WhatsApp Directed To Get User Consent Before Adding Them To Groups

Everyone know how irritating it is when we are added to family groups by relative without being asked. The result of this is that we will receive a “good morning” message every single day along with discussion on your bad behaviour if you don’t reply. Well, it seems like this problem won’t last long. The Indian government has now asked the Facebook-owned company to seek users’ consent before adding them to any WhatsApp group chat.

It appears that WhatsApp group chats can be the cause of misinformation and fake news spreading around. Additionally, many government agencies have received complaints from many people about other people adding them to groups without asking for their permission. The agencies later forwarded these complaints to the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY). According to reports, MeitY has decided to intervene to deal with this issue.

A letter from the government body has been sent to WhatsApp, requiring them to take action to put a stop to this possibility. One of the government’s suggestion is that the admins can only add people whose numbers have already been saved in their contact list. Moreover, any user that decides to leave the group for the second time should not be added again.

However, that does raise a concern as what will happen if a user that leaves twice is added into the group again by another admin, or to a totally new group. MeitY has prompted WhatsApp to look further into these special cases.

One feasible solution to this would be include push notifications into the system, which will notify users when they are added to a group. It could be a simple notification with the group’s name and the contact that tries to add them. Along with a notification, WhatsApp can try to integrate an Accept and a Reject button.