I built a Chrome extension for someone last week. It worked perfectly.
Too perfectly. The number got blocked.
Here's what happened:
My client runs ads across multiple countries. Inquiries flood in on WhatsApp — Arabic & Spanish — and he's manually copy-pasting everything into Google Translate, typing replies, pasting them back.
Then comes a voice note. In Arabic. And he's stuck.
So I built him something that sits right inside WhatsApp Web:
— Auto-translates every incoming message below the original
— Transcribes and translates voice notes
— Lets him type in English and sends the reply in the customer's language
Worked beautifully. For exactly one day.
Then the number got banned.
Turns out WhatsApp's spam detection flags automated sending patterns — non-human input timing, no natural keystroke events, programmatic send triggers.
Even if you're sending legitimate business replies, the moment a script touches the send button, the algorithm sees a bot.
So I'm rebuilding the reply flow.
The translation and transcription stays fully automatic.
But for sending, the user now copies the translated reply with one click and pastes it manually.
One extra step. But the number stays alive.
Strange constraint. But it's the constraint.
Renaming the product. Fixing the flow this week. Next post will have the live demo.
P.S. If you're running WhatsApp for business and switching between tabs to translate — there's a better way coming.