Fighting misinformation amidst the coronavirus outbreak is crucial. This is because misinformation can lead to undue panic, which in turn could possibly make the current bad situation even worse. This is why WhatsApp has announced that to do their part, they will be limiting message forwarding to just one chat at a time.According to WhatsApp, “However, we’ve seen a significant increase in the amount of forwarding which users have told us can feel overwhelming and can contribute to the spread of misinformation. We believe it’s important to slow the spread of these messages down to keep WhatsApp a place for personal conversation.”
The company had previously placed a limit of message forwarding to just five chats at a time. However, to combat misinformation, messages which are deemed to be “highly-forwarded” will now be limited to just one chat at a time. This is meant to discourage users from mass forwarding messages they get about the coronavirus outbreak, which could help curb or slow down the spread of misinformation.
WhatsApp is no stranger to fighting misinformation and previously, they introduced a label on forwarded messages which showed users which messages come from a forwarded source, which lets them know that it did not originate from the sender.
Filed in . Read more about Coronavirus, Covid-19 and Whatsapp. Source: blog.whatsapp