• Group administrators will be able to do so without telling the rest of the chat participants.
• Users can also select who may view their online status.
• Prevent screenshots on View Once messages.

According to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, this will help maintain WhatsApp chat “as private and secure as face-to-face conversations”.

Users will be able to secretly exit group conversations, select who may view their online status, and prevent screenshots on View Once messages.

It will start rolling out the features this month, emphasizing them in a worldwide campaign that will begin in the United Kingdom.

Leave quietly

By default, the popular messaging app notifies all users of a group chat when someone leaves or is removed.

While it is possible to deactivate this for individual group conversations, the option to quit quietly is not displayed to users when they select to “exit group,” which may cause discomfort, humiliation, or drama for individuals attempting to depart undetected.

However, only group administrators will be allowed to quit without telling the rest of the group chat participants.

Ami Vora, the platform’s product leader, said that it was part of the platform’s commitment on “building product features that empower people to have more control and privacy over their messages”.

“We believe WhatsApp is the most secure place to have a private conversation,” she said.

“No other global messaging service at this scale provides this level of security for their users’ messages, media, voice messages, video calls, and chat back-ups.”

Users will now have the option of allowing just certain contacts – or no one – to see when they are active on the site, putting online status choices in line with “last seen” settings.

“It’s always nice to give users more control – users like and need to have more control.”  Janis Wong, research associate at The Alan Turing Institute, told BBC News.

However, unless users are encouraged to utilise the features or are made fully aware of them in the app, their influence may be restricted.

“If it’s not default, or if users aren’t prompted to reconsider their options, then it’s not necessarily very useful, if users aren’t aware this is something that they can do,”  she noted.

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