Days ago, I updated my WhatsApp. I barely look at status updates because I hardly post anything myself. But yesterday, to my utmost surprise and disgust, I saw ads in my WhatsApp status. I want to pause here for a minute. I understand the need for money. I understand the need for expansion. Given my current station in life, if I saw an opportunity that sat well with me and could move me up the financial ladder, I would grab it with all fours. But this is me, a young man unfortunate enough to have been born in Nigeria. Mark Zuckerberg is the sixth-richest man in the world. His estimated net worth is around $258 billion. Since my teenage years, Mark Zuckerberg has been a billionaire and has remained one and, frankly, barring a nuclear apocalypse, will likely remain one. But, as Burna Boy crooned, “Even Dangote still dey find money,” so I understand the desire to become richer, perhaps even the desire to displace Elon Musk as the richest man in the world. These things are understandable. No one would blame a man for wanting more. What I cannot understand, what I cannot reconcile, is the desire to become so rich that you invade the privacy of other people. Why are there ads in anyone’s private status? Why should I be seeing somebody else’s business in what I consider my private space? What is my business with this person? I don’t understand the inability to say no to certain things. You are already obscenely wealthy. You have more money than most human beings could spend in several lifetimes. Why, then, must you still invade people’s privacy in pursuit of more? For a platform like WhatsApp, which has built so much of its identity around respecting people’s privacy, isn’t this a rather flagrant violation of the very thing you claim to value? If Zuckerberg and his team at Meta have an inch of a soul left in them, if they have not been completely consumed by Mammon, then they must reverse this satanic, Mammonian, greed-inspired update on WhatsApp, this indefensible, naked intrusion into people’s private lives, and return to respecting the sanctity of the lives of the very people who have made their products the household names they are today.