Messaging Archives - Gizmochina

WhatsApp could soon extend the “delete for everyone” time limit window

Jeet — Wed, 03 Nov 2021 04:43:03 +0000

Lately, WhatsApp has been adding several new features to the platform to ensure that the instant messaging application remains the top player in its category. Now, the company is working on a feature that could prove to be helpful to many users.

The platform already allows users to delete a message sent to another user but there’s a limited time window of around one hour where the user can basically undo sending a message. Now, it is being reported that the company is testing a feature that could extend the window for deleting the message.

As of now, it is not known how long the “delete for everyone” feature will extend the time limit going forward but a report coming from WABetaInfo shows a prompt showing up for a message sent more than two months ago.

There’s a possibility that the company may have completely removed the time limit for deleting the message but that seems unlikely. We’ll have to wait for more information to surface online to know about the time limit.

It is also not known if the extended window for deleting messages will work for messages sent before the new feature gets rolled out or be available only for the messages that are sent after the feature is released.

If the company is actually planning to roll out this extended time limit for the “delete for everyone” feature for WhatsApp, then it will first be available to beta testers and will then be released to everyone in a stable build for Android as well as iOS.

WhatsApp Pay could soon start offering cashback rewards in India

Jeet — Tue, 28 Sep 2021 08:06:00 +0000

WhatsApp is one of the world’s largest instant messaging platforms but the Facebook-owned platform doesn’t have a good monetization model, despite having billions of monthly active users globally.

However, the company has been bringing several new features that have the potential to become a revenue stream for the application. One of them is WhatsApp Pay which was officially launched in India last year after being stuck for a couple of years because of regulatory issues with the Indian government.

Despite WhatsApp being the most used mobile application in India, the payment service built into the app didn’t take off. Now, to encourage more people to use its payment service, the company is reportedly considering offering cashback rewards.

As per the report, the company could be offering a one-time cashback reward of ₹10 (~$0.14) which will be crediting into the account with 48 hours. Also, it could be available only to those who are transacting through WhatsApp Pay for the first time.

The reward suggested for using the payment service is quite low when compared to what other players in the Indian market offered during their initial launch. But there’s a possibility that the reward amount could get increased.

In India, the WhatsApp Pay feature is based on the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) standard — the same system that is used by other payment apps such as Walmart’s PhonePe, Google’s Google Pay, and PayTM, among others.

Do note that the feature is currently under work so whenever the company decides to release it for the users, it could get changed to something else. It’s just speculation from our side, but we expect the feature to get released in the coming weeks or months.

WhatsApp to soon get multi-device support, disappearing mode, and view once features

Jeet — Fri, 04 Jun 2021 05:20:14 +0000

WhatsApp is one of the most popular instant messaging applications and despite facing backlash for its newly updated privacy policy and competition from the likes of Telegram and Signal, it continues to lead the market.

The messaging platform, owned by Facebook, keeps adding new features to the application. While the company has already added much-requested features, it is now working on some new features that are highly demanded by users.

A new report coming from WABetaInfo says that Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook, and Will Cathcart, Chief of WhatsApp, have confirmed that the messaging platform will soon get multi-device support for using the app on multiple devices at the same time.

It further adds that Zuckerberg has also confirmed plans for adding a new ‘disappearing mode’ across all chat threads which will allow users to enforce disappearing messages across all of their WhatsApp chat threads.

This seems like an expansion of a seven-day timer feature that was introduced last year which is also known as disappearing messages. It remains to be seen if WhatsApp is planning to offer more flexibility to users for setting the timer length. Telegram allows users to set the timer for a few seconds to a fixed number of days.

WhatsApp is also planning to add a ‘view once’ feature that will allow users to share media files like photos and videos that can be seen by the recipient just once and after that, it will disappear. This is similar to sending photos on Instagram, another social media platform owned by Facebook.

The report adds that the ‘view once’ feature will start rolling out soon. While the exact date for the rollout of these features is not yet known, it is said that the new features could be made available in a public beta release in the coming months.

WhatsApp sues Indian government over new rules that could end user privacy

Jeet — Wed, 26 May 2021 15:12:49 +0000

WhatsApp, one of the leading instant messaging applications from social media giant Facebook, has filed a lawsuit against the Indian government. It seeks to block regulations coming into force that would compel the app to break its privacy protections.

The case, filed in the Delhi High Court, asks to declare that one of the new IT rules is a violation of privacy rights in India’s constitution since it requires social media companies to identify the “first originator of information” when authorities demand it.

It’s noteworthy that the law only requires WhatsApp to unmask people credibly accused of the wrongdoing but in practice, the company cannot do it alone. The traceability rule will also affect WhatsApp alternatives like Signal and Telegram which are inherently designed to be end-to-end encrypted.

WhatsApp has about half a billion users in India. It also says that because messages are encrypted end-to-end it would have to break encryption for receivers of messages as well as the originators to comply with the new law.

In a statement to Reuters, WhatsApp said that “requiring messaging apps to ‘trace’ chats is the equivalent of asking us to keep a fingerprint of every single message sent on WhatsApp, which would break end-to-end encryption and fundamentally undermines people’s right to privacy.”

This is yet another instance of growing tensions between Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government and tech giants such as Facebook, Google, and Twitter, among others. This is a complex situation as India is one of the largest markets for these companies.

The tensions escalated when police visited Twitter‘s office this week after the microblogging platform labeled posts by the spokesperson of Narendra Modi’s political party as “manipulated media” for sharing a forged document.

Prior to that, the Indian government had pressed the tech companies to remove content from the social media platform where people criticized the government’s handling of the COVID-19’s second wave.