WhatsApp Creates A “Community” Feature To Make It Easy For Moderators To Manage Multiple Groups

WhatsApp will create a Community feature. (photo: doc. unsplash)

JAKARTA – WhatsApp is working on a new Community feature that will make it easier for moderators to manage groups on the instant messaging platform. This company owned by Meta Inc. has been increasing the pace recently in terms of adding new features, which include functionality as well as privacy aspects.

Just a few weeks ago, WhatsApp launched a new tool that allows users to encrypt their chat backups in the cloud. With the launch, WhatsApp covered one fundamental security flaw that many users had been asking to fix for years. Moreover, it is now possible to transfer WhatsApp chat history from iPhone to Android phone without any problems.

Now, reliable WhatsApp update tracker WABetaInfo has seen the “breadcrumbs” of another feature in development called Community. First discovered by the folks at XDA Developers in the app's code, the screenshot offers a hint of what a Community is.

The feature is currently in development for iOS and Android, but is likely limited at this point to an internal testing phase only and is not widely available through the public beta channel.

WhatsApp currently allows 256 users in one group. So if the admin wants to add more people to the group, they are out of luck. The only solution in this scenario is to send the same information into multiple groups one at a time, which is a pain. This is where Communities might be able to help, as they will likely allow admins to manage multiple groups from one place.

Despite the name, Communities do not have any social media aspect, unlike Groups which users can follow on Facebook. All chats that occur in the community are end-to-end encrypted, just like private conversations. However, it's unclear whether the Community feature will work differently for regular and business accounts.

WhatsApp recently changed some rules about sharing data for chats with business accounts, but the policy change has come under widespread criticism from users. Based on the little data that can be drawn from the report and accompanying screenshots, it appears that the Community will follow a group-in-group approach.

An admin seems to be able to create or export multiple groups in a Community and manage them with some advanced tools that haven't been detailed yet. The report says, “admins can send messages in this group chat and they will be able to group together several groups related to the community: for example, a degree program can be considered a community, and all of its teaching classes are groups that belong to this community.

As with any feature in development, the end result may look different from the screenshot. Apart from the Community, WhatsApp is also testing the extension of the 'Delete for everyone' timeout.

In the current iteration, the feature allows the sender to delete messages within an hour, eight minutes, and 16 seconds of sending them. WhatsApp plans to extend that arbitrary timeout to an indefinite span of time that could be days, weeks, or even months after sending the message.