WhatsApp’s new feature will stop just anyone from joining your group

WhatsApp has been consistently improving its group chat features. Recently, the Meta-owned messaging app released a functionality that enables its users to add up to 512 members in a single group. Now, the company is working on a feature that will give group admins more control over who joins their groups.

According to a report by WABetaInfo, WhatsApp is working on a Group Membership Approval feature. Enabling this feature would give group users more control over who can join their WhatsApp group. A screenshot of the feature shared by the blog site shows that group admins will be able turn this feature on and off just as they do in case of features such as disappearing messages.

Furthermore, the blog site says that when group admins enable this feature, all people who want to join the group by using a group invite link need to be manually approved by the admin in order to share and respond to messages and see the ongoing conversation. There will be a new section within the group info section wherein group admins will be able to manage all incoming requests from people who want to join the group.

Notably, group admins will have to toggle this feature within group settings of individual groups in order to enable this feature.

What does this feature mean for WhatsApp users?

As of now, group admins can add new participants to a group either by looking for them in the app or by sharing an invite link for the same. This means that new members need to be invited to be able to join a group as there is no to discover new groups as it happens in case of Telegram. However, this new feature — group membership approval — hints towards the messaging app working on a feature that would make groups discoverable on the platform, turning WhatsApp from a conventional messaging platform to a more social messaging platform.

Alternatively, it could also be one of the pieces of puzzle in the company’s plans of introducing Communities on its platform — a feature that it announced back in April this year. To recall, Communities will have multiple groups under their ambit and hence it is important for the company to make groups more discoverable on its platform. If so, it would be important to give admin controls that would enable them to control who joins (or who doesn’t) a group.

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