Following the widespread blame on WhatsApp for its role in spreading dangerous and inaccurate information across the globe, the Facebook-owned social messaging service has recently imposed limits on WhatsApp message forwarding and how many groups a message can be sent to. The strategy further enhances the recently added labels that indicate when a message has been forwarded. This is all in a bid to cut down on the spread of false information and spam.

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Prior to the restriction, users could forward messages to as many as over 250 groups but a new trial will see that forwarding is limited to 20 groups worldwide. However, in India, which is WhatsApp’s largest market with 200 million users, the limit will be just five. WhatsApp is also getting rid of the “quick forward” feature in India, a button next to multimedia messages that made photos and videos even faster to pass along. The company believes that these changes will help keep WhatsApp the way it was designed to be- a private messaging app and not a conveyer of false information.

The rate at which false information has been spreading through the platform is alarming and the company has in the past introduced features which would help reduce the spread. However, the latest change is in direct response to a series of incidents in India. WhatsApp’s fake news problem isn’t just causing violence in India it has also resulted in killings in countries like Myanmar and Sri Lanka. The BBC recently wrote about an incident which saw one man dead and two others severely beaten after rumours of their efforts to abduct children from a village spread on WhatsApp. Reportedly 17 other people had been killed in the past year under similar circumstances, with police saying false rumours had spread via WhatsApp message forwarding.

“We’re horrified by the violence in India, and we’ve announced number of different product changes to help address these issues,” a company spokesperson said in a blog post. “It’s a challenge which requires an action by civil society, government and tech companies.”

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Recently speaking about the fake news issue caused by Whatsapp message forwarding, Mark Zuckerberg said that the company would be updating its stance on fake news that perpetuates violence. Instead of simply trying to hide those posts on the service, as it does with other posts promoting false news, he said Facebook plans to take that kind of content down entirely.
SOURCE: http://www.viralvista.net/whatsapp-message-forwarding-limited-across-the-globe-in-a-bid-to-cut-down-on-false-information-and-spam/