Launched worldwide at the beginning of November last year — except in Brazil —, the whatsapp communities are finally being released to Brazilian users starting today, according to information from Estadão.
The functionality, widely publicized by the messenger, allows hosting several groups of the same category (such as neighborhood, school or work) and forwarding messages to up to 5 thousand contacts at once, since it is possible to add up to 50 groups in a Community.
More precisely, Communities will be part of a new tab in the app, so users who notice the addition will only need to tap on it, enter a name, make a description and start adding groups related to the theme. All Communities have a channel signaled by a megaphone which allows the administrator to send notices to all members.
Speaking of admin, the person in charge of a Community will be able to send messages to all members, insert and remove members/groups, create new groups within the community and delete messages or files considered abusive. The administrator will also be able to enter groups that he is not part of — but in these cases, he will not be able to read the content of the conversations, obviously.
We’re creating new tools for admins to manage conversations between their private groups. They can choose which groups will be part of their Community, forming new groups or linking pre-existing groups. We will provide administrators with resources on how best to use these new features.
Users will be able to decide who can add them to a Community, like the existing settings for groups, report abuse, block contacts and leave a Community.
As we reported, the feature was prevented from being launched in Brazil — along with other countries — after a request from the Federal Public Ministry (MPF), which requested the postponement of the functionality in Brazil until the 2022 elections had passed due to the risk of dissemination false information during the election period. Thus, it was expected that the resource would be released this month.
It is possible, it is worth noting, that the novelty is being released gradually to users, and may not be immediately available to everyone.
