WhatsApp on Thursday announced the launch of voice and video calls on its Mac and PC PC apps, expanding the ways you can create the illusion of meaningful human interaction in this moment of crushing isolation.
‘With so many people still not their loved ones, and we need to adapt to new ways of working, we want conversations on WhatsApp to feel as close to personal as possible, no matter where you are in the world or the technology you are using , ”WhatsApp owner Facebook announced in his press release, a reminder that you are simply talking to another person face to face with reckless abandonment can still kill you.
This is good news for those of us who have been so deeply exhausted over the past year that even holding a phone feels impossible: the new WhatsApp call feature on the computer “makes it easier to work with colleagues, to make your family clearer” on a larger screen or free your hands to move in a room while you talk, “the company said.” You know deep down that it’s nothing more than Google Meet or Zoom or FaceTime or any of use the many other programs that do exactly the same thing, but the word ‘easier’ is currently so appealing that you appreciate the effort of making it seem like something to be happy about like nothing else.
And if you’m worried about WhatsApp (and, by extension, Facebook) listening intently to you while explaining to your mom in a video chat, that you called Walgreens every 15 minutes to find out if they have any remaining vaccines which they have to spray into someone’s arm before it expires and is thrown in the trash right next to the rest of your life, but no, they still have not available, fear! “Voice and video calls on WhatsApp are encrypted end-to-end, so WhatsApp cannot hear or see them, whether you are calling from your phone or your computer,” reads the press release.
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Voice and video calls on WhatsApp desktop apps, available for download here, is currently limited to one-on-one conversations, but the company promises that it plans to expand the feature to group chats sometime in the future, a period that remains fun to think about or so tame and has become vague that it turns into a meaningless concept, depending on where you are in your personal cycle between hope and misery. And we all know that the one thing we need now is more group chats.