Today is the official launch of Communities, the new feature that first entered into testing earlier this year. Communities is designed to help organizations, clubs, schools, and other private groups better communicate and stay organized.
Groups of up to 1000 users can be supported by communities.
Ahead of today's launch, some of the features developed for Communities had already made their way to the platform. Larger group sizes, 32-person video calls, and polls will also be supported on the platform.
The new feature is similar to Facebook Groups in that they both support things like sub- groups, file sharing, admin and more. While Facebook Groups are used by disconnected strangers who share a common interest, the Communities are meant to be used by members who are already connected in the real world. Unlike on Facebook, people who join these discussion groups already have some familiarity with one another, as they may have exchanged phone numbers or shared their number with a group admin. The phone numbers will be hidden from the wider community and only visible to admins and others in the same sub- groups as you.
The need to allow other group members to reach you is counterbalanced by the need for privacy. If you don't know every parent on the sports team, but you're comfortable with interacting with them in a private group setting, that's a sub-group of the entire school's Community.
Unlike Facebook Groups, which can be discoverable on the platform, the communities are hidden. You have to be invited to join to get a search feature.
The image is from the app.
admins of existing group chats will be able to transition their group to Communities, if they prefer, or they can re-create their group from scratch. The admin can add members to the groups or send out invites that will allow others to join the community.
Everyone in a community is alert to the most important messages in the main announcement group. The admin has given the go-ahead for members to chat in small sub- groups. It is possible to keep members from being bombarded with messages about events they are not involved in. A sub-group for a volunteer project or planning group could be created where only a few people need to talk.
Telegram and Signal, as well as standard messaging platforms like iMessage, and apps aimed at organizations or schools, could be challenged by the launch of Communities.
The CEO of Meta stated that the company is aiming to raise the bar for how organizations communicate with a level of privacy and security not found elsewhere.
He said that the alternatives available today require trusting apps or software companies with a copy of their messages and that they deserve the higher level of security provided by end-to-end encryption.
The image is from the app.
Concerns remain that Communities like this could facilitate groups that engage in illegal or dangerous behavior, like how Facebook Groups have allowed health and election misinformation to thrive in recent years, stoking the fires that led to events like the January 6 Capitol riot. The company says it will rely on the information it has about the Community, like its name, description and user reports, to decide if action is needed.
If it finds a group is being used to distribute child sexual abuse material, coordinate violence, or engage in human tracking, it will ban the individual Community members and admins, or all the community members. The company said that messages that have already been forwarded will only be able to be forwarded to one group at a time, rather than five.
The company is still trying to rebuild its reputation on the privacy front after the backlash over its policy update last year, which caught the attention of some anti-competition authorities and regulatory bodies. The launch of Communities wouldn't require another policy update, according to the company.
In 15 countries, communities have been testing with over fifty organizations. The feature was rolled out to a small group of people but didn't have a launch date.
Over the next few months, the feature will be available to all users of the app on both phones and tablets.
WhatsApp to launch ‘Communities’ — more structured group chats with admin controls
All Rights Reserved © 2024
