Why WhatsApp said ‘sorry’ to IT Minister Rajeev Chandrasekhar

Tagging WhatsApp in a Twitter post, the IT minister asked it to fix the error immediately.

“Dear @WhatsApp – Rqst that u pls fix the India map error asap. All platforms that do business in India and/or want to continue to do business in India , must use correct maps,” the minister wrote in his tweet.

WhatsApp fixed the error and took down the stream. It also deleted the tweet with the wrong map of India. “Thank you Minister for pointing out the unintended error; we have promptly removed the stream, apologies. We will be mindful in the future,” the company tweeted.

This is the second time Rajeev Chandrasekhar has warned a firm using the wrong map of India. Earlier this week, a similar warning was given to Zoom CEO Eric Yuan, after he tweeted a video that wrongly represented the Indian map. “You may want to make sure u use correct maps of the countries u do / want to do business in,” Chandrasekhar wrote in a tweet tagging Zoom CEO.

The tweet was later removed by Yuan who wrote “I recently took down a tweet that many of you had pointed out had issues with the map. Thank you for the feedback!!”.

Meanwhile, the social messaging platform is reportedly working on a feature that will allow users to report status updates in the future. According to a report by WABetaInfo, the alleged feature would let users report a status update within a new menu in the status section. For those unaware, WaBetaInfo is an online platform that tracks new and upcoming features of WhatsApp.

Reportedly, if any WhatsApp user finds a suspicious status update which violates the Terms of Service, users will have the option to report it to the team. The feature is currently under development and could soon be rolled out on WhatsApp Desktop beta.