It has only been three days since WhatsApp has talked about withdrawing the May 15th deadline of accepting the new privacy policy. The service also suggested that people who do not accept the new changes will not have their accounts deleted by WhatsApp, but did mention that the app will have restricted functionality. However, at that time, we were not sure about what the restricted functionality is going to be.

WhatsApp has now shared some clarification about what the restricted functionality is going to be, and from the looks, things are dire, and I am sure there will be another backlash over this.

WhatsApp Moves to Authoritarian Approach to Make People Accept New Privacy Policy

If you head over to the FAQ page, you will see what happens if you fail to act on WhatsApp's reminders. At first, I thought the limited functionality would not be drastic, but here is what will happen.

You won’t access your chat list, but you can still answer incoming phone and video calls. If you have notifications enabled, you can tap on them to read or respond to a message or call back a missed phone or video call.After a few weeks of limited functionality, you won’t be able to receive incoming calls or notifications, and WhatsApp will stop sending messages and calls to your phone.

It does not take a genius to tell that WhatsApp is essentially taking away all the rights from you, and such behavior is definitely not something you would expect from service this old. I feel this will cause a bigger backlash as opposed to the one that took place back when WhatsApp announced the new changes.

With that said, there is still no word on how long WhatsApp is going to give you before they start crippling the app's functionality. We are hoping there is an official statement from the service regarding this.