WhatsApp group admins to get more gatekeeping control; check details here

WhatsApp group admins will soon be able to see all joining requests, giving them more control over who can join a group, Mark Zuckerberg, chief executive officer of Meta Platforms, announced on Tuesday.

The messaging app will also introduce a new feature to make it easier to discover what groups you have in common with someone. These changes follow some updates made over the past few months, including making groups larger, and giving admins the ability to delete messages sent in the groups they manage. The new features will start rolling out globally over the coming weeks.

WhatsApp last year introduced communities, which allow connecting multiple groups together under one umbrella to organise group conversations on WhatsApp. With communities, users can easily switch between available groups to get the information they need, and admins can send important updates to everyone in the community. It also allows people who share similar interests or hobbies to connect in one place.

 “As more people join communities, we want to give group admins more control over their group privacy, so we’ve built a simple tool that gives admins the ability to decide who is able to join a group. Groups are where people have some of their most intimate conversations and it’s important that admins are able to easily decide who can and cannot come in,” Meta said.

When an admin chooses to share their group’s invite link, or make their group joinable in a community, they now have more control over who can join, Zuckerberg said. He announced the bundle of new updates for groups on his Instagram Broadcast Channel.

Previously the messaging platform expanded the scope of groups by offering users the ability to create in-chat polls, 32-person video calling, and groups with up to 1,024 users.