Meta cancels free WhatsApp Business API – but the real blow is to a critical population

Meta canceled the free service model of the WhatsApp Business API and switched to charging per individual message, a move that skyrocketed operational costs for independent services by thousands of percent. The hardest hit was the popular transcription bot "Eliezer," a volunteer project of the ivrit.ai initiative, developed by entrepreneurs Yair Lifshitz, Yanir Marmor, Kineret Misgav, and Yoed Sanpir. The bot, which at its peak handled 120 messages per minute and transcribed about 10,000 hours of audio per month for 20,000 daily users, faced immediate shutdown. Monthly operational costs would have jumped from a single dollar to about $5,000 – an impossible sum for a project relying on community donations of around $500 per month. The developers were forced to stop sending replies on WhatsApp and move them to alternative routes like Telegram and the Communicator app they developed, a move that caused a sharp drop in activity to only about 2,500 users. The most painful impact was felt among the deaf and hard of hearing population, for whom the bot served as a vital communication channel. Founder Lifshitz harshly criticized Meta: "Even if we had a larger donation, it feels wrong to pay Meta such exorbitant amounts – this is monopolistic behavior." According to him, real distribution costs are more than 100 times lower than the price Meta charges. As of the article's publication, no response was received from Meta Israel.