WhatsApp is letting you stick your selfies in every single place

Meta is updating WhatsApp with some enjoyable new methods to boost your chats and make messaging extra environment friendly. The favored messaging app will now have new digital camera results, stickers, and a shortcut for reacting to messages.

WhatsApp is obtainable on the web, desktop, and cell, however the app’s latest options are likely to hit smartphones first. The largest change Meta has made to all of its messaging merchandise within the final yr was the mixing of Meta AI for answering questions and producing photos, so it is good to see new WhatsApp options that don’t have anything to do with speaking to Giant Language Fashions.

Selfie stickers, digital camera results, and handy reactions

WhatsApp is adopting options from its opponents

Meta

It is best to see these new WhatsApp options as each a porting over of issues the app was already doing, and the adoption of options of Meta’s messaging opponents. For instance, now you can pull up your generally used message reactions simply by double-tapping a message, similar to you possibly can in Discord. The addition of selfie stickers is in roughly the identical vein. You possibly can flip any selfie you’re taking in your cellphone right into a sticker simply by tapping on the “create a sticker” icon after which tapping on the digital camera, in accordance with Meta. That sounds much like the way you make stickers within the Messages app on iOS, would not it?

Digital camera results originate from someplace even nearer to dwelling. Meta added filters and backgrounds for video calls in October 2024, and now Meta is providing you the power so as to add these 30 or so backgrounds, filters, and results to any video or picture you ship in a message.

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The corporate’s method to moderation will even influence WhatsApp

These modifications to WhatsApp are minor within the grand scheme of issues, however they’re only a sliver of the modifications Meta’s been making to the sorts of content material it is platforms will enable. When the corporate introduced it was disbanding its third-party program for fact-checking, the corporate additionally modified what sorts of speech it permits.

On Instagram, Fb, and Threads, language that will have beforehand been handled as hate speech is now allowed, according to Wired. The change is not as relevant on WhatsApp, the place there aren’t “posts” within the conventional sense, however it would not be shocking if extra formal modifications got here to what WhatsApp permits down the highway.