WhatsApp user agent
Closed this issue · 5 comments
hi guys, congratulations for the great work!
In our application, we need to identify when content is being shared on WhatsApp. I noticed that you have a bot identifier for Facebook (
), but no one for whatsapp.Would it make sense to add a check for WhatsApp and classify it as a bot?
More information about WhatsApp's user agent: https://developers.facebook.com/docs/whatsapp/link-previews/
Mh... “facebookexternalhit” is - as I understand it - the website that loads a link preview as a separate instance.
In the case of WhatsApp, however, this is not a separate instance, but the built-in browser in WhatsApp for a preview, right?
WhatsApp would definitely make sense as an additional entry. But I'm not sure whether it's a browser or a bot.
I’m not sure if WhatsApp has a specific browser on Android, I guess it uses chorme under the hood, in this case I’m referring to the preview when sending or typing a message
The user agent is not 100% accurate anyway. There are enough other examples that have exactly the same case.
We have actually seen “bots” as independent applications, for example crawlers. And at least that's how I understood the Facebook stuff (so far).
Somehow I don't see browser and bot fitting here. Maybe another type here?
@gfoidl do you have an opinion on this?
With curl, we also have our own type for tools (one entry). Should we perhaps create a new type here or just define WhatsApp as crawler here and add it as bot?
just define WhatsApp as crawler here and add it as bot?
That's what I'd do.
suggestion:
- Add
WhatsAppas robot
result:
- identified as bot
but:
- no version check (we dont have this for bots today)
- no platform check (we dont have this for bots today)