The fight against false information is becoming increasingly important in social networks. Now WhatsApp also wants to follow suit and prevent the spread of fake news with a new function.
In recent years, the spread of fake news has reached one peak after another, be it during the corona pandemic or the current war in Ukraine. Social networks like Facebook, Twitter and TikTok are being inundated with fake images and incorrect facts.
The networks use in-house “fact checkers”, i.e. employees who check the correctness of information, to take action against incorrect information. The messenger service WhatsApp, which belongs to the meta group (Facebook), now wants to follow suit with a new function and make it more difficult to send and forward incorrect information.
Messages can only be forwarded to a limited extent
In the latest beta version of the messenger, forwarded messages can only be forwarded once. This is how WhatsApp wants to prevent a chain reaction when wrong messages are repeatedly forwarded. If you are the originator of a message yourself, this restriction does not apply. It is only activated if a received message has also been forwarded to you.
However, this blocking function is not entirely new – it was introduced in Brazil a few years ago, but is now to be implemented worldwide in a future update. A further differentiation is also made in Brazil: A message that has only been forwarded once can be forwarded to a maximum of five other chats there. A message that has already been forwarded multiple times, only once.
Similar restrictions already exist in Germany. That’s what it says on the official whatsapp page: “You can forward a message to a maximum of five chats at a time. If a message has been forwarded many times, it can only be forwarded to one chat at a time.”
Do you use WhatsApp regularly, but are you always looking for new tricks or unknown functions that make it easier to use? In our guide, we present nine WhatsApp tricks that you should know.
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