Image credit – WABetaInfo
WhatsApp has a spam and fake news problem where due to the ease of use of the messenger, it allows users to easily spread spam and fake news without necessarily knowing about it. The company has been trying to do something about it and according to WABetaInfo, they have more features in the WhatsApp beta that will help deal with spam and fake news.
How will they do this? Basically if you were to check out the information about a particular message (where it shows you if it has been read or delivered), the beta was spotted with a new feature that also showed users how many times the message has been forwarded. What does this mean and how does it identify spam or fake news?
Sometimes if a message has been forwarded multiple times, there is a good chance that some people might simply be passing on the message instead of checking to see if it might be legit, which is how fake news can spread. So if you see a message that has been forwarded 100 times, then maybe it could be worth doing a bit of research before you decide to forward it along to your other contacts.
WhatsApp had previously introduced a new feature where they started to label messages that were forwarded. They also started to limit the number of times a message can be forwarded to try and reduce the impact of fake news when it spreads. Whether or not these changes will help remains to be seen.