Johannesburg - Amid a plethora of new features and functionality, instant messaging app WhatsApp is set to give admins using the Android operating system more control over groups.
According to independent WhatsApp monitor WABetaInfo, the Meta-owned app is rolling out a feature allowing group admins to delete messages.
“WhatsApp is finally rolling out admin deletion to some lucky beta testers on WhatsApp beta for Android. Admin delete is a new feature that lets group admins delete any message in their groups.
“Thanks to this feature, group admins finally have more control over their groups by using this new moderation tool. This is surely the best news of the week,” WABetaInfo said in a blog post.
A double-edged sword of functionality, the new feature will effectively put all control in the hands of group admins, much like in the group chat features offered by competitor messaging app, Telegram.
While a positive for group admins, the feature will allow these users to delete any messages from regular participants of those groups, to be silenced and removed, despite the nature of comments and messages.
This means that in the case of group chats with businesses providing services or products, admins can easily remove complaints and negative comments.
Despite this, an enhancement to WhatsApp Admin control comes amid the company’s push towards enhancing community engagement.
Recently, WhatsApp expanded group chat sizes to 512 members, with up to 2GB of file transfers and reactions to messages. WhatsApp’s file-sharing size also increased from 100MB to 2GB, aimed to enhance collaboration among small businesses and school groups.
Other upcoming features
The app has also been reported by WABetaInfo to soon introduce new waveforms for voice notes for Desktop after releasing the latest WhatsApp beta for Windows update from the Microsoft Store.
WhatsApp has also released a new footer to inform people that their chats, calls, location sharing, status updates and more are end-to-end encrypted, for Android, alongside a redesigned security page, already available to some beta testers.
Meanwhile, app users will soon be able to view rich previews when sharing links to text status updates.
“The feature has been released to some beta testers that install the latest WhatsApp beta version of the app for Android or newer versions. In addition, long text shared as a status update does not fill the entire screen now,” the blog reported.
IOL Tech