WhatsApp is rolling out usernames globally, which means you can finally chat with strangers without giving them your phone number. Instead, you’ll give them a username. Problem solved. Your privacy is now protected by the same mechanism that protects your email address: absolutely nothing.
The feature is being hailed as a privacy win. Users can now connect with people they’ve never met using a handle instead of their actual digits. This is progress, apparently. It’s also the digital equivalent of wearing a mask to a surveillance camera convention—you’re still being recorded, just with slightly better optics.
Meta owns WhatsApp. Meta also owns the largest advertising network on the planet. Meta knows your phone number, your location history, your contact list, and probably what you had for breakfast. But sure, hide your digits behind a username. The username that’s tied to your phone number. The phone number Meta already has.
The rollout happens over the next few months, which gives Meta plenty of time to figure out how to monetize usernames. They already know how to monetize everything else. A username is just another data point, another vector for inference, another angle on the profile they’ve already built.
Meanwhile, people will feel genuinely relieved. They’ll think they’ve won something. They’ll tell their friends about this privacy feature from the company that literally invented the targeted ad industrial complex. The absurdity isn’t that WhatsApp added usernames. It’s that we’re grateful.