I have little need for the six features that WhatsApp is offering as a part of WhatsApp Plus. I don’t need a custom app icon, stickers, a different theme for the app, ringtones (my Whatsapp is perpetually on mute and notifications are off, except for my wife), or pinning extra chats: three pinned chats are enough.

What I will gladly pay for:

1. Verified profile, so as to prevent people from impersonating me. It has happened to me once. Happens to a lot of founder friends of mine regularly.
2. Block WhatsApp for Business messages (mostly spam), except for businesses that I approve, instead of businesses that claim to have my approval, alongwith the ability to pause messages from businesses once my transaction is over. Transfer control to the user from the business.
3. Give me broadcast control: Identify who has me on which broadcast list, and give me the ability to exit that list permanently.
4. Give me message control: Allow only my contacts to message me on WhatsApp
5. Autoresponders: for when I’m busy, traveling, especially for when I want to redirect people to someone else. I shouldn’t need to convert my WhatsApp number to a WhatsApp for Business number. I’d like to auto-redirect messages spam (and accounts) from PR agencies to a black hole, but that’s just me. (PR agencies don’t message journalists. They spam them. The key phrase to block there is “on behalf of”).
6. Turn off MetaAI, including auto-refusal of people using MetaAI in chats. I refuse to engage when them: it’s a low-trust environment for me.
7. Persistent web login and agent enablement: allow people and their agents to be persistently be logged in without having to change their number to WhatsApp for Business, or login every 14 days for their agents to retain access to it, and make WhatsApp more programmable with webhooks.

   (Note: I don’t know how compatible having webhooks is with end to end encryption, but the database is unencrypted on device (it is on my Raspberry Pi), so my Hermes agent should be able to play with it on the same device).

Ok, I know the last one is something that a handful of people like me would want, but actually, I don’t think this should be a paid feature. This is how WhatsApp needs to evolve.

My broader point is that what WhatsApp thinks people want, based on its offerings, is bling not utility. That’s a social media mindset. WhatsApp is not Instagram, it’s a messaging app. What people actually want is lower noise, higher signal.

YouTube got this right with YouTube Premium.