WhatsApp has now put a new forward limit to a forwarded message that can be sent again as a part of its plans to stop the wild and crazy rumors and conspiracy theories about the pandemic. From now on, WhatsApp will allow users to forward messages to only one single person at a time, possibly making it more difficult to spread any misinformation on its platform.
The company in an official blog post said, the company in the wake of the coronavirus outbreak, there has been a tremendous increase in the amount of forwarding WhatsApp messages. The company said, “we believe it’s essential to slow down the spread of these fake messages to keep WhatsApp a place for personal and healthy conversation.
In addition to the change mentioned above in the message forwarding feature, it said its working with NGOs and governments, including the World Health Organization (WHO) and more than 20 national and international health ministries worldwide, to help people get accurate and correct information. The company also unveiled its dedicated COVID-19 information hub and also donated $1 million to fight misinformation.
Whatsapp has always been a fake news peddler in India and around the world as well. Although, WhatsApp forward limit up to five per messages to prevent the spread of any fake viral news. And it did reduce the forwarded message by almost 25 percent on their platform. With all these, the company also started labeling forwarded messages back in 2018 and recently rolled out an advanced feature to verify the content of all the forwarded messages.
