{"id":1018725,"date":"2026-07-03T09:49:47","date_gmt":"2026-07-03T04:19:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/?p=1018725"},"modified":"2026-07-03T10:36:15","modified_gmt":"2026-07-03T05:06:15","slug":"explainer-why-whatsapps-new-username-feature-has-sparked-controversy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/2026\/07\/03\/explainer-why-whatsapps-new-username-feature-has-sparked-controversy\/","title":{"rendered":"Explainer: Why WhatsApp\u2019s new username feature has sparked controversy"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>WhatsApp has announced plans to roll out a username feature later this year, allowing those on its platform to communicate without sharing their phone numbers. The Meta-owned messaging platform maintains that the feature is aimed at enhancing privacy, particularly in group chats and interactions with new contacts. The company has already opened early reservations for usernames.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>WhatsApp has announced plans to roll out a username feature later this year, allowing those on its platform to communicate without sharing their phone numbers. The Meta-owned messaging platform maintains that the feature is aimed at enhancing privacy, particularly in group chats and interactions with new contacts. The company has already opened early reservations for usernames.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,92,24],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1018725","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-newspapers","category-telecom-the-tribune","category-the-tribune"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1018725","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1018725"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1018725\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1018735,"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1018725\/revisions\/1018735"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1018725"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1018725"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1018725"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}