As part of its effort to curb the spread of fake news on its platform during the coronavirus pandemic, Facebook-owned chat application, WhatsApp, has announced its readiness to impose a new limit on message forwarding.
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The company said in a statement that this action was imperative at the moment in the bid to disrupt frequently forwarded false COVID-19 claims.
A WhatsApp spokesperson said in a blog post:
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.
We believe it’s important to slow the spread of these messages to keep WhatsApp a place for personal conversation.”
Presently, the company said that users could share frequently forwarded messages to five contacts at a time, a limit that was imposed in 2019 to help keep WhatsApp focused on private messaging.
Under the new regulation, however, if a user receives a message, they will only be able to send it on to a single chat at a time.
The move by the US-based outfit follows the fact that the media space has, in recent times, been awash with widely spread falsehood that coronavirus is related to 5G. This has fuelled wide suspicion worldwide, with some citizen vandalising more than 20 phone masts in England.
WhatsApp, following its sheer popularity globally, has been tipped as a tool used to amplify these claims.
Due to the end-to-end encryption WhatsApp uses, the company cannot see the contents of messages sent via its platform.
This, in the meantime, prevents the company from employing the same moderation strategies used by Twitter and Facebook, where contents flagged harmful are taken down.
Meanwhile, WhatsApp said it is aware of these limitations and it will work more to keep the app running reliably in the face of the current global crisis.
It said:
We’ll continue to listen to your feedback and improve ways for people to share with each other on WhatsApp.”
