WhatsApp will begin experimenting with Communities, an replace that represents a “major evolution” for the messaging app, in response to Mark Zuckerberg. An unreleased model of the characteristic was first noticed final 12 months, however the firm hadn’t confirmed its existence till now.

Communities will enable folks to mix separate group chats “under one umbrella with a structure that works for them,” WhatsApp wrote in a blog post. “That way people can receive updates sent to the entire Community and easily organize smaller discussion groups on what matters to them.”

The firm hasn’t shared particulars round precisely how these teams will probably be shaped, however a spokesperson stated the thought is to present “close-knit groups” extra methods to speak past the chat options at present supplied by WhatsApp. The firm will begin testing the characteristic later this 12 months in “select countries,” however will ultimately make it out there globally.

In a put up on Facebook, Zuckerberg said that Communities could be a significant shift for WhatsApp and Meta, one which emphasizes “feeds” and conventional social networking options lower than “community messaging.”

“In the same way that social feeds took the basic technology behind the internet and made it so anyone could find people and content online, I think community messaging will take the basic protocols behind one-to-one messaging and extend them so you can communicate more easily with groups of people to get things done together,” he wrote. He added that Meta was engaged on comparable options for Messenger, WhatsApp and Facebook as properly.

It’s additionally a playbook Meta has used previously. In 2017, Zuckerberg tried to reorient Facebook round Groups and “meaningful communities.” The firm began constructing new characteristic for Groups and inspiring customers to affix as a part of its new mission to “carry the world nearer collectively.” Zuckerberg appears to be following the identical technique now with WhatsApp, which is way extra well-liked than Facebook in a lot of the world. 

Making WhatsApp extra like Groups on Facebook additionally comes with some dangers, although.Facebook’s earlier pivot to Groups could have resulted in elevated polarization on the platform, and Groups have additionally been pegged as major sources of misinformation on the platform. And WhatsApp, which as a consequence of its encryption lacks most of the moderation instruments out there to Facebook, has already struggled with misinformation and different problematic content material. Making it even simpler to attach disparate group threads into one place might doubtlessly exacerbate these points.

A spokesperson stated the corporate is “building a number of updates” targeted on security, and pointed to new controls that enable admins to delete messages and current limits on message forwarding.