The Meta-owned popular instant messaging application WhatsApp is reportedly working on bringing the ability to react to messages to channels. With this feature, users can easily react to messages shared in the community announcement group, without revealing their phone numbers to unknown community members.
According to a report from WABetaInfo, a website that tracks WhatsApp, the meta-owned platform is working on implementing a new section called “Channel settings”. In this section, admins will be able to manage certain options for their channels. The report said that the instant messaging application has plans to allow channel admins to manage which reactions followers can send to the channel.
“Thanks to this discovery, we can finally confirm that message reactions are coming for channels. In reality, this was not so unexpected since the community announcement group already provides users with the ability to react to messages, but this discovery further confirms their plans to bring this feature to channels,” WABetaInfo said.
The report suggested that this feature may be beneficial in certain situations. In some contexts, a certain level of seriousness may be necessary, and adding particular emojis to certain messages could potentially bother other channel followers. By disallowing the use of any emoji with the “Default only” option, WhatsApp is aiming to prevent misunderstandings and avoid causing any annoyance.
However, the meta-owned platform also knows that this option might somewhat limit the variety of emojis that can be used. As a result, WhatsApp will also provide channel admins with the choice to enable the ‘any emoji’ option.
Lastly, channel admins will also be able to disable reactions for their channels for some reason. The message reaction feature is under development for channels and it will be released in a future update of the app.
In related news, WhatsApp is also rolling out a feature to initiate group calls with up to 15 people, and it’s available to some beta testers
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