WhatsApp to Limit Unreplied Messages Sent by Users and Businesses
By limiting the number of messages that businesses and individual users can send to strangers without receiving a response, WhatsApp is trying to address its spam issue.
With groups, communities, and business messaging, the app has grown more sophisticated over time, but it began as a simple means to send messages to personal connections. People are receiving more messages than ever before as a result of those changes, and it can be challenging to keep up with them all.
Unless they receive a response, every message that users and businesses send to other people will be counted against this new monthly cap. For example, sending three messages to someone you meet at a conference counts against the limit.
WhatsApp hasn’t said what the limit will be, as it’s testing different limits during this time. However, when a business or an individual is about to hit the limit, the app will display a warning to those users with a pop-up showing the count, so they can avoid getting blocked from sending messages.
The company told TechCrunch that this test will be live in multiple countries in the coming weeks. It also said that average users won’t usually hit the limit, and their messaging experience won’t be affected. Instead, the controls are designed to be effective against people and businesses that blast messages and spam people.
There are frequently more than 50 unread messages in my WhatsApp inbox when I check it. Many of them come from companies and unidentified individuals when I try to find out who sent them. Since WhatsApp serves as a multipurpose communication medium for markets like India, where I’m based, people around me have had comparable experiences.
WhatsApp has attempted to reduce some of this spammy activity over the past year by implementing tools and safeguards. Limits on the number of marketing communications a corporation can send in a month were first tested by the company in July 2024. It began offering consumers the ability to unsubscribe from company marketing messages in 2024. In this manner, a company can provide them with assistance or updates without spamming them.
WhatsApp began experimenting earlier this year by capping the number of broadcast messages that users and companies could send to other people. According to the corporation, it has begun to expand this experiment in over a dozen countries, including India, which has over 500 million users and is one of its largest marketplaces.
