As Meta pushes even deeper into businesses on WhatsApp, its biggest bet to monetize the instant-messaging app for more than 2 billion users, we are getting an early glimpse at how user experience might change on the free app. Not great.

Thousands of Indians have complained recently about receiving spam texts from businesses in large numbers. WhatsApp, in India, where the messenger service has 500 million accounts and thus possibly more users than any other competitor, is becoming very much like the very thing that dislodged SMS from India: too many unwanted bulk messages to users' phones.

Thousands of brands in India have enrolled on WhatsApp, consistently hitting eyeballs of more than 80% of users, said a person close to the matter, a figure miles ahead of campaigns run on emails and traditional texts. More annoying, however is that even after having blocked some businesses, many return in the inbox through different phone numbers, says an account of author.

Business WhatsApp is fast turning into WhatsApp for spam. ????
Blocking a couple of accounts every day, these days. PR agencies are also now spamming on WhatsApp. pic.twitter.com/dvgbqx7cz8
 
Just when I thought which brand was missing on my @WhatsApp chats while trying to spam me without my giving them explicit approval to target here, here comes @ChaiPoint_cares pic.twitter.com/1Aq5vXb5pA

WhatsApp is the new spam machine, it has become what it intended to solve with SMS.

Ola / Uber services are no where close to what they were to replace… taxi / cabs.

Every domain, brings up an opportunity to innovate every few years.

Never used @EaseMyTrip but still they went ahead with their spam message. Flipkart did the same earlier this week (bought a TV once). #Whatsapp #Spam pic.twitter.com/yaXsLG3yyw

In many ways, the issue doesn't come as a surprise.

Google offered businesses in India the ability to use RCS to supercharge their communication with customers in the country, the company's biggest market by users. Rich Communication Services, or RCS, is the collective effort of a number of industry players to supercharge the traditional SMS with modern features such as richer texts and end-to-end encryption.

The company had to shut down its service in the country after some of the businesses began abusing the anti-spam policies of the company in order to deliver marketing messages to users in India.
Read more about WhatsApp's rampant spam issue on Rest of the World.

A Meta spokesperson commented:

Messaging is the new way to get business done, better than an e-mail or phone call. Our rule is that people have to ask for updates in order to get them, and before a business can message somebody, we empower people with easy ways to block a business or to report a problem at any time. We constantly work with businesses to make sure that the messages people receive are useful and welcome; we also have limits on how many messages a business can send per day. Getting this right is important for us as well as the businesses and most importantly the people we serve.