For spammers.

They don't have one for regular people who want to do regular end-user computation.

kamma4434 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

I personally find the almost absence of spam on WhatsApp a big success story for it. Think about how much Spam still hits your email inbox (and nobody knows how much is filtered away before it does).

I totally understand why they try and make it hard for integration to happen. When compared to classic SMS, the fact that you need to start a conversation with a preapproved template means that they have a way to control casual interactions.

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pancsta 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Companies in spain use it for legitimate reasons, so its more a lack of usage which makes spam the only usage?

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TeMPOraL 2 days ago | parent [-]

I consider marketing use to be spam, and this is what the API is primarily meant for.

I understand that WhatsApp is kinda special in that it effectively replaced SMS in some parts of the world, but IMO this needs to be looked at through the lens of other Meta effort. The same is the case with Facebook/Messenger, and has been since before WhatsApp has been a (Meta) thing - they offer multiple different official ways to support spamming users and tricking them to buy stuff, but may the Lord have mercy on you should you want to create an auto-responder or "save to calendar" script and hook it up to your personal account.

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filcuk 2 days ago | parent [-]

Who mentioned marketing? It's used for package tracking, order updates, bookings and so on where I live.

	▲	TeMPOraL 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		Not where I live, presumably not in the US, and it doesn't look like the main use case emphasized in the developer/integration documentation.

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c0balt 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

That seems a but pessimistic. A few companies use it for customer service, like ime Adidas Germany [0] (they handled an exchange for me once on there). It is effectively just another customer support line like a chat portal on a website.

[0]: https://www.adidas.de/en/help/contact-us