WhatsApp launches a new “communities” feature – Le Monde

Today, WhatsApp chat groups are limited to 256 people. THOMAS WHITE / REUTERS WhatsApp unveiled new features on Thursday, April 14, starting with the upcoming launch of “communities”, which will allow their administrators to bring together several discussion groups in the same space and thus address a large number of persons. Messaging, owned by the American Meta (Facebook, Instagram), intends to meet the needs of “certain structures, such as schools, local associations or non-profit organizations”, which “now rely on WhatsApp to communicate in complete safety and getting organized. The new feature must be tested for two months before being rolled out internationally. Today, WhatsApp chat groups remain limited to 256 people. But, from now on, the communities will make it possible to bring together several existing groups in the same place, such as the parents of pupils from different classes of the same school for example. Like a virtual bulletin board, only administrators will be able to send messages which, like conventional messages, will be end-to-end encrypted. Read also Article reserved for our subscribers Privacy, security, e-commerce… The boss of WhatsApp explains Administrator moderators Communities can also be used by companies. “If a restaurant wants to form a group to share its menus or send promotions, it can do so,” noted Jyoti Sood, before clarifying that Meta did not plan to “monetize” the communities. In addition, WhatsApp will evolve discussion groups, the backbone of its operation: like the palette of reactions on Facebook, users will now be able to respond to messages with emoji buttons; the size of shared files will be extended to 2 GB and the maximum number of participants in a voice call raised to 32 people; administrators “of groups will be able to delete inappropriate or problematic messages for all members of the chat”, thus strengthening their role as moderator. Read also Article reserved for our subscribers Is community moderation the future of social networks? These new possibilities, which will be deployed “in the weeks to come”, according to the press release, are reminiscent of the Telegram channels, a Russian messaging system that allows messages to be broadcast to a large audience, on publicly open channels or in private discussions requiring an invitation. However, on WhatsApp, content can only be transferred to one group at a time, to avoid spam phenomena. Users will also not be able to search for communities they would like to join on messaging: they will have to be part of a group, and therefore have been added by an administrator. “Telegram allows conversations for hundreds of thousands of people; WhatsApp communities will remain a private message service that will allow people to communicate privately with people or groups they are close to,” said Christina LoNigro, WhatsApp spokesperson, as quoted by Agence France-Presse. Meta has been widely criticized for moderation and transparency problems with its social networks, but also with its messaging systems like WhatsApp, which are all the more opaque as the exchanges are private and encrypted. Messaging, which has more than two billion users worldwide in February 2020, has often been criticized for being a space for the circulation of “fake news”. Read also: “Infox” in Brazil: how false information flooded WhatsApp Le Monde with AFP