Saima Ikram
In an attempt to stop widespread false information and fight against infodemic, WhatsApp puts restrictions on forwarding messages. Those messages who have already been forwarded multiple times — can now only be forwarded to one chat. This now requires a manual effort to select a particular message and manually forward it to multiple contacts.
Earlier, WhatsApp allowed forwarding to 5 contacts at a time but in order to stop false information and misleading viral messages, the company has applied this new rule to curb fake news. The decision was announced by Facebook-owned company last week.
The decision comes after COVID-19 Pandemic that has caused the spread of massive, false information including conspiracy theories linking to different countries, even linking the coronavirus to 5G wireless internet.
It is hard for WhatsApp to identify false information on the platform because of end-to-end messages encryption which means the company can not read individual chats. This is why last year the forwarded messages had an arrow displayed in front of them to know the users that this is a forwarded message and could well be a piece of false information.
