Communities was first officially announced back in April along with a bunch of new group features, but an earlier version of it was spotted as far back as last November. As you can deduce from the name, the feature allows users to create an umbrella community where multiple separate WhatsApp groups can be pushed under it. It is essentially an organisation tool for those who might be involved in several different circles for various purposes. To make it convenient for keeping things in order, Communities gives a wide range of tools and privileges to administrators. Admins of communities are able to approve or reject which groups can be included, start sub-groups for ad-hoc discussions, and send out mass announcements through an announcement group. Furthermore, only they can add or remove members, or even send out invite links, so strangers won’t be able to infiltrate your circle. Admin members are also able to delete problematic messages for everyone, although Meta did not clarify whether or not there is a time limit to this. To keep things private, WhatsApp is also bringing its end-to-end encryption to Communities, with the addition of leaving groups silently, a feature that was already seen in a previous beta. Meta says that Communities and the accompanying new group features will be gradually rolling out to all Malaysian users over the coming weeks, so don’t worry if you don’t have it just yet. While we’re glad to see Malaysia being ahead of the curve for once with a new feature launch, the company has still not revealed a specific date for the global rollout. (Source: WhatsApp press release)
