wow.

I only use web API vendors that support open source clients - so I always get 100% most of those features for free.

Edit: Except "increased limits for sending files".

I believe the Delta Chat client started off as a fork of the Telegram client.

Timing first, friction later: Whatsapp was first, it extended like wildfire in Latin America before the 2014 buy in by Meta. I attribute it to the ease of configuration: you didn't need an email, it was just your phone number, and then all your contacts were reachable. It didn't lose traction even when it changed from free app to "free for a year". Friction came later, Telegram gained some ground but it was very niche, my friends that were in CS were using it "for the bots and the stickers" but you needed to invite your contacts to use it and it didn't make sense if they already had Whatsapp. Later, more and more businesses started using Whatsapp to chat with customers and eventually it became the default.

Honestly Lemmy and Piefed looking like Reddit from 10 years ago is a feature, not a big, to me.

Laughs in Fortnite?

Google goes to step 4 and 5, then creates "the next hot thing".

Whatsapp was great and everybody used it before Facebook bought it. It was 1€/year subscription.

Now that Facebook bought it, there's no way of choosing an alternative. Only "nerds" care about it being owned by Facebook. And "nerds" don't have enough social power to say "if you wanna talk to me, you have to use this other app", they'll just stop talking to the "nerd".