After Broadcast and Communities, popular chat app WhatsApp is now testing another communication tool for its platform called “Newsletter” which will serve as a one-to-many information broadcasting feature. This tool is expected to allow users to receive useful updates from individuals or groups such as local officials, sports teams, or organizations. It will enable users to choose who they want to hear from and follow broadcasters of their choice within WhatsApp, reports WaBetaInfo.
The report adds that the name “Newsletter” is a codename for the feature, and it is not clear when it will be released. Newsletters are expected to help reach large number of people and will be given as a separate and optional section within the Status tab, separate from private chats that are encrypted.
End-to-end encryption is a security feature that ensures that messages exchanged between two individuals on WhatsApp are only visible to those individuals and nobody in the middle, including WhatsApp itself, has access to it. However, with Newsletters, the messages are sent from one to many which means that end-to-end encryption is not practical for this type of communication since it would not provide any privacy benefit for users.
According to the WaBetaInfo report, there is no mention of ads in Newsletters at this time, and the content will be shown chronologically, similar to how we see our WhatsApp chats.
The report states that the development of Newsletters has been built with privacy in mind, and users will be able to control who they follow, and nobody else will be able to see who they follow, regardless of whether they’re in their contacts list or not. Additionally, the Newsletter is marked as a private tool because people who create and join a Newsletter are in a private space as their phone numbers and personal information are always hidden by default.
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