The last thing that I want to see in an app whose sole purpose is texting and sharing with friends and family is advertisements of any sort. But that’s exactly the kind of Facebook Messenger experience I’m going to get in the near future. So are you, and we can’t do anything to stop it.
I’m not even talking about smart bots or any sort of artificially intelligent assistant meant to help out with useful information during chats. No, I’m talking about good old ads that will take up a rather large chunk of your screen for no apparent reason. Well, we all know what the reason is. Hint: 💰💰💰
The ads won’t be targeted based on the chats you’re having, at least not for the time being. But it’s very likely they’ll still be delivered based on what Facebook knows about you.
As TechCrunch explains, there’s no way to permanently turn off Messenger ads. Your best option would be simply switching to something else to replace Facebook if these unskippable commercials become too annoying. Facebook says it ran tests in Australia and Thailand, and “the results were promising,” since the company “put people’s experience first.”
Who in their right mind would like to experience an ad taking up a large portion of the screen in a messenger app rather than seeing the actual content they come in to see? No one, that’s who.
I get that advertisements pay for everything that’s “free” online, and there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that. Ads in Facebook are fine, whether it’s on desktop or mobile. It’s the price we have to pay to get free services. But flooding a chat app with ads is definitely not the way to go here.
