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How does WhatsApp make money? It's free - with some tricks

We all use messaging apps such as Whatsapp for free, but what's in it for them?

“Our goal is to move as close as possible to becoming fully supported by small donors, relying on a large number of modest contributions from people who care about Signal,” wrote its president Meredith Whittaker in a blog post last year. Discord, a messaging app largely used by young gamers, has a freemium model – it is free to sign-up, but additional features, including access to games, come with a pricetag. The idea is that even if there is encryption and anonymity in place, the apps don’t need to see the actual content of the messages being shared to work out a lot about their users, and they can then use that data to sell ads.

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