WhatsApp Communities Feature Aims To Unite Groups In One Place

WhatsApp announced the WhatsApp Communities Feature a few days back in a blog post. The new Communities feature will unite multiple groups under one mega group. It will try to remove all miscommunication that happens within a large organization with many groups.

What are WhatsApp Communities?

WhatsApp Communities is like a mega-group under which all smaller groups of an organization will reside. The feature will make it easier to manage communication across similar groups and maintain transparency. Moreover, it will give granular control to administrators who can oversee and tackle all the problems within an organization.

Features

WhatsApp Communities will have numerous useful features such as:

Greater Control

Administrators of communities can exercise greater control over groups and their members. Admins will be able to add or remove members in a group and also link or unlink a group from a community. They will be able to filter out redundant messages and even delete the ones that are unnecessary.

End-to-end Encryption

Like one-on-one messages, WhatsApp Communities will also have an end-to-end encryption feature. WhatsApp will encrypt all chats with E2EE to ensure better privacy. Moreover, it will prevent sensitive information from leaking out of the communities. Users’ phone numbers won’t be visible to anyone except fellow group members and admins. So, even if you are a part of the community, no one can see your number unless you allow them.

Limits on Message Forwarding and Finding Communities

Users cannot search for communities and send requests to join them. WhatsApp communities are closed and focused groups that cannot be found on the platform. Only an admin can add you or a group to a community.

Moreover, there are message forwarding limits within communities. Admins can make a general announcement for all sub-groups. But users cannot forward a message to more than one group at a time.

Penalizing Abusive Communities

WhatsApp will adopt a stern approach to managing communities. If any of them violates the policies, users can report such users or even groups. WhatsApp will only use unencrypted information and user reports to analyze the wrongdoings in a community. The E2EE feature restricts access to private chats and group chats. So, the only option is to report a community.

WhatsApp communities will slowly roll out to users. Participants of the beta program may get to try it out earlier though. WhatsApp also added emoji replies and many other features this year.