What do you make of people disabling blue ticks on WhatsApp?

[fnb]

What makes people go into the settings to specifically disable this feature?

I don't know what difference it makes. Most people read their messages straight away on the preview, then later open the message when they want to reply. So you don't need the blue tick to know that someone has read your message - they have.

I believe the privacy functions do not apply to group chats. If you press ‘info’ the sender can also see all members who have read their message too, which I don’t like lol

I don't like the fact that if you block someone but they are in the same group as you, you can still see their group messages. You want to stay in the group (eg a hobby) but have to see the annoying person's messages.

Even if you don't get the blue ticks I assume it's been seen via notifications etc.

How do you do this?

These are things that are important to the person RECEIVING the message. I suppose that yes, I'll have to send a second message telling the person confirm receipt because they won't put the blue ticks on. It's just a bit selfish to put the onus on the person getting information TO you.

How would that work otherwise though? You'd see everyone else's replies, but you wouldn't know what they're replying to.

It annoys me if I notice people have it disabled. I think- you don’t have to worry whether I’m stalking you to see if you’re online/ hunt you down if you don’t reply. Just answer when you want.

Because I don't want colleagues to see whether or not I have actually read a message as this creates an expectation (in their mind) that I should act on it immediately. It's particularly an issue with colleagues in the Middle East where there seems to be no concept of non-working hours. Luckily our email and messaging system (Slack) does not have read receipts but they will often resort to WhatsApp if you are marked as away on Slack.

But presumably you aren't their sole WhatsApp contact, and it's highly unlikely they altered their settings because they think you, specifically, are a bunnyboiler?

I only recently found out what the blue tick meant. I find it strange that someone is anxiously watching their phone and taking note when their message is read, unless its an emergency. But then if its am emergency surely you'd ring? I pick up my phone once or twice a day to catch up and I certainly could do without the pressure of a phone addict stressing about the speediness of my reply.

If I see that there are no blue ticks, then I'm presuming the person might also not answer the phone, but I really, really resent to having to resort to calling or texting someone because they've disabled the blue ticks. I call people as little as I can and that's the general trend these days.

Yes that’s a good point. One person I know has the blue ticks disabled, but we are now in another WhatsApp group together and she has the blue ticks on. So now I think maybe you can select which chats do and don’t have them.

No, you can’t turn them off for group chats. All group chats will go to blue ticks once everyone in the group has read the message, regardless of whether individuals have the privacy setting enabled or not.

I like my privacy. The whole location on, read, "this person is typing" nonsense, I find terribly intrusive. I will read and respond in my own time, from an undisclosed location.

I did this because my manager sometimes texts me on WhatsApp (quite often actually) and I want to pretend I’ve not seen her work related messages when it’s outside of my working hours.

I have it disabled because people get weird over you not replying to messages immediately. And it's nobody's business when I'm online or whether I've read their message yet.

This explains it. Her ticks are turned off in our one to one WhatsApps but not in the group we are both in.

I didn't know you could. I will do it now though! I hate the way people police whether or not you left them on read or replied fast enough.

Blue ticks off for me, I don't want the pressure of feeling I have to reply immediately. It's useful in a group chat though to see whose read what

I have all these things switched off
I don't understand why they exist

With WhatsApp, I think it was just automatic to me to switch it off like switching off read receipts for emails at work. There's a difference between just seeing the email or your cursor hit the email - and actually having read and process the email.

I find it really controlling that somebody wants to know that much tbh.

I also saw a friend getting really worked up when she wanted a favour from someone and saw that they had read the message but hadn't replied and I thought, must make sure I've switched that off.

Hopefully, I don't know anyone who gets worked up about it - no one's ever mentioned it.

Life is too short to bother with this

Genuinely, why does anyone care or judge if these things are disabled? Must a person have their phone welded to them and reply based on the time it takes for another’s anxiety to peak over 2 blue ticks? It’s a message not a summons and I assume most people appreciate their privacy. This judging others for turning on their privacy settings is weird.

This.
Or they’re avoiding a difficult ex.

I always mean to turn all of this off but actually have found that having them on has simply trained everyone I know to lower their expectations re: replying quickly. Because I never do. It doesn't matter if they can see me online, they still don't expect a reply.

Also it doesn't mean anything. I use WhatsApp web a lot and I think it shows me as default online if the tab is open. Even though I haven't been at my laptop for an hour.