Meta understands that the essence of people using the popular messaging application “WhatsApp” is to communicate with friends, family and communities in complete privacy, and it always emphasizes that this is the main purpose of the application and its top priority. Therefore, the launch of the Channels feature, which I started testing earlier this year, represents a big step that users have been asking to take for years, so today I officially announced the possibility of creating what is called Channels to be a simple, reliable and private group messaging tool, and it can be considered an advanced version of communities which was introduced by the company in the previous year.
All you need to know about the new channels feature in WhatsApp
Users will notice that a new section has appeared in the bottom bar called Updates where they can find statuses and channels they've chosen to follow, separate from individual conversations with family, friends, and communities. Simply put, Channels is a one-way group messaging tool that allows moderators to send texts, photos, videos, stickers, and polls. And to help you select channels to follow, the app will make the channel database public so that new channels can be searched for, like in Telegram there are channels tailored to your hobbies, sports teams, updates from local officials, and more. You can also go to channels from invite links sent in chats, emails, or posted online.In terms of privacy, WhatsApp has indicated that Channels will be the most private tool among the group messaging services currently available. This starts with protecting the personal information of moderators and followers, so if you are a channel moderator, neither your phone number nor your profile picture will be visible to followers. Likewise, following a channel will not reveal your phone number to the moderator or other followers, and therefore you are the one who decides to follow the channels (and your decision is completely private).
And just like the way WhatsApp designs messaging, channel updates won't become yours forever as channel history will be kept on the company's servers for no more than 30 days. . Moderators will also have the ability to block screen captures and forward messages from their channels.
The app also gives moderators the ability to choose who can follow their channels and determine the discoverability of those channels in search results. Because the goal of the channels is to reach a wide audience, channels are not fully encrypted end-to-end by default. The company says that it believes that end-to-end encrypted channels destined for a limited audience makes sense in some cases, such as non-profit organizations or health organizations, and is considering That as a future option as well.
It is worth noting, and according to what was stated in the company's statement, that the launch of the channel feature today came after joint cooperation with leading global entities and a select group of organizations in Colombia and Singapore, where users in both countries will be the first to be able to use this feature, for the purpose of development, learning, harmonization of experience and analysis reactions. But WhatsApp promises to provide the channel feature to more countries and will provide the ability to create channels for anyone in the coming months. Finally, the app will provide an opportunity to support moderators in a way that allows them to build businesses around their channels through the availability of the ever-expanding WhatsApp Pay service along with the ability to promote specific channels to help increase awareness of them.
So, the Channels feature is very similar to those in Telegram, and to ensure that you try it as soon as possible, you will need to install the latest version of the WhatsApp application on your Android phone or iPhone. You can do this by opening the Play Store or the App Store, going to the updates section, then pressing the “Update” button next to the “WhatsApp” application to download the new update. And if it does not appear that there is a new update available on the Play Store on your Android phone, you can download the latest versions as an APK file and install them manually without losing any data, and here we recommend downloading this file from APKMirror .