A lot of WhatsApp users must have experienced the hassle of being added to unwanted groups. Being part of these groups was always annoying, but what made the experience more difficult was the process of exiting. Many users simply learnt to live with the unwarranted groups since they couldn’t exit without hurting friends and emotions.
Worse, at times users exited groups only to be re-added moments later.
This, however, is set to change.
With focus on privacy, the Facebook owned messaging giant is likely to roll-out a fresh update that would allow users to prevent people from adding them to unwanted WhatsApp groups.
Earlier this April, WhatsApp rolled out a new feature that gave users more control over group chats. This feature prevented the users from being added to groups automatically. The company is now updating this feature with a new ‘blacklist’ option, if a report on trusted WABetaInfo is anything to go by.
According to WABetaInfo, WhatsApp is testing a new ‘My Contacts Except’ option for group chats.
Once rolled out, WhatsApp will let users choose between ‘Everyone’, ‘My Contacts’ and ‘Nobody’ from the list of options for joining groups. Selecting ‘Nobody’ will trigger a group invitation sent to the user that expires in three days. It is expected to give the users complete control and allow them to decide who can add them to WhatsApp groups, the report suggested.
With the new update, WhatsApp is likely to replace ‘Nobody’ with ‘My Contacts Except’. That way, new users will need to manually select people they wish to block from adding them to groups. That said, the process remains the same and users who have been blacklisted will have to send a group invite instead of directly adding users to any group they please.
This new feature is still under testing for beta users on Android and iOS. The default setting continues to remain ‘Everyone’ for groups. In order to change this, users will need to go to Settings -> Account -> Privacy -> Groups.
The public release of this feature has not been announced by the company yet.
