WhatsApp’s “Restricted Groups” Will Allow Admins to Mute Group Members

A new WhatsApp feature is in the works, and if you’re a group admin in WhatsApp, you’ll probably love this. It’s no secret that WhatsApp keeps testing new features from time to time on both iOS and Android devices, but this feature could give more control and power to the admin of any WhatsApp group. So far, the only way to stop the notorious members of any group was by simply kicking them from the group. Now, there’s one more way to stop them, and you don’t really have to remove them from the group anymore.

The new “Restricted Groups” feature will allow group admins to disable other members from texting within the group. Consider this to be similar to the “mute” functionality that you’ve probably seen in certain social networking applications such as Discord. Upon activation, the other members will only be able to read what’s posted in the group, along with the option to send a direct message to the group admin. This gives more control and power to the WhatsApp group admins, especially in a scenario where they want to stop members from spamming in a group.

WhatsApp is currently testing this feature in the version 2.17.430 on both Android and iOS platforms. As of now, admins can restrict members for texting anything in the group for a period of 72 hours, but this restriction could potentially change by the time the feature is widely rolled out to everyone. The feature is disabled by default, so don’t expect to take advantage of it right off the bat. “Restricted Groups” could be put to good use in cases where admins want to make some important announcements to all participants in the group, but expect some notorious group admins to exercise power over you once the feature is made available to everyone.

Source: WABetaInfo