Somalia joins India in protesting WhatsApp's move to usernames

Somalia's government has backed India's objections to Meta Platforms' decision to let WhatsApp users find each other by username instead of phone number. Somalia is now the second national government in a week to formally ask the company to explain the new feature.

What feature sparked the dispute

Meta-owned WhatsApp has started rolling out the ability to add contacts by username without revealing a phone number, something Telegram and Signal have supported for a long time. For years, the phone number served as the only identifier for the service's more than two billion users: to message someone, you had to know their number, which automatically put a barrier in the way of random contacts and spam.

• Meta has started rolling out username-based login and contact search in WhatsApp in place of phone numbers
• India was the first to formally ask Meta to clarify the change
• Somalia became the second government in a week to join the protest
• The dispute now spans two continents: Asia and Africa

Why governments are worried

For a long time, the phone number acted as WhatsApp's built-in identity verification mechanism. It is tied to a SIM card and, by extension, to a carrier and to the passport details that most countries collect when a SIM is purchased. Regulators argue that switching to usernames makes it harder for law enforcement and for the platform itself to track scammers, spam campaigns, and potentially dangerous content, because users can change a username at will, create several at once, and avoid linking it to any real-world documents.

What this means for Meta

India is WhatsApp's largest market by user count, and Meta has historically taken complaints from Indian regulators very seriously. The company has repeatedly adjusted the service's policies to meet New Delhi's demands, from content moderation rules to disclosing the origin of mass-forwarded messages. Somalia's move shows that concern over usernames isn't limited to a single market or a single threat model. Countries make different arguments against anonymization, ranging from fraud to national security, but they reach the same conclusion: many regulators consider a phone number a safer means of identification than an arbitrary handle.

How this compares with other markets

WhatsApp isn't the only Meta service to draw regulatory pushback over changes to user identification. The company constantly balances ordinary users' demand for privacy against governments' demands for transparency in communications. In countries with high rates of messenger-based fraud or a history of extremist activity, the phone number has traditionally been seen as a minimal but still effective barrier against anonymous abuse. Local authorities therefore see dropping it not as a technical improvement but as a potential risk.

What it means

Even a narrow interface change in a messenger with a billion-plus audience instantly turns into an international regulatory dispute. Meta will either have to rework the username feature to meet individual countries' requirements or face restrictions on WhatsApp in places where regulators treat the phone number as a matter of national security.