I had never used the feature a lot so I didn't know what was the behavior.
I just tested, there's no red dot, it just shows you the number of unread messages, which is really not attention catching (I actually had 2 unread messages there for months and had never noticed before).
> Unless you're in some A-B test I definetely don't have this option on my Privacy setting. Just Triple checked.
https://i.imgur.com/GRLMjGh.png
Just took this screenshot. It's also not new, my girlfriend has been using it for years.
> I'm not even sure how to respond to this, if you're privilleged enough to say this, good for you. I'm definetely not.
I can't see any demographic that can't afford to leave a family discussion on WhatsApp, especially one with people that they don't want to talk to.
As for work conversations, unless you work a job where you're not on a computer all day, which is probably less than 1% of the commenters of HN, there is a more work-appropriate tool for communication that your company is already using.