Signal's CEO attacks WhatsApp after launching what she calls "surveillance" advertising
Meta is going to start introducing ads into the world's most popular messaging app . This new strategy , which was just announced, has raised alarm bells among privacy advocates and competitors alike.
While private chats are currently being kept out of the loop and advertising will be limited to the 'News' tab , some are wary of this twist on Mark Zuckerberg's platform, as it could be the first step toward flooding the app with ads to monetize the user experience .
One of the first voices to respond to this major change in WhatsApp was Meredith Whittaker, president of Signal . The leader of the rival app to Meta's platform has previously defended the significant differences between the two, so she took this opportunity to reiterate this.
“ Use Signal. We promise: no AI clutter, no surveillance ads , no anything else the rest of the industry is doing. We lead, we don’t follow,” Whittaker posted on X (formerly Twitter).
This criticism follows others leveled at WhatsApp in recent months . The previous one was just three months ago, amid the controversy known as "Signalgate," in which several Trump administration officials mistakenly included a journalist in an encrypted Signal chat, revealing US military plans against the Houthis in Yemen. That incident, far from tarnishing Signal's reputation, served Whittaker to emphasize the robustness of his platform.
“Signal is the gold standard in private communications,” the executive stated at the time. She emphasized that Signal is a non-profit, open-source organization that implements end-to-end encryption (E2EE) across all its services to ensure the protection of both metadata and message content.
Whittaker also insisted that, unlike Signal, WhatsApp does not protect sensitive data such as contact lists, user communication patterns, message sending schedules, or profile photos. “When companies are forced to, like all data collectors, they hand over this important and revealing data ,” he warned, highlighting how such practices put the privacy of millions of users at risk.
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