Centre to review messaging platforms’ response on notice over username feature

IT Secretary S. Krishnan said that responses to notices sent to messaging platforms on their username feature, and to Meta on child sexual abuse material, had both been received by the Ministry over the weekend.

Mr. Krishnan said that those responses are under consideration and indicated that the government would spend around a week on the review.

WhatsApp’s username feature — which allows users to be contacted or to contact others without sharing a phone number — had raised concerns in the government that this feature could be used for impersonation and scams.

Meta has pushed back on those concerns, saying that the WhatsApp feature would be rolled out with a PIN safeguard, and that users who send too many strangers messages would be automatically blocked, as is already the case.

Arattai, the Zoho Corp.-owned WhatsApp competitor, has disabled its username feature as this review gets underway.

On the CSAM issue, Meta said in a blog post that while it has deployed technology to detect people posting CSAM, it is “in a constant battle with criminals who hide among our 3.5 billion users and try to evade our detection.” The government’s notice and Meta’s response follow a BBC report that found multiple suggestive ads directing users to CSAM content outside of Instagram.