In what appeared to be a hopeful challenge to Slack, the social messaging app WhatsApp revealed in April that it was working on a new ‘Communities’ feature, a method for different groups to come “under one umbrella.” The function is now accessible to beta testers.
Over the past few months, the Meta-owned messaging platform has gradually rolled out incremental enhancements, including Communities, 512-person groups, 32-person video chats, a 2GB file-sharing limit increase, emoji replies, and “last seen” statuses that enable you to hide it from specific people.
If you already have the function available to you, you can add up to 10 groups under one community. According to WhatsApp, Communities is now available in “restricted countries.” Communities also offer group administrators more authority; they can ban members and delete posts they feel are “errant or troublesome.” Within that Community, members may also split off into more compact discussion groups.
Communities will show up on a separate page on the app, claims WABetaInfo. A screenshot of the app’s Communities tab, which normally replaces the camera icon, was also uploaded on the website.
End-to-end encryption will be added to the Communities feature, WhatsApp revealed to Mashable in April. However, remember the controversy around WhatsApp’s revised privacy policy from the previous year.
Upcoming improvements that WhatsApp is working on include the ability to secretly end group chats (without the fuss that inevitably occurs when you leave).
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