WhatsApp is the hot topic this week because of the controversial username update on their application. WhatsApp has only opened username reservations so far — the feature itself isn’t live yet, and Meta says it will roll out “slowly later this year.” Still, the announcement has faced several criticisms from the privacy people, and as one step further, the Indian government has put a pause on this update, with the Ministry of Electronics and IT (MeitY) sending a formal notice to Meta giving them three days to explain the feature in more detail. This isn’t the first time India has taken this kind of action either — they similarly acted against Telegram recently over anonymity concerns, showing a bigger pattern of scrutiny on messaging apps.
You can read WhatsApp’s own announcement on usernames here – and more on the MeitY notice here:
Fast forwarding to now, WhatsApp has announced a new feature in their application which will let other users know when we are online by showing a small green dot on our profiles when our application is open. Normally, the status indicator will be hidden once you click on the top of a chat with the contact info — that’s exactly where the green dot currently shows up too, it doesn’t yet appear in the chat list or the conversation view, so you do need to open that contact info screen to see it. It’s worth noting this isn’t a totally new idea either — Facebook Messenger and Instagram have had similar green dot indicators for a while, so WhatsApp is really catching up here rather than inventing something new. And no, it doesn’t bypass your existing privacy settings — if you’ve already hidden your Last Seen and Online status, the green dot won’t show up for you either.
The feature is currently in beta, having already been rolled out to Android last month, and now currently it has been rolled out to iPhone, specifically visible in WhatsApp beta for iOS version 26.26.10.72. You can read more about the rollout on WABetaInfo
