Meta (ex Facebook) has just announced the creation of “Communities” on WhatsApp to meet the needs of closed groups who require more tools to structure and manage their conversations, according to a press release made public this weekend.
These types of groups usually have connections between people who know each other and are organized around a common location or interest.
Parents at a school, local clubs and even restricted workplaces now rely on WhatsApp as their main means of informing those around them, “these groups need private means of communication, separate from social media, but offering more tools to facilitate real-time conversations than email or broadcast-only channels,” the statement added.
+ Empower administrators +
These new tools allow administrators to manage conversations within their private groups. Admins are responsible for creating and managing communities on WhatsApp, “they can choose which groups will be part of their community by forming new groups or linking pre-existing groups,” the statement said.
Community admins will also have the ability to unlink groups from the community and remove community members entirely.
Additionally, group admins will be able to delete inappropriate or abusive conversations or media for all members of a group.
+ Giving users more control over their conversations +
In addition to providing new tools for administrators, users can control their interactions within communities. Existing settings allow users to decide who can add them to a group – and these settings will also apply to groups in communities.
Users will also be able to easily report abuse, block accounts and leave communities they no longer want to be part of, let’s also add the option to silently leave a group, so that all its members are not notified when some decide that the conversation does not suits them more.
+ Reasonable limits on the size, visibility and transfer of messages +
While other apps offer unlimited group chats, WhatsApp focuses its product development on meeting the needs of organizations and other groups where many people already know each other.
Unlike social media and other messaging services, WhatsApp will not support the ability to search or discover new communities on its service, according to the same source.
To limit interference and overload, only community administrators will be able to send messages to all members of the community – this is called the community announcement group.
Community members can chat with each other in small groups that administrators have created or approved.
With the introduction of Communities, messages that have already been forwarded will only be able to be forwarded to one group at a time, instead of five, which is the current forwarding limit, this will significantly reduce the spread potentially dangerous misinformation within community groups.
+ End-to-end encryption and privacy on phone numbers +
Given the private nature of discussions within these tight-knit Communities, WhatsApp will continue to protect messages with end-to-end encryption so that only members of the respective groups can see them without anyone else. This security technology protects sensitive conversations between organizations, workplaces and personal groups.
To protect user privacy, the phone number will be hidden from the entire community and will only be visible to community admins and members of the same group as you. This will prevent unwanted contact and also reduce the risk of retrieving member phone numbers.
+ Take action once morest abusive communities +
These new measures and controls are designed to allow community admins to address issues within their groups, since they know them best. We will also continue to encourage users to report problematic communities and posts directly to us.
“Where we become aware of communities engaging in abuse such as spreading child pornography or coordinating violence or human trafficking, WhatsApp will ban community members or administrators, disband a community, or ban all members of a community,” the statement said.
And to add that “We will rely on all available unencrypted information, including the name of the Community, its description and user reports, to determine if a member of the Community has committed abuse.
WhatsApp will continue to expand its support for Communities in the months and years to come and, as always, we will continue to listen carefully to user feedback on how we can help users connect privately, safely and securely.” .
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