Today, WhatsApp launches Communities, a new feature that offers larger, more structured conversation groups.
Communities add admin controls, support for sub-groups and announcement groups, 32-person phone and video conversations, greater file sharing, emoji reactions, and polls to the messaging platform.
Communities offer end-to-end encryption for up to 1024 users. Some of the features designed for Communities, such as emoji reactions, huge file sharing (up to 2GB), and admin message deletion, were present on WhatsApp before today’s debut. Now, outside of Communities, WhatsApp will offer polls, 32-person video calls, and greater group sizes.
The new feature may be compared to Facebook Groups because they both offer sub-groups, file sharing, and admin functionality. WhatsApp Communities are supposed to be utilized by people who are already connected in real life, unlike Facebook Groups. WhatsApp is phone number-based, thus participants joining discussion groups have already swapped numbers or disclosed them with a group admin. The phone numbers are only shown to admins and people in your subgroups.
This balances users’ privacy needs with the need to be reached by group members. You may not know every parent on your child’s sports team, but you’re probably comfortable conversing with them in a private group environment.
WhatsApp Communities are secret, unlike Facebook Groups. You must be invited to use the search and discovery features.
At launch, admins of existing group chats can convert to Communities or re-create their group as a Community. Admins can add members to groups or issue invite links to the Community.
One major announcement group alerts everyone of crucial messages. Only admin-approved subgroups can chat. This prevents members from receiving communications about unrelated group events. Members may create a chat-only subgroup for a volunteer project or planning group.
Communities might compete with apps like Telegram, Signal, iMessage, GroupMe, Band, TalkingPoints, and Remind for private and big group interactions.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg emphasized the encryption components of the Communities feature, adding the business “aims to elevate the bar for how organizations interact”
“The alternatives accessible today include trusting apps or software companies with a copy of their messages,” he stated.
Communities like this might promote illegal or harmful behavior, similar to how Facebook Groups have allowed health and electoral misinformation to proliferate in recent years, feeding the fires that led to the January 6 Capitol incident. WhatsApp’s attempts to stop such activities seem limited since the company claims it will rely on the Community’s “name, description, and user reports” to determine if action is needed.
If a group is used to transmit child sexual abuse material, coordinate violence, or engage in human tracking, it will ban Community members and admins, disband the Community, or ban all Community members. To curb the misinformation’s spread, the firm would only allow communications to be forwarded to one group at a time, rather than five.
The business is also striving to rehabilitate its privacy reputation after the criticism over its hard-to-understand policy change last year, which grabbed the attention of anti-competition regulators in the EU and India. Later, WhatsApp clarified its regulations and said Communities wouldn’t require another update.
Over 50 groups in 15 countries have tested communities for early input. WhatsApp said in August that it had rolled out the capability to testers but didn’t offer a launch date.
Today, WhatsApp will begin rolling out the feature to all Android and iOS users worldwide over the coming few months.
source: ghscribe.com
