Discover the new functions of WhatsApp: from reaction with emojis to expanded post-election group

WhatsApp launched this Thursday (14) in an experimental stage a new feature called “communities”, which will act as an umbrella housing several groups with thousands of users.

In practice, this is a large group of groups, which can have thousands of members, with all communication encrypted. Today, each WhatsApp group has a maximum of 256 members.

The feature will be in testing with some users in the coming months.

WhatsApp has committed to the TSE (Tribunal Superior Eleitoral) not to debut the “communities” in Brazil before the eventual second round of the presidential election, scheduled for October 30. The company, however, does not promise to hold the launch of communities between the second round and the presidential inauguration in Brazil.

In an interview with SheetWill Cathcart, global president of WhatsApp, said he did not fear that the “communities”, a feature that will allow you to send encrypted messages to thousands of users, means a setback in the fight against disinformation.

“We’re designing the product carefully, with intention. There are a lot of products on the market that haven’t been thought out with the same care. We’ll be able to deliver a very useful feature to users, while also making cautious design decisions to combat misinformation.” , he said.

Check out other news from the messaging platform below.

WHAT CHANGES IN THE APP

communities

• They will encompass up to 10 groups with a limit of 256 people in each. WhatsApp is studying increasing the capacity of groups to 512 users;

• An administrator can send a notice to all groups in a community and reach up to 2,560 users at once;

• Forwarded messages can be relayed to one group at a time, not five as it is today. The measure is one of those being developed to curb misinformation in the app;

• WhatsApp guarantees that the features will not be available before the presidential elections

Changes to the current app format

• Admins will be able to delete wrong or problematic messages from groups. Today each user can only remove their own post;

• Shared files, such as videos, photos and documents will be able to have a maximum size of 2 Gb, against the current 10 Mb;

• Users will be able to react to messages from other users with emojis;

• Voice calls will be able to bring together up to 32 people. WhatsApp wants to compete with apps that have gained strength in the pandemic, such as Meet and Teams