WhatsApp is currently rolling out a new feature for group administrators where they can send messages to a group while disallowing messages to be posted by other non-admin group members.
In a blog post, the folks over at WhatsApp interpreted the different uses for this feature. Teachers can use it to post announcements or alerts in a group specifically made for that class, for instance. Even non-profit organizations, as well as event management groups, can benefit from this feature. Blogs and news channels can gain additional traffic by getting users to join their respective groups and then posting regular post updates.
“Today, we’re launching a new group setting where only admins are able to send messages to a group. One way people use groups is to receive important announcements and information, including parents and teachers at schools, community centers, and non-profit organizations. We’ve introduced this new setting so admins can have better tools for these use cases.”
Although, this update from WhatsApp could also give rise to pirated movie torrent groups, as it has been the case with Telegram. However, with WhatsApp’s 100 MB file sharing limit, bringing that into reality could prove to be a really challenging task for piracy experts, that is, until the Facebook-owned chat app increases its file sharing limit. And if that ever happens, there’ll be very less to differentiate between Telegram and WhatsApp.
To enable this feature for a group, go to the ‘Group info’ panel of that group and tap on Group settings. Then, tap on the ‘Send Messages’ tab and choose the ‘Only Admins’ option. The feature update, however, is not over the air; which means that you will have to manually update it from the App Store or the Play Store.
