WhatsApp reveals ‘Communities’, adding Structured Group Chats with greater emphasis on Admin Controls and Privacy.

Months after its initial announcement, WhatsApp has finally unveiled the next big update of its widely popular messaging app with the implementation of a new feature called Communities. Designed to usher in a new era for the WhatsApp platform, Communities aims to allow users to bring together multiple groups, that will be known as sub-groups, under one larger structure which will be given the titular name ‘Community’. Through this the Company aims to give greater functionality to group chats and introduce added improvements such as Emoji Reactions, 32-Person Voice Calls and 2 Gigabyte File Sharing.

Early Vision

Recognizing the fact that the way people communicate online is changing, the Company heeded the feedback of their users and realized that there was a growing desire in people to join, communicate and coordinate within a Community that does not necessarily have to adhere to elements related to Social Media Platforms such as Facebook or Instagram. This, added with the steady increase in WhatsApp usage during the Pandemic, the Company acknowledged that Organizations such as Schools, Universities and Non-Profit Organizations now openly rely on WhatsApp to communicate and share information in a quick and secure manner. With this sentiment along with their app’s end-to-end encryption services, the Company began readying Communities in order to continue connecting users through the power of messaging on a much larger scale.

New Admin Tools

One of the aspects of Communities is giving more control to Group Admins, in light of this WhatsApp is building new Tools and putting forth Resources on how to best utilize these Tools, for their Admins. Since Admins will be in complete control of creating and managing Communities, they will therefore have the ability to either individually add members to Communities or simply share an Invite Link, similarly Admins can also remove any member from a Community or unlink a sub-group entirely. Furthermore, Admins will only have the power to share announcements with all sub-groups in a Community, compared to the Users who can only communicate inside a sub-group of which they are a member of.

WhatsApp has also put forth a limit on Message Forwards. With the introduction of Communities, now messages that have already been forwarded will only be able to be forwarded to one group at a time compared to five groups as is the case right now on the app. This was done in order to reduce the amount of spam and misinformation that remain prevalent in groups on WhatsApp, which is expected to significantly reduce the amount of overloaded and convoluted messages in groups as well.

User Interactions and Security Measures

Besides empowering the Admins, several User options will be introduced with the Communities update. Adding on top of an existing setting, Users will be able to decide who can add them to Communities as well. Leaving Communities, Blocking Accounts and Reporting Abuse options will also be readily available. Moreover, the ability to silently leave a Community without notifying other members will also be implemented.

In terms Privacy, WhatsApp will continue to uphold the aspects highlighted in their end-to-end encryption service when it comes to messages, therefore Users’ phone number will remain hidden from all other sub-groups in the Community except from the Admins and the sub-groups of which the User is a member of. Under severe circumstances, if reported of abusive crimes WhatsApp has the authority to either ban an Individual Community member, ban an Admin or disband the whole Community altogether.

As of right now, there is no news of when the Communities features will be made live for the General Public. Currently the feature is in its testing phase and is only made available with a limited number of Communities for the primary purpose of attaining more Feedback prior to a Worldwide launch.