As an act to curb the flow of fake news, WhatsApp limits message forwarding

In an effort to curb the spread of fake news, WhatsApp has announced new controls for India.

Up until now, you could forward a message to multiple chats at once. Now, with the new changes, WhatsApp will limit messaging forward in India. The messaging service will include a plan to limit the number of chats that users can send forward to five in the country. It will also remove the ‘quick forward’ tab next to the media messages. However, globally, WhatsApp will limit the number of forwards to a maximum of 20 groups.

“Today, we’re launching a test to limit forwarding on WhatsApp. In India — where people forward more messages, photos, and videos, than any other country in the world — we’ll also test a lower limit of 5 chats at once and we’ll remove the quick forward button next to media messages,” the company said in an email on Friday morning.

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The company mentioned in a blog, “Today, we’re launching a test to limit forwarding that will apply to everyone using WhatsApp. In India – where people forward more messages, photos, and videos than any other country in the world – we’ll also test a lower limit of 5 chats at once and we’ll remove the quick forward button next to media messages.” Indians are said to forward more messages, photos and videos than any other country in the world.

“It is regretted that the enormity of the challenge and the rampant abuse happening in the country leading to the repeated commissioning of crimes pursuant to the rampant circulation of irresponsible messages in large volumes on their platform have not been addressed adequately by WhatsApp,” it said.

Apart from labelling forwarded messages, WhatsApp has introduced a few initiatives to curb fake news.

According to a Reuters report, WhatsApp is working with seven organisations, which includes the likes of Centre For Social Research, to build and scale an education programme that can address the challenges posed by misinformation and fake news.