The WhatsApp Unveil new features, Thursday, April 14, starting with the highly anticipated launch of “Communities”, which will allow its managers to gather several discussion groups in the same place and thus address a large number of people. Messaging, owned by the US company Meta (Facebook, Instagram), aims to meet the needs of Certain structures, such as schools, local associations, or non-profit organizationsWorld Health Organization “Now rely on WhatsApp to communicate securely and organize themselves”. The new feature must be tested for two months before it can be released internationally.
Today, WhatsApp chat groups are still limited to 256 people. But, from now on, societies will make it possible to bring together several groups that are in the same place, such as parents of pupils from different classes of the same school for example. Like the virtual bulletin board, administrators will only be able to send messages that, like traditional messages, will be end-to-end encrypted.
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Communities can also be used for business. “If a restaurant wants to form a group to share their menus or send out promotions, they can do so.”Jyoti Sood pointed out, before explaining that Meta wasn’t planning on it “make income” communities.
In addition, WhatsApp will develop discussion groups, the backbone of its work:
- Like the Facebook interaction panel, users will now be able to reply to messages using emoji buttons;
- The size of shared files will be expanded to 2 GB and the maximum number of participants in a voice call will be increased to 32 people;
- Officials Groups will be able to delete inappropriate or problematic messages for all discussion members.This enhances their mediating role.
These new possibilities will be published “in the coming weeks”According to the press release, Telegram channels are reminiscent of Telegram, the Russian messaging system that allows broadcasting messages to a large audience, on channels open to the public or in private discussions that require an invite.
However, on WhatsApp, content can only be moved to one group at a time, to avoid the phenomenon of spam. Users will also not be able to search for the communities they want to join in messaging: they must be part of a group, and therefore have been added by the administrator. Telegram allows conversations to hundreds of thousands of people; WhatsApp Communities will continue to be a private messaging service that allows people to communicate privately with people or groups close to them.”Cristina Lunegro, a spokeswoman for WhatsApp, explained, citing Agence France-Presse.
Meta has been widely criticized for moderation and transparency issues with its social networks, but also with messaging systems like WhatsApp, which are more opaque because the exchanges are private and encrypted. The messenger, which has more than two billion users worldwide in February 2020, has often been criticized for being a space for the circulation of “fake news”.
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