Mark Zuckerberg announced on September 13 its own take on Discord, the ‘Community Chat’.
Meta will begin testing the ability for people to start Community Chats in Messenger in the coming weeks, allowing people to create a Facebook Group, start chats, and audio channels, and invite others to join within the app. They’ll also be expanding Community Chats to even more Facebook Groups.
Like Discord, ‘Community Chat’ is composed of ‘channels’ or group chats organized by Facebook group admins who can invite people to be part of the conversation. People inside the community can also choose which group chat they’re interested to join in.
It seamlessly blends Messenger and Facebook Groups. It has a separate section so it won’t be mixed with the user’s personal messages on the main conversation list.
Admins are also capable to create audio channels where they can simultaneously interact with each other through audio.
Currently, they continue to develop moderation tools to make the features wholesome and safe for everyone. This includes reporting and moderation capabilities like blocking, muting, or suspending group members, and removing members or messages, as well as Admin Assist, which allows admins to set custom criteria that will automatically do the same using machine learning.
Community Chats are available for select Facebook Group admins, for now, and will continuously roll out to others these coming weeks.
