WhatsApp Revamps Group Chats and Rebrands Them ‘Communities’

It looks like those used to the standard ebb and flow of their WhatsApp group chats are in for some pretty significant changes. 

WhatsApp just announced they are revamping these group chats, naming them "Communities,” as reported via an official blog post. This brings some changes for the average user but also some new features.  

What does this mean exactly for current group chat users? The company says Communities allows them to combine multiple chats “under one umbrella” to suit their individual tastes. 

"That way, people can receive updates sent to the entire Community and easily organize smaller discussion groups on what matters to them,” they wrote. 

Meta is adding features to WhatsApp Communities to combat misinformation and toxic behavior, such as giving moderators more power to delete messages and protecting messages with end-to-end encryption. They are also adding reaction emojis to reduce chat clutter, upping the file-sharing size to 2GB, and increasing voice chat capabilities to 32 people simultaneously. 

Even more significant? According to Meta head Mark Zuckerberg, these changes are likely to be implemented across the company's entire suite of messaging networks, as announced in a personal Facebook post.

This means that Facebook Messenger and Instagram will likely introduce Communities at some point in the near future, though Zuckerberg did not issue a timetable for the changes. 

As for WhatsApp Communities, the company will start testing in the “coming weeks,” with eventual plans to launch the feature globally.