The launch upends its founders’ original mission of creating an app with ‘No Ads! No Games! No Gimmicks!’ This week, WhatsApp did something its founders said it would never do: it’s putting advertisements inside the app. It ends WhatsApp’s decade-plus run of offering an ad-free messaging and calling experience.

WhatsApp introduces ads in the Status tab, shifting from its original ad-free promise while maintaining encrypted messaging and calls.

Meta (META) stock rises after announcing plans for WhatsApp to introduce ads, using some user data to target advertising. Reddit (RDDT) stock pops after releasing new artificial intelligence (AI) advertising tools,