Zuckerberg announces 32-person video call on WhatsApp

Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO and founder of Meta, today revealed that WhatsApp’s long anticipated ‘Communities’ feature is now available. The feature is scheduled to roll out today. Mark said that over the coming months, the feature will gradually become available to all users.

The update effectively adds Slack and Discord-type functionality, making it perfect for large groups, companies, and local communities like school parents. The Communities feature will use end-to-end encryption to handle features like in-chat polls, 32-person video calls, groups with up to 1024 participants, and Call Links. Its goal is to provide structural support for all communication inside a single app.

“Today we’re launching Communities on WhatsApp. It makes groups better by enabling sub-groups, multiple threads, announcement channels, and more. We’re also rolling out polls and 32 person video calling too. All secured by end to end encryption so your messages stay private,” Meta CEO, Mark Zuckerberg said on the launch of Communities.

“Communities on WhatsApp will enable people to bring together separate groups under one umbrella with a structure that works for them. That way people can receive updates sent to the entire Community and easily organize smaller discussion groups on what matters to them,” the company said.

Communities will also come with strong new admin features, such as the ability to manage which groups can be added and send out announcement messages to everyone.

Additionally, community admins will have the authority to delete a member’s account from the community and delink groups from it, apart from being able to delete inappropriate chats and content.

Users too, will be able to have a larger set of controls – deciding who can add them to a group, leaving communities and leaving a group silently.

Meta has put a lot of effort into making sure Communities offers a “level of privacy and security not found anywhere else” for communication that takes place among various organizations and workplaces.

The development comes just right after when WhatsApp had rolled out the ‘Call Links’ feature that enables users to create a voice or video call link share it with their intended contacts, and as soon as they click the link, they will be included to the ongoing call. News18