Any time you add a new person to a group chat, they can’t see the previous messages. So, they lack context about what’s already discussed and what everyone is talking about. WhatsApp is looking to solve this problem with its latest feature: Group Message History.
The feature does exactly what its name suggests: it allows a new participant in a group chat to view past conversations. This way, they can quickly catch up on what’s being discussed and add their input.
For privacy reasons, WhatsApp will limit how far back newly added members can view past messages. They will not gain access to the entire group chat history. When you add someone to a group, the app will prompt you to choose how much history to share. You can send between the last 25 and 100 messages, in increments of 25. For most cases, this should be more than good enough.
This implementation gives WhatsApp an edge over Telegram. While the latter allows for group message history sharing, it’s either all or nothing. You cannot selectively share just the last 25 or 100 messages.
Group Message History also gives WhatsApp an edge over iMessage, as Apple’s messaging platform lacks any such feature.
Note that you can’t share a group’s message history with a member after adding them to the group. You must take this action while adding them to the conversation. So, if you forget to share the chat history while adding someone, you will have to remove and re-add them to share the chat history.
WhatsApp will also inform other group members when the chat history is shared with newly added members. The timestamps, sender information, and message history are all displayed differently from those in regular messages to make them easier to understand.
Admins stay in control of history sharing
Like all WhatsApp conversations and its recent security improvements, Group Message History will remain end-to-end encrypted to ensure privacy and security.
If you are a group admin, you can turn off message history sharing across the group. However, admins will still retain the ability to share chat history themselves.
WhatsApp says Group Message History will roll out gradually to users worldwide.
