We all get them. Those forwarded texts from you aunty saying she won a Pick n Pay voucher that is actually a huge scam. Or those articles from those dodgy sites spreading political fear. The new Whatsapp forwarding limit promises to help prevent this sort of thing from spreading.
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WhatsApp is aware that their platform is used on a daily basis to forward texts to friends and family and they are now limiting the number of texts you can forward in an attempt to slow down fake news. From today, WhatsApp will impose a five message limit across the globe so you will only be able to forward your fake news to five people at a time.
WhatsApp has had this restriction in place in India since July 2017 after the spread of fake news led to killings and lynching attempts. Global concern that the platform was being used to spread fake news without context has been high in recent months. There is no monitoring system behind WhatsApp so whatever you send cannot be reported to be fake.
This is thanks to WhatsApp’s end-to-end encryption that keeps your chats private. This great privacy does have its downfall though and that is the inability to control what you send be it real or fake. Hopefully, this move will be a small start to something greater to stop fake news and those dark Pick n Pay voucher scams.
