Social Media is an incredibly easy way to spread misinformation, better known as ‘Fake News’. Especially during the corona pandemic, the consequences of this became clear. For this reason WhatsApp made an attempt to counter it and is now doing so again.
Meta’s sister company previously introduced the Often Forwarded labels. Now WhatsApp wants to restrict its users by being able to forward messages in only one group conversation.
WhatsApp moves to combat ‘Fake News’
The latest beta version of WhatsApp features a new functionality. According to WABetaInfo, it involves a restriction on message forwarding. Whereas previously users could forward certain messages to an unlimited number of group conversations, in the iOS version of the beta, this can only be done to one conversation.
As soon as WhatsApp users want to forward a message to multiple groups, they will see a warning. This comes in the form of a yellow bar seen at the top of the screen. “Forwarded messages can only be sent to one group conversation,” the warning reads.
The alert within the app (Image: WABetaInfo)
Incidentally, the restriction does apply only to messages that have been forwarded more frequently. Self-written messages are not restricted.
When will you have to deal with it?
At the time of writing, not all testers of the iOS beta have been provided with the functionality. It is expected that WhatsApp will change this in the coming weeks. When all users will have the restrictions imposed is unknown at this time.
What we do know is that behind the scenes WhatsApp is busy improving its popular application. Last week, Meta’s sister company announced several features to improve voice messaging. There was no word yet on a final release date, but users can expect the changes within a few weeks.
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