On Thursday, WhatsApp announced the introduction of voice and video calling in its desktop applications for Mac and PC, expanding the ways you can create the illusion of meaningful human interaction in this time of overwhelming isolation. .
“With so many people still apart from their loved ones and adapting to new ways of working, we want WhatsApp conversations to feel as close as possible in person, no matter where you are in the world or the technology you’re in. using “, the owner of WhatsApp Facebook announced in his press release, a reminder that simply talking to another human being face to face with reckless abandonment could still kill you.
This is good news for those of us who are so deeply exhausted last year that even having a phone is impossible: the new feature of WhatsApp desktop calling “makes it easier to work with colleagues, seeing your family more clearly frees your hands to move around a room while you talk, “the company said. You know deep down that this is no different than using Google Meet or Zoom or FaceTime or any of the many other apps that they do exactly the same thing, but that word “easier” is so appealing now that you appreciate the effort of doing this it seems like something to be happy about if nothing else.
And if you’re worried that WhatsApp (and, by extension, Facebook) will hear you sob uncontrollably as you tell your mom in a video chat that, yes, you’ve been calling Walgreens every 15 minutes to see if they have any leftover vaccines that they have to inject into someone’s arm before they expire and throw themselves in the trash next to the rest of your life, but no, they don’t have them yet, don’t be afraid! “Voice and video calls on WhatsApp are end-to-end encrypted, so WhatsApp can’t hear or see them, whether you’re calling from your phone or from your computer,” the press release says.
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Voice and video calls to WhatsApp desktop applications, available for download here, are currently limited to one-on-one conversations, but the company promises to plan to expand the feature to group chats sometime in the future, a period of time that can either be thought of or has become so tenuous and vague that it was transformed into a meaningless concept, depending on where you are in your personal cycle between hope and misery. And we all know that the only thing we need now are more group chats.