There is growing evidence that WhatsApp could be developing a Communities feature. The possibility was first discovered by XDA Developers in October. Now WABetaInfo has similar findings.
WABetaInfo claims that the Communities feature gives group administrators more control over groups. This feature allows you to create groups within your groups. It may also allow you to arrange channels under a Discord community.
Administrators might be able invite new users through a Community Invite link and then start messaging others. Although it is difficult to predict how these chats will look, WABetaInfo points out that they appear end-to-end encrypted.
This subtle design change may also help to distinguish Communities from regular group chats. WABetaInfo has pointed out that community icons will be squares with round corners. This is a design WhatsApp misunderstoodly enabled in October, and then quickly disabled. It is not known when Communities will officially roll out.
WhatsApp is working on a Communities feature to bridge the gap that exists between it and other messaging apps, like Signal and Telegram. WhatsApp's privacy policies were changed earlier this year. This caused confusion among users and led to a mass exodus from other messaging apps. Telegram gained 70 million users last month after WhatsApp and the entire Facebook network of apps went down.
