WhatsApp limits message forwarding to curb fake news

Stop and think for a moment: how many times have you received one of those fetched messages on the WhatsApp with some promotion too good to be true? Not to mention the proliferation of links from news sites that just want to spread the so-called “fake news”, which can end up shaping the way people view a subject – a negative influence.

This type of problem ends up reaching us through groups with strangers, and even by very close people, such as friends and family who, out of naivety or even as a joke, send us such links.

WhatsApp against fake news

O WhatsApp has been adopting measures to change this scenario of sharing fake news, with independent research on the subject, through the program WhatsApp Research Awards, and more recently with the announcement in its official blog about the limitation in forwarding messages.

The initiative drastically limits the number of people or groups that can receive a forwarded message. Until now, it was possible to spread the content to up to 250 chats at a time, with the change the limit goes to 20. In more extreme cases, such as in India, where the dissemination of false content is alarming, the imposed limitation would be only 5 chats at a time.

More than 20 people have been lynched in India after being accused of kidnapping minors in the past two months. This false information ends up being propagated by the WhatsApp. As pointed out very well by the Washington Post, of the 200 million people who use the WhatsApp in India, many are having their first contact with smartphones, so this lack of experience is a big factor in this avalanche of sharing fake content.

Furthermore, the WhatsApp recently applied a way for users to know if a message has been forwarded. The term resend appears at the top of the message, making it clearer that this is not a primary message.

Have you ever been a victim of fake news? Share your story below in the comments.

Source: WhatsApp