In a bid to give user safer and more private messaging experience, Facebook today has added Message Forwarding Limit to Messenger. Just like WhatsApp, In Messenger, now users will be able to forward any particular message to not more than 5 people at a time. Facebook said they introduced this feature in Messenger to prevent the propagation speed of any viral misinformation that may potentially harm the real world.
Facebook said, right now, while the world is fighting with the existing pandemic, some countries like US and New Zealand also have to conduct major elections. Hence, this is the time to take another level of precaution to fight with misinformation. That’s the reason, we add Message Forwarding Limit to the Messenger. The less a user able to forward a misinformation the less likely it to go viral in a short span of time and in turn gives the authority enough time to take appropriate actions.
Earlier this year, Facebook added several features to Messenger like Safety Notifications, Two-Factor Authentication, Block and Report Messages. Now, adding Message Forwarding Limit patches an another layer of restriction and makes the app experience more exclusive.
How Message Forwarding Limit breaks Misinformation to propagate rapidly?
Restricting a message to forward with not more than 5 people at a time will not affect a normal user that much. However, it will definitely troublesome to those who uses an automated method to forward a message (that might be a misinformation) to a large number of users in a shot span of time.
WhatsApp already have the Message Forwarding Limit
Last Year, WhatsApp rolls out the Message Forwarding Limit, restricting the user to forward a message with not more than 5 people at a time. Also, this year, WhatsApp restricts the frequently forward message (labelled with double arrows) to forward with up to 1 chat at a time.
As most of us see, Facebook gives us a freedom of speech (following certain conditions) but at the same time it also fights with misinformation and rolling out features like Message Forwarding Limit is an example showing the same.
