WhatsApp keeps a secret

gm legends. It’s Sunday.

This week: WhatsApp blindfolds itself, five new privacy tools, how to save money on Meta Ads while getting better results, and when to move on from an MVP. Plus, some of our favorite launches from the past week. 

This newsletter will never move on from you, legend. Enjoy.

P.S. Launching soon? We’d love to hear about it → editorial@producthunt.co 🫶

WhatsApp is the most-used messaging app in the world. Not that all those 3 billion-plus users are talking to each other. Oh, no, they’re gabbing with AI, no doubt asking questions that are risque (“What are you wearing?”), embarrassing (“How do I boil water?”), or incriminating (“How to remove a dead body”). 

Well, now you don’t have to worry about your AI chatbot airing your dirty laundry because Meta this week unveiled an Incognito Chat with Meta AI. (It’s also available in the Meta AI app.)

Often, incognito just means your computer or phone deletes your browsing history and cookies on that device. However, the websites you visit and the internet provider you use can still track you. 

But Meta says its incognito mode is “truly private” because “your messages are processed in a secure environment that even Meta cannot access. Your conversations are not saved and by default, your messages disappear — giving you space to ask questions and explore ideas without anyone watching.”

You can never be too careful when it comes to guarding your digital privacy. Here are some other recent launches aiming to keep you safe online:

• PanicMode is a desktop app that lets you push a single hotkey and get to an unobjectionable workspace. Ideal for when people are over your shoulder.
• BlankOut helps you redact sensitive information from documents (e.g., bills, medical results) before sending them to AI.
• GhostlyX is a new privacy-first analytics platform that helps website owners understand their website metrics without tracking users.
• FileFlan lets you share files from any device to any device privately and freely using end-to-end encryption.
• Tinfoil is another private AI chat. It works on open-source models by leveraging security mechanisms built into NVIDIA GPUs.

Speaking of Meta and privacy, Mona Kohlhaas is trying to give solopreneurs more visibility into how the Meta Ads platform works. She writes:

I’ve spent years in marketing, and there’s one thing that always drove me crazy: The massive gap between what Meta claims is happening and the reality of our bank accounts.

Meta loves to show us link clicks and high CTRs to keep us spending, but we know that many of those clicks are just ghosts—accidental taps, bot traffic, or low-intent engagement that never reaches the checkout page.

The problem is that most tools to fix this are built for enterprise agencies with massive budgets and jargon-heavy dashboards.

So, I decided to bring my own solution to life.

You may have noticed we’ve been doing lots of leaderboard tie-ups recently. A few weeks ago, we did a Y Combinator leaderboard; every product that launched on Friday was reviewed by a YC partner, with one lucky duck getting an interview. 

Last Friday, we had Vercel Day. Products that launched on Friday competed not only for the usual #1 ranking but also for Vercel credits and a chance to pitch Vercel’s venture arm. It brought out plenty of cool tools and apps, including:

• Gradient Bang, a massively multiplayer, retro-style game where the only way to interact is by talking to LLMs.
• PHBench, which claims to predict, from a Product Hunt launch page alone, which companies will go on to raise a Series A.
• Standboy, a just-for-fun VS Code extension that shows a working Game Boy emulator in your sidebar whenever an AI agent is running.

Click through to see Friday's top launches.

Nika, the queen of Product Hunt, has seen many products come and go, and she’s not sure they’re all necessary. There are sooo many products, AI is making them suuuuper easy to build, and there’s limited attention to go around. “Some ideas don’t just feel unoriginal to me, they don’t even feel useful.”

But she’s been impressed by concepts like ProblemHunt and 404tomb because “people can validate an idea before building, whether there’s actual demand for it, or whether that idea has already failed in the past.”

So, she wants to know: “How do you decide if something is worth building? And how much time do you usually give an MVP before moving on?”

Original answers only, legends.