WhatsApp Trials New Feedback Feature to Block Marketing Spam from Unwanted Business Accounts

 

Whatsapp is celebrating a major new milestone after its business accounts crossed the 200M monthly active user mark recently.

Many users have been giving the company feedback about how they’re constantly bombarded with messages arising from sources that they might not be keen on seeing too often. This includes the long list of spam content thrown in their direction in huge amounts.

The marketing spam can really be annoying to those who feel they’ve never signed up for this in the first place. Now, Meta seems to be in the works of ridding this complaint forever after rolling out a new feedback interactions feature to better sort wanted from unwanted messages.  

Before, users could either allow or block business accounts as a whole. Now, the app is testing a new way by which businesses can provide feedback on what they want to see and what they don’t. This will entail a new interested or not interested button that stops or resumes for any specific message or category.

The feature will be tested on users from all over the world where they can select interested or not interested. This would be for offers and announcements. Similarly, users can even put a block on getting the messages as a whole so that in the future, they can go back to the texts if they want to get an offer from a particular brand or during a certain time of the year.

Business accounts can provide messages through the platform’s API depending on any one of the four categories listed which includes marketing, authentication, utilities, and service. In the past, users couldn’t select what they wanted and what they didn’t. 

Now, the change allows them to restrict one category while allowing the others to come in. For example, you might want updates on offers about things you’re interested in purchasing by a certain brand. You could opt to get the messages during a certain time of the year like for the festive season sales or a Black Friday.

This means you’ll get texts about authentication codes for shopping offers but nothing related to marketing spam. It’s like the user picks and chooses what they can and cannot receive instead of the other way around.

The latest interactions feature is clear proof that Meta is keen on listening to users’ feedback and making sure their voices are heard. Before, such options were never there. Remember, many of us were able to unsubscribe to such alerts by email but never through WhatsApp so this is a welcoming change.  

The firm has long been in the works of rolling out new controls related to messages from business accounts. We even saw the company’s VP for product management hint at a similar feature arising in the future while talking at a leading event in India.

WhatsApp says the main goal here is to ensure transparency about interactions and engagement linked to businesses. In case you do not wish to engage, the best way to signal this to the business is to block or report the account. This gives the company the chance to gauge what the user is interested in and what it’s not.

Before, WhatsApp was seen restricting the number of marketing messages that every person could get on a certain day without outlining a specific limit. This went against the app’s own policy of promoting itself as a place to have personal chats.

Then we saw the app roll out broadcast messages, the option to join communities, and even for a business to communicate with customers directly. These come with separate tabs on the app. So it was clear that WhatsApp needed to strike a balance between generating revenue and not bombarding users with spam from business accounts. This feedback feature just might be the change it needed.