You know the feeling: A friend invited you into a WhatsApp group for people who love knitting and hip hop and now you’re kinda sick of the 2Pac knitting memes. You decide to leave the group, but WhatsApp notifies everyone of your betrayal. Messages of disappointment are flooding in. That Dr. Dre sweater you had hoped for isn’t coming any time soon.
Soon, however, all this will change. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said that WhatsApp is working on a feature that will let you silently leave a group. According to The Guardian, group administrators will get notified, so your group exits won’t be totally secret, but it’s better than nothing.
It’s not the only new feature that’s coming. WhatsApp will also block taking screenshots of “view once” messages, a feature nicked from Snapchat, the pioneer of ephemeral messaging. As always, be aware that this does not guarantee privacy, as the person on the other end can always take a photo of the phone’s display.
Finally, Zuckerberg confirmed a feature we saw being tested in July, allowing users to hide their online status. This means other users will not be able to see when you were last using the app.
“We’ll keep building new ways to protect your messages and keep them as private and secure as face-to-face conversations,” Zuckerberg said in the post.
According to The Verge, the silent group exit and hidden online status are coming this month, while screenshot prevention is coming “soon.”
