Paytm CEO Vijay Shekhar Sharma has a suggestion for WhatsApp that may benefit you, and netizens love it

Paytm founder and CEO Vijay Shekhar Sharma on Monday offered advice to WhatsApp that could benefit billions of users worldwide who receive spam messages on a daily basis from various sources.

In a post on X, Vijay Shekhar Sharma praised WhatsApp's recently implemented feature of automatically blocking messages from unknown numbers when they arrive in high volume.

The Paytm CEO shared a screenshot of the new WhatsApp feature, which was automatically applied to his number since he appeared to receive a high volume of messages from unknown numbers.

Sharing the screenshot, Sharma wrote, “Thank you @whatsapp.”

However, he did have a suggestion for the Meta-owned messaging platform.

“Can you block spams also like this? Call / messages both. I keep marking messages spam to ‘train the model’ (sic),” he said.

He further stated that he was willing to pay a monthly subscription for spam blocking.

What did netizens say?

Vijay Shekhar Sharma's suggestion attracted multiple ideas from other X users.

“Blue ticks are cool. Red ticks for spam auto-blocked? Cooler,” one user said.

“If WhatsApp nails spam blocking for calls and messages, count me in for the subscription. Training models needs more than 'mark as spam' clicks-actual utility would be game changing,” another commented.

“I guess we need an open whatsapp - like emails, anyone could customise the functionality with their code,” a third user said.

However, some people were not on board with the idea of a paid service.

A person said that WhatsApp should monitor the sender of such spam messages and said consumers should not pay for spam protection.

“Shouldn't this be a part of their service? For someone to receive spam, it has to be sent by someone else. It's a zero sum game. The sender side needs to be monitored, not the receiver. Consumer paying for spam protection is like blackmail, incentivising operator to get more spam.”

“If you want to train the model it's ok. But don't give unnecessary ideas of monthly subscription. People are already barely surviving. You got investor's money doesn't mean all have it with them,” another commented.

WhatsApp's new feature

WhatsApp has recently rolled out a new feature where one can block unknown account messages if the option is turned on.

“WhatsApp will block messages from unknown accounts when they exceed a high volume. During this period, your contacts can message you as usual. Message blocking stops after message rates return to normal,” WhatsApp says on its website.

The platform may also prompt you to enable this feature if you receive a high volume of unknown messages. You have the freedom to turn the feature on or off.

One can enable or disable the feature by going to Settings and then selecting Privacy.

Under the Advanced option, turn “block unknown account messages” on or off.