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Daily Record
Daily Record
Science
Daniel Morrow

WhatsApp makes huge change to group chats for users from today

WhatsApp has reportedly increased the number of people allowed in a group chat for some users from today.

The messaging application previously stated it is “slowly rolling out” the ability for group chats to now contain 512 people.

This is a five-fold increase on the 100 people previously allowed to chat on the app in a group previously.

It has been widely-reported this feature has started to roll out to some users today.

Speaking on the change last month, WhatsApp stated: “One of the top requests we’ve consistently received is the option to add more people to a chat, so now we’re slowly rolling out the ability to add up to 512 people to a group.

“Building private, safe and secure communities takes works and we think this series of improvements will help people and groups stay close to one another.

“We hope people enjoy these updates and look forward to sharing more throughout the year.”

Meta, the firm which owns WhatsApp, announced a raft of changes that it has implemented in a blog post last month.

Users can now ‘react’ to messages by using emojis, instead of typing a new response entirely.

People are also able to send files that are up to 2GB in size within WhatsApp - the previous limit was 100MB.

Bosses are also looking to update the app further this year and announced details of its Communities feature for WhatsApp.

It is hoped organisations, business and other close knit groups will be able communicate more securely and “get things done”.

Communities will contain tools for admins to have control over groups and send out announcement messages for everyone that has joined certain groups.

Messages sent using the feature will have end-to-end encryption.

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