WhatsApp launches Telegram-like Channels feature

WhatsApp on September 13 launched a new feature called Channels that lets users receive updates from organisations, sports teams, artists, leaders, and other popular entities.

As The Verge put it best: “It’s a Twitter feed, minus all the metrics and reply guys. WhatsApp has clearly noticed all the governments, transit agencies, brands, and others looking for a new (and non-Twitter) place to share their most important updates and sees Channels as a drop-in replacement.”

This feature is very similar to channels on Telegram, which are a hotbed for illegal and spam content. Channels on Telegram are used to distribute porn, share pirated content, disseminate trading advice, and more. In India, the securities market regulator has gone after Telegram channels multiple times for promoting illegal stock advice and there are at least five copyright infringement cases against Telegram pending in front of the Delhi High Court. WhatsApp could also suffer from a similar problem when it starts allowing anyone to create channels, which the company said it will allow in the coming months. WhatsApp guidelines for channels disallow illegal and harmful content, but so does Telegram’s. Thus, it remains to be seen how effectively these guidelines are enforced.

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Channels will be under a separate tab and the user’s personal information like phone number and profile photo is not shared with the admin of a channel or the followers. This also means users cannot be contacted through channels.

Channels are one-way communication, meaning the channel admin can broadcast messages but followers cannot reply to these messages. Users can, however, react to messages using emojis. Updates sent on a channel can be forwarded to groups or personal chats.

WhatsApp users can discover channels to follow based on their country or other metrics like channels that are most active or most popular based on the number of followers. “WhatsApp will not recommend channels based on users’ personal messaging activity, which remains private and end-to-end encrypted,” the platform noted.