WhatsApp has started showing channel admins how many people opened each update, as a counter sitting inside the message bubble and climbing while followers arrive. WABetaInfo reported the rollout on 27 July across current Android and iOS builds. WhatsApp's own launch blog from June 2023, headlined "A Private Way to Follow What Matters", already said the thing that makes such a counter possible: "Given the aim of Channels is to reach a wide audience, channels are not end-to-end encrypted by default." That sentence was published by the company on day one and describes an architectural choice rather than a leak. The counter lands five months after Meta took Promoted Channels global.What the counter showsAbout The AuthorAt heart, I am a storyteller drawn to the watershed moments that bend the technology landscape. I braid narrative with data, humanise statistics, and trace the arc from first spark to world-changing impact. My reportage, features and reviews are witty, sardonic, visual and vivid, using anecdote to illuminate rather than eviscerate.
As a technology journalist with over sixteen years of experience, I have travelled the world and the seven seas, covered every major tech conference worth its lanyard, chronicled the defining breakthroughs of the last decade and a half, and played a pivotal role in launching some of India’s most important technology publishing platforms across web, print and TV.
