Dear WhatsApp — I am an Admin and not Spammer

I am the admin of the Startup Community where 1000+ members are present. I am also an IITian with 15+ yrs of experience. I manage a large community of entrepreneurs and developers.

But

In 24 hours, Whatsapp blocked me and unblocked me 3 times.

Here is the story of the “Half Backed Community feature of Whatsapp”

This entire blog is sectioned into 2 parts.

1. How/Why did WhatsApp block and unblocked me?
2. What changes it needs?

How I flagged

Around 2 pm, I gave this message & 7pm, It restored the account

They blocked and unblocked me 3 times.

When we create Whatsapp Community, The Announcement Group (AG) is automatically created. This is the villain of our story.

An Announcement Group is a group, where a member of your Groups automatically added. The worst part about this AG.

• No members can post in this group. only admin can
• Members are added automatically by Whatsapp but It will show a message like — “Narendra Sisodiya added you”.
• Let's suppose, I have 5 groups, I am adding these groups one by one to the main community and Imagine some members present in all 5 groups. when I add the first group, they see a message that Narendra added them to the group. they leave the Announcement Group. I add the 2nd group and they see the message that Narendra again added to the same group that they just left.
• As an Admin, I really HATE Annocement group (AG) but there is no option to remove it or disable it.

This is how the Announcement group looks like on a normal user’s screen.

WHY there is a REPORT group option present?

I am not creating this announcement group. There is no option to delete it. But members of the community can “report” it. This is stupid.

I am flooded with such messages that I am adding them to some groups.

They are already part of Whatsapp Group where I am admin. Now I added the Group to the Community.

So, when I add a Group to the community, all these 1000 members get notifications.

Suggestion 1 — Announcement Groups (AG) must be optional. Members should not report the AG.

What does my Whatsapp inbox look like?

Let's suppose, your community has 7 groups. Members of one group can request to join other groups.

So they send messages to the admin to add them to a different group from the same community.

If you see carefully, There are too many messages like

Can you please add me to the group?

Let’s see, what exactly this message looks like

As an admin, I have to click on the “Add to Group” button, but the most user has a setting by which I can’t add them (on their request). I need to send them an invite link or invitation.

2 Problems here

• I got 100+ requests, and I was adding them one by one, but then the system triggered me as Spammer Because technically I am adding unknown people to the groups. Adding unknown members to groups should NOT be treated as spam (if they request).
• For many users — I can’t add directly, I have to send them an ‘invite link’ or invitation`. So, technically, I need to send exact same messageto a large number of people. This can again be treated as Spam.

So, Whatsapp must update its automatic trigger system.

Solution?

Users from one group should be able to join automatically from one group to another, without any admin request. I am not able to use my mobile, My iPhone becomes slow every time I update iOS and with so many messages, My Whatsapp is so slow.

Member from one WhatsApp group should be able to join Other group, without any permission.

All Suggestion!

Let me repeat what changes we need in the WhatsApp community.

• While creating a community, we should get options to disable the Announcement group.
• Member should get some message like this — “You are already part of X group and X group is part of Y community. Do you want to join Y announcement group?”
• Members from one group should be able to join other groups in the same community. Why does the admin need to approve 100+ messages?
• Spam rules need to be revisited in the context of a Community where large members are present.

If you know someone in Whatsapp Team, Kindly send this blog to them.