WhatsApp is working on a new Community feature that will make it easier for moderators to manage groups on the instant messaging platform. The Meta-owned company has upped the pace lately when it comes to the addition of new features, covering both the functionality as well as privacy aspects.
Just a few weeks ago, WhatsApp rolled out a new tool that allowed users to encrypt their chat backups on the cloud. With the rollout, WhatsApp closed one fundamental security weakness that many users have been asking to fix for years. Additionally, it is now possible to transfer WhatsApp chat history from an iPhone to an Android phone without any hiccups.
Now, reliable WhatsApp update tracker WABetaInfo has spotted breadcrumbs about another feature in development that is called Community. First spotted by the folks over at XDA Developers in the app's code, screenshots offer a clue to what the Communities are all about. The feature is currently under development for iOS and Android, but it is likely limited to the internal testing stage at the moment and is not available widely via the public beta channel. WhatsApp currently allows 256 users in one group. So, if an admin wants to add more people to a group, they're out of luck. The only solution in this scenario is to send the same information into multiple groups one by one, which is definitely cumbersome. And this is where Communities might be of some help, as they will likely allow an admin to manage multiple groups from a single place.
Make Life Easier For Group Admins
Despite what the name suggests, Community doesn’t have any social media aspect to it, unlike the Groups users can join on Facebook. All chats happening in a community will be end-to-end encrypted, just like personal conversations. However, it is unclear if the Community feature will work differently for regular and business accounts. WhatsApp recently tweaked some rules about data sharing for chats with a business account, but those policy changes received widespread criticism from users. Based on what little data one can scrape from the report and the accompanying screenshots, it appears that Community will follow the group-within-a-group approach.
An admin will apparently be able to create or export multiple groups in a Community and manage them with some advanced tools that are yet to be detailed. The report says, “admins can send messages in this group chat and they will be able to group some groups related to the community: for example, a degree course can be considered a community, and all its teaching classes are groups included in this community.” As is the case with in-development features, the final result might look different from the screenshots. Aside from Communities, WhatsApp is also testing an extended 'Delete for everyone' time limit. In its current iteration, the feature allows the sender to delete a message within one hour, eight minutes, and 16 seconds of sending it. WhatsApp plans to extend that arbitrary time limit to an indefinite span that can be days, weeks, or even months after sending a message.
Sources: WABetaInfo, XDA Developers