Kenya: Whatsapp Develops Feature to Allow for 'Silent Exits'

19 May 2022
Capital FM (Nairobi)
By Clare Tonui

Nairobi — WhatsApp has developed a feature that is yet to be released whereby one can "Silently exit groups" without notifying other people in the chat.

Only group admins will be able to see who exits the group, but others will not.

According to the WhatsApp Desktop beta, when you exit a group, WhatsApp normally adds a system message in the chat to inform all participants when you join or exit the group whereas with the new feature, when you exit, this information will only show up to the group admins.

Group admins should always be notified about what happens in their groups, so it is needed to show them who exited a group.

"The feature will surely be released on WhatsApp beta for Android and iOS in the future. But this feature is under development on WhatsApp Desktop beta at the moment and it is planned to be rolled out to users in a future update," a statement on the WhatsApp Desktop Beta.

"It's been clear for a while that the way we communicate online is changing. Most of us use social networks and feeds to discover interesting content and stay updated. But for a deeper level of interaction, messaging has become the center of our digital lives. It's more intimate and private, and with encryption it's more secure too," Mark Zuckerberg, Co- founder and CEO of Meta platforms stated in a Facebook post.

Among other features, in the WhatsApp blog, the social app vision for communities is that people are able to communicate in a much easier way through this software. Other features that are yet to come are large File Sharing feature with the ability to share media files upto 2GB,

Bigger group calls feature where WhatsApp will increase the group call limit to 32 participants in the future but note that group calls may also have lower participant limits that vary, based on which device everyone in the call is using.

Admin Delete for everyone: group admins will be able to delete messages for everyone in groups in the future, for moderation reasons.

New group size: WhatsApp is planning to increase the group capacity when they bring more tools to admins and users in the future.

The message reactions feature has already been released to some users on WhatsApp Beta for Android and it is coming for other people after some time.

The U.S-based Meta Platforms Inc, formerly known as Facebook, which is the parent company of this social app has not revealed the date of launch but this important feature will be of great help to its users.

Read the original article on Capital FM.

Tagged:
Copyright © 2022 Capital FM. All rights reserved. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com). To contact the copyright holder directly for corrections — or for permission to republish or make other authorized use of this material, click here.

AllAfrica publishes around 400 reports a day from more than 100 news organizations and over 500 other institutions and individuals, representing a diversity of positions on every topic. We publish news and views ranging from vigorous opponents of governments to government publications and spokespersons. Publishers named above each report are responsible for their own content, which AllAfrica does not have the legal right to edit or correct.

Articles and commentaries that identify allAfrica.com as the publisher are produced or commissioned by AllAfrica. To address comments or complaints, please Contact us.