WhatsApp and artificial intelligence
WhatsApp Channel
A WhatsApp Channel is a one-way broadcast tool: whoever runs it posts, and followers can read, react and share, but not write. According to WhatsApp, it does not show the admin's number to followers, nor any follower's number to anyone else.
Also known asWhatsApp Channels · channel · broadcast channel
How it is used in a residence
Channels were launched in June 2023 in a handful of countries and became widely available in September that year. They have their own tab, separate from chats, and messages go out under the channel's name, not a person's. For a residence it is the tidy version of the noticeboard: the exam timetable, the water cut, the opening ceremony of the academic year.
Compared with a group or a WhatsApp Community, its strong point is privacy: following a channel reveals nobody's number. Its limit is the same feature seen from the other side: nobody can reply. And, unlike private chats and groups, channel messages are not end-to-end encrypted, so it is no place for anything personal or for a resident's data.
Worth knowing
What people take for granted: that a channel collects what people reply. It collects nothing. Someone who wants to report a fault after reading the channel ends up writing to a staff member's personal phone, where the residence keeps nothing. For a notice that can be answered privately there is the broadcast list, and for handling requests, an AI assistant on the residence's number.
Sources
Related terms
- Broadcast listA broadcast list is the WhatsApp feature that sends the same message to several contacts at once, but to each one separately: it arrives as a private chat with the sender, any reply is seen only by the sender, and nobody sees the other recipients.
- WhatsApp CommunityA WhatsApp Community brings several groups together in one space, with an announcement group in which only the admins write. It is used to organise a large number of people into subgroups, such as floors, buildings or years, and to reach them all with a single notice.