In WhatsApp beta for Android number 2.24.9.14 some users have something new that could raise some privacy controversy: a small list of friends who have recently been online.
As you can see in the screenshot below, published by the usual WABetaInfo, on the page that appears when you press the button to create a new chat there is also a section “recently online“, where some contacts who have recently been active on WhatsApp are suggested.
Let’s make it clear that this is not a exhaustive list of all recently active friends, but only of suggestions based on WhatsApp algorithms, the precise dynamics of which are unknown to us. Based on what the source reported, however, it seems that if a user has set that his last login cannot be seen by anyone, his name will not appear among the suggestions.
The idea of WhatsApp may be to help understand who has been active recently, perhaps with the aim of starting a conversation or not callbut in fact it is still a type of suggestion that is very much an end in itself.
Since it is not a complete list, perhaps the person we are interested in contacting has been online recently but is simply not shown. And in any case, if we wanted to start a chat/call with someone, it matters little whether it was active or not: in the case of a conversation the recipient will reply when he can, and in the case of a call perhaps it will be the ringing of the phone that calls him back.
Since seeing the status online is always a controversial topicgetting involved with something like that for a function of which we struggle to find real utility It doesn’t seem like the best idea in the world to us. Maybe WhatsApp will also think the same way and will retrace its steps before releasing the feature permanently.
