WhatsApp, a Facebook-owned chat app, is limiting the number of chats that can be forwarded to curb the spread of harmful misinformation around the Coronavirus.
Once a message is labelled “highly forwarded” with the double arrow icon, it will only be possible to forward that message to one WhatsApp chat at a time as opposed to five as previously.
With billions of people in isolation from each other due to COVID-19, more than ever, people all over the world are relying on WhatsApp to communicate with their extended families, doctors, teachers and friends during this crisis.
“We’ve seen a significant increase in the amount of forwarding which users have told us can feel overwhelming and can contribute to the spread of misinformation,” said a WhatsApp on Tuesday. “We believe it’s important to slow the spread of these messages to keep WhatsApp a place for personal conversation.”
In 2018 WhatsApp began labelling messages that had been forwarded with a single arrow icon and later in the year made the first change to its “forward limits”, by dropping the forward limit for all messages from 20 to just five.
The Facebook-owned service, with more than 2 billion users, is also testing reverse image search and text search to curb fake news on its platform.
Facebook together with trusted authorities across the world will send hundreds of millions of messages directly to people requesting information and advice. You can learn more about these efforts, as well as how to submit potential myths, hoaxes and rumors to fact checking organizations, on our Coronavirus Information Hub.
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