WhatsApp

That's a reasonable question, but if you go looking for answers in Meta's financials, you won't find many: The company blends WhatsApp's metrics with those from Instagram and Facebook, so there's very little specific data available. A few years ago, it announced that WhatsApp had 2 billion users around the world, and that's about it.…

Enlarge / An Apple Store in Shanghai, China, on April 11, 2024.CFOTO/Future Publishing via Getty Images Apple said it complied with orders from the Chinese government to remove the Meta-owned WhatsApp and Threads from its App Store in China. Apple also removed Telegram and Signal from China. "We are obligated to follow the laws in…

Enlarge / Beeper's new apps are now available, without waitlist, across nearly all mobile and desktop platforms. Beeper, the multinetwork messaging app that recently gave up on trying to engineer around Apple's walled-off iMessage service, has been acquired by Automattic, the company behind WordPress. It is now open to everyone and has a completely revamped…

WhatsApp will soon be granted access to explore the "full functionality" of the NSO Group's Pegasus spyware—sophisticated malware the Israeli Ministry of Defense has long guarded as a "highly sought" state secret, The Guardian reported. Since 2019, WhatsApp has pushed for access to the NSO's spyware code after alleging that Pegasus was used to spy…

Remember when investors were worried that Mark Zuckerberg was incinerating money on the Metaverse and virtual reality?Well, that's still happening: Last year, Meta lost $16.1 billion on its "Reality Labs" division, the group that brings you things like the Oculus goggles. That's up from a loss of $13.7 billion in 2022.Those losses are accelerating, too:…

More Gen Zers trust YouTube vs. other social platforms, a new Business Insider-YouGov survey found.Roughly 59% of Gen Zers ages 18 to 26 view YouTube as somewhat or very trustworthy, the survey says.Of six platforms, Facebook fared worst, with 60% of adult Gen Zers calling it untrustworthy. Thanks for signing up! Access your favorite topics…

It turns out that Silicon Valley's tech titans keep in touch via WhatsApp too.A group chat with over 100 tech CEOs was speculating about Sam Altman's firing from OpenAI, per the NYT.Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Dropbox chief Drew Houston are part of the group, per the NYT. Loading Something is loading. Thanks for signing up!…

WhatsApp said Thursday that it's rolling out a secret code feature that's meant to provide additional protection to sensitive conversations.The Meta-owned chat app's new feature builds on its Chat Lock feature, which hides conversations in a folder that requires its own password, fingerprint or Face ID to unlock. The secret code feature allows for the option of requiring…

Apple has officially joined Meta and TikTok in appealing the European Union's designation of their services as "gatekeepers" under the Digital Markets Act (DMA)—a strict EU antitrust law aimed at "preventing gatekeepers from imposing unfair conditions on businesses and end users" and "ensuring the openness of important digital services." On Friday, the EU Court of…

Two of the world's biggest tech companies have appealed the European Union's designation of their services as "gatekeepers" under the Digital Markets Act (DMA)—a strict EU antitrust law aimed at "preventing gatekeepers from imposing unfair conditions on businesses and end users" and "ensuring the openness of important digital services." On Wednesday, Meta became the first…