Facebook owned social media platform WhatsApp is cutting down on the number of times you can forward a message to other people. Previously, a message could be sent to 20 people or groups, but forwarding is now going to be limited to five.
This is an effort to fight fake news and the spread of misinformation.
This limit of five recipients first showcased in India in July 2018 after fake news proving to be a source of vioence in the country. Now, it’s rolling out to WhatsApp users around the world.
The platform, which currently has about 1.5 billion users, has been trying to find ways to fight the improper usage of the app. A lot of global concern has been circulating that WhatsApp was being used to spread fake news, manipulated photos, videos without context, and audio hoaxes, with no way to trace who sent them or monitor who gets them.
From the look of things, WhatsApp has not been as bad as its parent company Facebook in regards to accounting for user privacy. With an effective end-to-end encryption, it is regarded the most popular social media app especially in countries where government surveillance is at its peak.
That is the possible reason the company is not backing down on the security to check the messages being sent, but rather to ensure that the content is not in anyway fake news.
WhatsApp will be updating the app over the coming days to activate the new forward limit, starting with Android users and followed by iOS.
This is an addition to a number of updates made recently including stickers for both Android and iOS app users, which users can now download and use for expression in chats; private replies for group chats on Android; and the Picture-in-picture mode also recently introduced to allow for video play wihtin a chat when you receive links of videos hosted on YouTube, Facebook, Streamable, or Instagram.
