After encountering serious opposition over its controversial plans, Facebook is finally backing away from its efforts to sell ads in WhatsApp.
The plans to monetize the app had reportedly caused its co-creator, Brian Aston to quit in protest. It may be factors such as this that forced Facebook to give up monetizing the messaging platform.
Facebook has now disbanded the developer team responsible for creating code that would integrate ads into the app. The code has also been removed from WhatsApp’s internal builds, but it may still feature ads on the Status page.
Facebook says that it is currently focusing on features to “allow businesses to communicate with customers and organize those contacts.” The app creators agree that this will weaken WhatsApp’s end to end encryption.
A Facebook representative revealed that the company may integrate ads into the app, however, for the time being, it will remain ad-free. They haven’t revealed an exact timeline for when this change will go into effect.