WhatsApp makes a social media joke — and then scrambles to explain it meant no harm

Corporate blunders are part of the fabric of social media marketing for brands. Eventually, they all fall into that trap. What starts as a desire for brands to be too relatable, and personify themselves to tweet just like you, always ends up with them having the most bizarre Freudian slips. The latest one was when Mark Zuckerberg’s messaging app WhatsApp suggested that they’ve been enjoying certain texts by saying “we see you.”

Zuckerberg has already had his fair share of controversies: first, through an accusation that he is ending fact-checking to favor the current administration, and second, that he’s helping Donald Trump come up with lies about how many jobs his company is creating in the next couple of years. So the last thing one of his companies needs is a flub online — especially on X, which is famous for its brutal user base.

On Oct. 28, the official WhatsApp X page had the wise idea of posting “people who end messages with ‘lol’ we see you, we honor you.” Immediately people started questioning exactly what that means, and if that means they’ve been spying on their users, despite their claims of ensuring privacy.

your personal messages are private between you and the recipient. “we see you” in our original post was meant as a way to say we relate to and understand people who love to use lol as a way to end a message

— WhatsApp (@WhatsApp) October 28, 2025

There was also another user who hilariously posted a scene from Succession where one of the characters, Greg, explains to his boss Tom that their new company motto about “We hear you” might be perceived the wrong way because they actually do spy on their audience. For WhatsApp, things aren’t as dire — they do have legal precedence that would allow them to confidently make the claim that they actually don’t spy on users.

“We’re listening?”

“There’s a gray area in terms of our data collection… it seems we are sometimes listening quite aggressively” pic.twitter.com/CY9yGrinG3

— Daksh Bhatia (@NotDakshBhatia) October 29, 2025

But if you let their competitors tell it, like the founders of Telegram or Signal — they’d probably dispute Meta’s claims. However, it is worth noting that taking the founder of Telegram seriously should be done at your own risk — the pre-natal enthusiast has some pretty strange ideas of what’s best for humanity; chief among them being siring over 100 kids all over the world in a bid to spread his genius IQ.

It would be low-hanging fruit to just use this as another opportunity to take a swipe at the often chaotic world of tech bros. But in all fairness, this is an issue that goes far beyond them. This is a story about how corporate culture and social media just don’t mix.

The entire point of social media is to be sincere and give a little glimpse of your personal thoughts. Corporations may be legally individuals, but in practice, they are just entities whose purpose is generating monetary gain. So whenever they claim they have values or try to make jokes, there’s always the stroke of the chin by the consumers who don’t quite get the whole purpose of the posturing.

Corporates don’t get that, and it always leads them to having a social media presence that pretends to be a person. Who can forget Burger King making that infamous tweet about women belonging in the kitchen. For days they tried their best to clean that gaffe up, but they never quite did.

In 2021, Burger King UK tweeted "Women belong in the kitchen."

It was meant to empower women chefs.
Instead, it backfired instantly.

Let's break down why this campaign was a disaster and what it teaches us about marketing 🧵

⌈1/9⌉ pic.twitter.com/YifGncM8cr

— Frogache | 🌱 (@0xFrogache) August 25, 2025

All these accounts need to do is post new offers and new products, and we’d all be fine. Well, except Ryanair — they’re the exception that proves the rule.