In markets where Whatsapp is entrenched, it’s already begun to enshittify.

They have ads and spam already (sorry, no-consent messages from businesses). This isn’t even new. [0]

There’s a clear pattern, say “we’ve rolled out strict policies”[1] and then… nothing changes on the ground, and TechCrunch writes another “they’ve fixed it” article a year later.[2]

Also their Communities feature has pretty crap UX.

Yes WhatsApp’s pervasive. But if pervasive was the end of the story, we’d all be using ICQ and AOL. The last thing any country needs is to hand over more of their lives to Facebook [sic].

[0] https://techcrunch.com/2022/10/10/in-india-businesses-are-in...

[1] https://techcrunch.com/2024/11/20/whatsapp-will-finally-let-...

[2] https://techcrunch.com/2025/10/17/whatsapp-will-curb-the-num...