Being able to do payments without a bank through whatsapp is way beyond the risk appetitte of european regulators for example.
Plus forcing whatsapp to add e2e encryption already fixes most of the issues in terms of risk to privacy regardless of how big the userbase it.
That claim does not ring true to me. Maybe a few years ago, but now? I don't use whatsapp and I don't know anyone who uses it, except for a group of expats from South America who probably use it because it's still widespread in South America and their friends use it, maybe?
WhatsApp, Instagram, Threads, messenger, and Facebook all in one app. Horrifying.
The problem is Reddit has very little real value, and to get that value you'd have to go even further into pushing its users away from the platform as you'd need to be able to target and identify individuals.
Unlike Twitter, Instagram, Facebook etc the majority of Reddit is very intentionally anonymous, not even requiring an email address. A sizable portion still use 'old reddit' because of how awful and hostile the redesign was.
To get it to a point of profitability it would need to be more viable for advertisers, and that only comes with forcing them down users throats, which traditionally is not a reddit thing and would alienate people even more than they've already done recently.
It's also worth noting its 18 years old and still hasn't come remotely close to being profitable.
I think the fact that users already go looking for a specific thing at a specific subreddit makes the value instantly apparent.
Being able to target users with an interest in your niche is infinitely valuable. Personalised ads are the entire business model of google and facebook to behemoths.
The problem is reddit is led by the most unqualified management of any top 10 most visited world site and they spent 2 quarters developing NFT profile pictures instead of mod tools, or advertiser platforms.
Having non intrusive ads, with good quality, that directly relate to what you care about? Is a dream of users and brands. Have an AMA with a movie start or a videogame developer and have them pay for it as marketing, or allow a weekly "share your news" from brands where they can talk new products, or versions of their thing.
There are a million ways to monetise reddit, in ways that the community would not be angry. But making it look like tiktok, forcing a terrible app, spending billions hosting your own images and video, and having mods do free labour for you while you fight to get any money in... is not the best way to go about it.
Today, it's almost as everyone has forgotten about social media monopolization.
If TikTok gets banned, where to the users go? Instagram.
Threads could replace Twitter.
Reddit is going downhill... Maybe Meta could even buy it in a firesale?
Outside of chat apps like Discord, Slack, Teams and Telegram (which compete with WhatsApp), Meta will have consolidated most of the world's social media under them. And that's assuming they dont buy out Discord.