The feature will bring together groups of up to 256 users, under larger umbrellas where administrators can send alerts to a community of thousands. Communities could challenge other messaging apps, such as Telegram, which was widely used to communicate in the Russia-Ukraine war, and other private messaging platforms, such as iMessage or Sign. “It’s been clear for some time now that the way we communicate online is changing,” said Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, announcing the news in a post on his public Facebook profile. “Most of us have a laid back attitude when it comes to painting a picture about ourselves and our content. But for a deeper level of interaction, messages have become the center of our digital lives. It’s more intimate and private, and with encryption it’s also more secure. “ The messaging service, which is end-to-end encrypted and has about 2 billion users, said the Communities function will also be end-to-end encrypted. “This is really geared towards communities where you’re already part of your life and doing private communication,” Whatsapp CEO Will Cathcart told Reuters, citing Salesforce-owned Slack or Microsoft Teams as comparable types of communication. . He said there were no current billing plans for the new feature, which is being tested in beta in a small number of global communities, but did not rule out offering “business privileges” in the future.
What are the main features?
WhatsApp has dealt with abuses such as bulk messaging and the spread of misinformation and hate speech. Cathcart said users will not be able to search for different communities on WhatsApp and that it will use anti-abuse tools and safeguards, such as promotion limits for the new feature. WhatsApp said that there will also be changes in the operation of Groups before the release of Communities. He said it adds group managers the ability to delete problematic messages from everyone’s conversation, and administrators can remove people from an entire community group, while users will be able to leave a group silently without everyone being notified of the exit. their. The groups will also receive voice chats for up to 32 people at a time. Communities will also have group features such as emoji responses, file sharing and larger voice calls. Zuckerberg said the Communities would be released in the coming months. He said Meta would set up community messaging features for Facebook, Messenger and Instagram. Meta also plans to develop end-to-end encryption on all other messaging services in its applications as part of its ongoing, declared privacy drive.
