WhatsApp Restricts Frequently Forwarded Messages to now 1 chat at a time

To fight fake news, Instant Messaging App WhatsApp introduced several features in past and the latest one is restricting the forwarding limit of Frequently Forwarded Messages on WhatsApp. In a bid to degrade the spread of Fake news, last year, WhatsApp brought a feature to restrict the forwarding limit a message to upto 5 chat at a time. Now, upgrading the same feature, WhatsApp now let a user to forward a frequently forwarded message to upto 1 chat at a time.

What does Frequently Forwarded Messages Mean?

From Frequently Forwarded messages, I mean such messages that are forwarded the most (say 5 or more times) on the platform. WhatsApp represents a forwarded message with a single arrow and a label saying forwarded. On the other hand, the app represent a frequently forwarded message with double arrows with forwarded label. That is how you can differentiate a forwarded and a frequently forwarded message on WhatsApp.

Well, the introduction of this new feature doesn’t mean now we can’t forward a message to 5 people at a time. The restriction is only imposed to frequently forwarded messages the definition of which I have described already.

How restricting the Frequently Forwarded Messages on the WhatsApp going to decrease the spread of Fake News?

So, what happens after restricting frequently forwarded message limit to 1 user. Do we assume, fake messages gonna end on WhatsApp? Of course not however, the spread rate of fake messages on the platform would definitely going to decrease. As WhatsApp wrote in one of their blog posts, last year when they restrict message forwarding to upto 5 people, they able to decrease 25% message forwards globally on their platform. And of course that would also help them to decrease the spread of fake news on WhatsApp to some extent.

One more feature for Frequently Forwarded Messages

For Frequently Forwarded Messages, WhatsApp has brought one more useful feature recently that helps a user to verify the correctness of a frequently forwarded message via a search icon next to the message. Once a user tap on the search icon, WhatsApp search the correctness of same message on Google Search. Although the feature was in beta last month, however, now many users reported to access it on both WhatsApp Web and WhatsApp mobile.