WhatsApp Limits Forwarding to Fight Misinformation

Facebook’s WhatsApp is taking some action against the spread of misinformation and fake news on its platform. Fake news has long been a huge problem on WhatsApp, even though it hasn’t really gotten a ton of attention from the tech industry.

In countries like India and Brazil, misinformation is spread using WhatsApp and it’s believed to have affected elections in the past. WhatsApp is now limiting the number of forwards per message to only five users/groups, meaning that those who are using WhatsApp to spread misinformation will now be quite limited. You could forward a message to up to 20 users/groups at a time in the past.

Windows Intelligence In Your Inbox

Sign up for our new free newsletter to get three time-saving tips each Friday — and get free copies of Paul Thurrott's Windows 11 and Windows 10 Field Guides (normally $9.99) as a special welcome gift!

"*" indicates required fields

This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

The company told Reuters that the limitation is in action to help fight the spread of rumors and misinformation after the platform became a weapon in the political battleground in Brazil. Being able to forward a message to up to 5 people at a time is still quite a lot if you think about it, so misinformation on WhatsApp isn’t going away anytime soon. This is a nice chance, but it is arguably not enough.

Tagged with

Share post

Please check our Community Guidelines before commenting

Conversation 3 comments

  • markbyrn

    Premium Member
    21 January, 2019 - 7:28 pm

    <p>so you can only spread 'misinformation' to 5 instead of 20 😉 </p>

  • vaibhavgarg1982

    22 January, 2019 - 1:04 am

    <p>This change is just an eyewash. Given that WhatsApp has increased the limits on group membership to an insane number (no longer limited to 100), you can potentially distribute the message to 5000 people. How is that supposed to deter anyone is beyond me!</p>

  • epsjrno

    Premium Member
    22 January, 2019 - 10:09 am

    <p>All this does is allow WhatsApp to say, "Look at us! We're helping! Pay attention to us!" The problem is that it does nothing in reality.</p><p><br></p>

Windows Intelligence In Your Inbox

Sign up for our new free newsletter to get three time-saving tips each Friday

"*" indicates required fields

This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

Thurrott © 2024 Thurrott LLC