The latest WhatsApp features have just been announced.
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New features for WhatsApp have just been announced by Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg. These include features that will mean a quiet exit is suddenly possible. Here are the changes.
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Leave group chats… discreetly
You know how it is, you’re in a group chat. It was fun, but honestly, you get enough of it. Maybe one or two people are dominating the conversation or the conversation has become extremely boring.
Right now, when you’re done, you exit the chat and everyone can see that you’ve left. This is announced to all and can be something of a mark of dishonor, leaving those behind to wonder what they did wrong, perhaps.
The etiquette of the digital world can be so difficult at times.
Mark Zuckerberg announces new features for WhatsApp.
Meta
Soon, as Zuckerberg explained, you’ll be able to “leave group chats without notifying everyone.” There’s something about the app that allows people to connect with superior ease that now allows you to secretly disconnect.
This is a definite improvement and means you can walk away without causing offense or raising eyebrows. Sure, some people will notice you’re gone—those who have the decency to admit that your contribution to the conversation is as eloquent and pithy as Oscar Wilde’s—but they won’t know exactly when.
The admins of the group will know, but no one else.
Who can see you online
This update will mean you can choose exactly who can see you while you’re online.
In other words, you will be able to hide your presence from others. It’s another privacy-focused update that will aim to show that WhatsApp will, as Zuckerberg says, “continue to build new ways to protect your messages and keep them as private and secure as face-to-face conversations.” face”.
Imagine an online chat in the twenty-first century that is as personal as an analog conversation in real life. Oh, that’s progress.
In fact, it probably is.
You can choose between everyone seeing you, no one, and the tantalizing option of “My contacts except…” So much is implied in these dot-dot-dots. Which contacts will you hide from and what does that tell you about them? Or you?
Block screenshots
This is another good step forward. WhatsApp has developers View Once messages which, as the name suggests, cannot be viewed again and again. However, their ephemeral quality is limited by the fact that you could, if you were sneaky enough to do so, take a screenshot of that message.
The new setting will prevent a contact from taking a screenshot the way Snapchat does, so you’ll get a message that the screenshot is “blocked for added privacy.”
While it doesn’t rule out any way to save an image (you can use another phone to capture your first’s screen this way), it might make some people think twice before using this sneaky maneuver.
Today’s news is the latest in a series of changes coming to WhatsApp in the coming weeks, adding to yesterday’s announcement that you can delete messages up to two days after sending them.
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